I broke the Ron Santo news to a Cubs fan

I was in Chicago for work the latter part of the week, and on Friday, I was up way too early, and had the TV on, and saw news of Ronnie Woo Woo's passing. Just the day before, at the clinic I was working at, we'd been talking baseball, about the Cubs and White Sox, and I totally ripped on Santo, as I usually do, since he was probably the worst color commentator ever. From a non-Cubs fan perspective, anyway. And the Cubs fans in on the discussion jumped to his defense saying, he's a guy who totally loves the game, and totally loves the Cubs. That's something I appreciated; the only problem was that his inchoate homerism usually led to absolutely nothing useful coming from the color man's microphone, in terms of understanding of the game, in terms of amusing stories, in terms of anything, to the point that Pat Hughes pretty much has to carry the Cubs broadcasts all on his own.

So, having shredded the guy on Thursday, I woke up Friday to see that he'd died, and I felt kinda bad about that, so when I was riding to work with my fellow employee, a young (just out of college) Cubs fan, among those I'd been having the discussion the previous day, I told her that I felt bad about ripping Santo the day before. She laughed a bit, basically saying it wasn't anything she hadn't heard before...obviously unaware of his passing. So, as gently as I could, I told her Santo had passed away.

And, I wasn't the least bit surprised to see her eyes water a bit.

Santo wasn't a good broadcaster in any stretch of the imagination, but he was a Cub through and through. For a generation of Cubs fans, he was the guy giving voice to everything they were feeling, with every OH NO! and YEAH! when the Cubs erred or scored mirroring exactly what they were thinking. To an outsider, or to anyone who cared that a baseball broadcast shouldn't just be blind homerism, that it should serve to inform as well as entertain, Santo was the caricature of every awful announcer ever, but to Cubs fans, that didn't matter.

And so, in a way, he was their Harwell, the beloved voice on air, and from that perspective, I knew exactly what my co-worker was feeling as she heard the news, as she texted her dad to tell him the news, because I did the same after Ernie passed away.

Where I'm envious, though, was when we got to the clinic, she got to spend time that day talking over favorite Santo memories in person with fellow Cubs fans. I mean, I talked to my brother and another friend when Ernie passed away, and again when Sparky died, and of course, I shared those sad days with you guys, but there was something special about being able to discuss, remember, and share with others in person, at that first moment of grief, and being a Tigers fan in Wisconsin, I didn't have anyone to talk to, face to face, to remember special moments, to laugh about things we both remembered.

In Santo's case, it was perhaps a little more raw than in the case of Ernie and Sparky, because he was still an active broadcaster, and though he'd been battling his issues (bladder cancer was the malady that finally claimed his life) for years, he was still a current figure, still in the booth making no sense whatsoever (to me, anyway  :), so it wasn't like our guys, who we had a chance to honor over the years since they left the game or the booth.

That said, I still wish I had a chance to grieve directly with others who shared my warm memories of Sparky and of Ernie, because I knew all too well the reason my colleague got that tear in her eye, and however absurd it is, I'm jealous that she got to share her sadness with others, face to face, that same day.