After brush with death, Ron Santo makes eagerly awaited trip home

CHICAGO — Ron Santo comes home tonight, and that's an amazing accomplishment for a guy who died last November.

His relatives from the Rainier Valley neighborhood near Sicks' Stadium where Santo grew up, and all the old Franklin High buddies waiting so eagerly for Santo's return to Seattle after a 13-year absence, will find that he is the same old Ronnie — exuberant, eternally optimistic, and very much alive.

Yeah, his right leg is gone, amputated seven inches below the knee a week before Christmas after 11 operations failed to save it from the gangrenous ravages of diabetes.

It's an obstacle, without question, but hardly a deterrent. One got a glimpse last weekend of the challenges Santo faces in his job as Cubs color analyst on WGN radio. A little shakily, but with undaunted determination, the 62-year-old Santo maneuvered his way up a short set of stairs into the office of Cubs Manager Don Baylor to tape a pregame show last Sunday at Wrigley Field. Waving off help, Santo struggled a bit, but made it to the top and proceeded with the interview.

He's outfitted, of course, with a prosthesis that he's not ashamed to pull off and display. He calls it his "Corvette," but Santo eagerly awaits the unveiling of his Cadillac, a custom-fitted, permanent prosthesis that should come in about a week.

"Then I think I'll be able to get on my horse, play a little golf," said Santo. "I feel great, I honestly do. When they took my foot, I never felt so good in my life. Getting all that out of me, the infection — I just felt great."

Santo never considered sitting out the season, and showed up for the first day of spring training in Mesa, Ariz. He started out the season with a walker, advanced to a cane (which he handed to Billy Williams before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch for the home opener at Wrigley Field, to a long and rousing standing ovation), and last weekend went about his work without any devices at all.

"In our business, we throw around the words 'great,' 'heroic,' 'inspirational,' in the same way we use the article 'the,' " said Chip Caray, a television broadcaster on WGN. "But when you see what Ronnie's gone through, when you see the way he's handled himself, the incredible self-deprecating humor, the courage he's shown, the openness he's dealt with it, the millions of dollars he's raised, it really is an inspiring thing."

"I think being here is part of the cure from what he's been through," added Pat Hughes, Santo's broadcasting partner on radio. "He's getting stronger and stronger. Ron has a lot of gas left in his tank."

That didn't seem to be the case after his eighth operation in November, when the electrical function of his heart shut down. He was running on empty — and on verge of conking out altogether.

"I was in bed, reading, and I started getting a little dizzy," he recalled. "I knew right then, my heart was going to stop. And I was really at peace. I didn't have any pain. None. I wasn't scared. I can't explain it."

As he was drifting out of consciousness, a nurse, Andrea Stone, leaped on top of him and looked him in the eye and pleaded, "Ron, don't leave me. Stay with me."

"It frightened me," he said. "I thought she was going to die if I died."

He heard Stone yell, "Code Blue!" and saw the room fill with medical personnel scrambling to save him. One doctor asked, "Is he breathing on his own?" and Santo tried to nod.

"I watched it," he said. "I was right there. I wasn't above. Ten people came in and they're working on me. Bingo, something goes down my throat. The last thing I remember is a guy saying, 'He's flat! He's flat!' Then they hit me on the chest, like a punch."

The next memory is waking up with his wife next to him, assuring him that yes, he was indeed alive, that it wasn't a heart attack but rather an electrical shutdown.

Reflecting on the incident, which led doctors to implant a mini-defibrillator, Santo said, "I didn't see a white light, but I knew I was going. And I did go. Believe it or not, from that moment on, I knew I was on this earth for a reason. I really mean that. I got through all these operations. My heart did stop, but I came back. I had my leg cut off. I'm walking. I feel great.

"Then, when I stop and think, the reason is to find a cure."

Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 18, just as he was about to embark on a baseball career that many believe will eventually put Santo into the Hall of Fame, he has helped raise $50 million for research, through golf tournaments and charitable fund-raisers he has sponsored.

"It's not for me; it's for those kids," he said. "Because this is a devastating disease."

Santo has been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support he has received from Cubs fans — approximately 10,000 e-mails, and boxfulls of cards and letters.

"I know fans loved the way I played the game of baseball, but I never knew the love they had for me," he said. "I was overwhelmed. It was so heartwarming. I mean, this is love. This wasn't because I was a good ballplayer. This was because they like ME. ...

"I always treat people the way I want to be treated, and it comes back."

And now Santo is coming back to the town that claims him as its native son, but which he can't rightfully claim any more as home.

"I grew up in Seattle, lived there 19 years, and it was great, and those people will always be my friends," he said. "But I'll be honest: I wouldn't think of living anyplace else but Chicago. I've spent the majority of my life here."

Asked if he planned to check out his old neighborhood, Santo joked, "I'm trying to figure out how I'd get to my old neighborhood. The last time I was out there, there were so many freeways and highways, I wouldn't even know where to go. We had a duplex, and I know that's gone."

The Cubs were due to fly into Seattle yesterday afternoon. Tomorrow morning, Santo will be honored by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels at City Hall. He will have lunch with his Franklin High football team, reuniting with buddies like Frank Savelli, Pete Acker, John Phillips, Jimmy Johnson and Bill Chatalas.

After Saturday's day game, he will have dinner with friends and family, including sister Adielene Santo, who lives in Kent and is not surprised by the positive attitude her brother has maintained during his ordeal.

"He's always been that way," said Adielene Santo. "Maybe a lot of his strength came from my mother. She was quite that way, a very, very positive person. Ron's always been that way, and he's been through a lot."

As he sat in the press room at Wrigley Field last weekend, a constant stream of well-wishers approached Santo, inquiring delicately about his health. Doing great, he assured them all, and it's hard to believe otherwise.

"I've been with Ron since 1959, when we played Double-A baseball together, and so I saw the positiveness, the never-say-die attitude," said Hall-of-Famer Billy Williams. "I knew he'd bounce back. I knew that somewhere along the line, he'd pull through and really enjoy life."

Added Caray, "He's slowly but surely getting back to a sense of normalcy. That will be the greatest accomplishment of all, when he can get on a horse and go ride in the country for two hours and just forget about being Ron Santo the amputee, and he can just go back to being Ronnie, the cowboy. That, I think, is what he really wants."