Ron Santo

Ron Santo is a former Major League Baseball third baseman for the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox. He played from 1960 until 1974, winning five consecutive Gold Gloves from 1964 through 1968.http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/santoro01.shtml

On December 9, 2008, after falling nine votes short for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Santo lashed out at the voting process that determines selection into the Hall of Fame. He stated, "It's a travesty. When I saw nobody got in again, I go, Whoa, this is wrong. They can't keep going the way they're going. They've got to put a (different) committee out there. It'll be eight years now that they've voted and not let anybody in. And personally, I feel like there's a lot of guys that should've been in, not just me."http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3756458

On December 2, 2010, Santo died at the age of 70. The cause of death was complications from bladder cancer.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/12/03/GA2010120302783.html

During his career, Ron Santo recorded a .277 batting average with 342 home runs and 1,331 RBIs. Defensively, Santo was recognized from 1964 to 1968 with five consecutive Gold Glove Awards at third base. Santo was also a nine-time All-Star at his position. Santo had four straight seasons where he hit 30 or more home runs and eleven straight seasons where he hit at least 20. He also had four seasons in which he drove in 100 RBIs and eight seasons in which he drove in at least 90. Despite these numbers and achievements, as of 2008, Santo had not been elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.http://web.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/vetcom2009_bios.jsp

• "Getting in or not getting in is not going to change my life at all. I'm going to be me, and that's it. But I feel I deserve this. I put up Hall of Fame numbers during the greatest era of baseball for pitchers, and I played with diabetes. Only diabetics can know what I went through. It would have just been satisfying to be elected."—Ron Santohttp://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3756458

• "They get the ballot and they only look at the name, they don't look at the numbers. They should have a committee and sit down and talk about the 10 guys eligible. You've got to have people who know what you've done."—Ron Santohttp://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081208&content_id=3705945&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

• "There are guys like Ernie Banks and Fergie Jenkins and myself, and we saw him play and saw the type of player he was, and that's how we cast our votes. We thought he was a Hall of Fame player.—Hall of Famer Billy Williams on Ron Santohttp://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081208&content_id=3705945&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

• "This is disappointing to me and I know it's disappointing to Ronnie. But I've often said that because we weren't in the postseason and not on national television at the end of the year, it did not help. A lot people didn't know this guy was a great baseball player."—Billy Williamshttp://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/chi-09-mitchell-chicagodec09,0,6980490.story