Another Revered Baseball Voice Is Silenced

Devoted listeners feel the loss, whether it’s for the broadcasters’ idiosyncratic, bombastic or soothing voices; their enthusiasm; the daily company they provide for three hours at a time from spring through summer; or the unifying impact they have on their communities.

Santo, who was 70, gave Cubs fans at least three major reasons to love him.

He was a terrific third baseman who has been denied election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

He unashamedly loved his team from the WGN Radio booth with the authenticity of a true Cub of the Ernie Banks-Billy Williams vintage who has endured decades of disappointment.

And his courage — diabetes led to the amputation of his legs and myriad other health indignities — inspired his fans and listeners. The depth of his admirers’ feelings is on vivid display at his tribute page on Legacy.com.

“Your heart was wide open and your spirit danced,” Michelle Donfrio of Naperville, Ill., wrote. “There are few people these days who are willing to put themselves out there as honestly as you do. Your laugh will still be with us.”

Mike of Elmhurst, Ill., wrote: “The only thing better than watching the Cubs win was listening to Ron watch the Cubs win. We will miss you!”

Santo’s death came three weeks after that of Dave Niehaus, the Seattle Mariners’ announcer since their inception. In May, one of the greatest voices, Ernie Harwell, died of cancer at 92, and thousands paid their respects to him inside the front gates at Comerica Park, where he lay in repose.

“He was like family to us,” one Harwell mourner said.

A year earlier, Harry Kalas who endeared himself to Phillies fans for four decades, died before a game in the Washington Nationals’ broadcast booth — an apt, if terribly sad, way to say goodbye.

The Harwell-Niehaus-Kalas generation is fading. Fortunately, its torchbearer, Vin Scully, who just turned 83, is still vital and behind the Dodgers’ microphone. Bob Uecker, 40 years into his Brewers tenure, is almost 77 and is recovering from his second heart operation this year. Jerry Coleman, 86, still calls Padres games, and Joe Garagiola, 84, calls some Diamondbacks games.

They connect with fans because of their skills, their tenure and their authenticity. Santo lacked Scully-like skills, but it did not matter. Nor did it matter for Phil Rizzuto. Sometimes, you love an announcer like Santo for the fun he brought to fans who identified with his passion.

“In life, as in broadcasting, the greatest indictment is if you’re a fraud,” said Curt Smith, an author of books about baseball broadcasting and biographies of Scully and Mel Allen. “Santo wasn’t. He never presented himself as a professional who did his homework, even if he did it; he certainly knew baseball. If you were a Cubs fan, he was your guy, he loved your team, you loved him, and he loved the city you loved.”

He added: “God bless him. He wasn’t one of those robotic clones who numb you.”

Charley Steiner, who calls Dodgers games on radio and observes Scully as a colleague, understands the integral role radio broadcasters play.

“They’re the background music of summer,” he said. “They’re home plate. They’re going to be there at 1 in the afternoon or 7 at night. There’s a sense of reliability, stability, entertainment, comfort — and oh, by the way, there’s a game.”

Fourteen years after Allen’s death — and 46 years after he lost his job calling the Yankees — he is still fondly remembered by fans of an advanced age. His Southern accent, his expressions and his nearly annual presence calling the World Series are still part of his fans’ reality.

The remarks of the rabbi who eulogized him at his funeral could have applied to many of baseball’s greatest voices. “Mel Allen’s life was one long, extended, exhaustive, triumphant prayer,” he said, “a call to us to see the sublimities of the stolen sign or the first seasonal shifts of the wind.”

Santo was not a play-by-play announcer like Allen, or nearly all the baseball voices most often lionized. But he wanted happy endings for the Cubs as Allen did for the Yankees, although he expressed it as the raw, eternally adolescent id of the games that he called with Pat Hughes.

Hughes, who also worked beside Uecker in Milwaukee, said: “You can take Larry Bird with the Celtics, Jerry Rice with the 49ers or Wayne Gretzky with Edmonton, and no other star player ever loved his former team more than Santo. He loved the organization, the fans and Wrigley Field. He was genuine. He spoke from the heart. He wasn’t trying to fool anybody.”

Hughes recalled standing for the national anthem with Santo in the Shea Stadium radio booth in 2003 when the heater above them ignited Santo’s favorite hairpiece.

“I saw smoke coming out of his hair and he was rubbing his head,” Hughes said. “I said, ‘Man, what did you do?’ He hadn’t noticed how close he was to the heater. I took a cup of water and doused it.”

Santo wore it during the game despite looking as if a “golfer had whacked a divot in it,” Hughes said. He eventually discarded it but had three others, one worse than the next.

Steiner admired the on-air camaraderie of Hughes and Santo.

“Pat was Bud Abbott,” he said, “and just let Ron fly.”