When the lingering, languid Fall finally faded, it went fast, yielding to the harsh arrival of frigid temperatures, blustery winds and suddenly obvious darkness.
The days are too short.
The days were too short, too, for two good guys who died after both battled illness and persevered with electrifying grins and immense hearts. Ron Santo was 70; Dan Shea was 80.
Santo was famous and beloved by Cub fans; Shea was not famous but beloved by newsroom colleagues and folks in the community almost as much as his family.
Santo, who died Dec. 2, was eulogized at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.
Shea, who died Nov. 27, had his memorial service Dec. 4 and will be remembered at Holy Family Church in Peoria.
Both men wore their hearts on their sleeves, not their faiths. But faithful men they were.
Both had dour default expressions, but explosively smiled, their faces like fists, all folds and wrinkles draped below twinkling eyes.
Both helped kids.
Both benefited from organized labor, too. Santo was a nine-time All Star third baseman who missed the big-money era after free agency, but he was the first Major League Baseball player to exercise his right as a veteran to veto a trade when the Cubs tried to send him to the Angels. Shea served as president of Peoria’s Newspaper Guild, which helped ensure dozens of journalists there could make a decent standard of living, and he appreciated the importance of the 1958 work stoppage required to gain a contract and also the generosity of owner Henry Slane, who engineered an employee-ownership deal decades later.
Both faced physical adversities. Even before Santo lost his legs to complications from diabetes, he had trouble running. I first met Santo at one of Randy Hundley fantasy camps in 1990. It was the week Santo accepted the Cubs’ offer to join their radio broadcast team, and I remember his reaction when he was thrown out trying to score from second on a base hit: “C’mon!” he said, laughing. “I had to try!”
Shea lost his wind, and the last few times I saw him he was in a wheelchair. Devoted to running for decades, he never looked comfortable, seeming like a tomato on toothpicks as he shuffled down the street, red and sweaty. But he was a gamer, too.
A longtime newspaper copy boy, reporter and sportswriter, he became a copy editor, working with guys so cynical, quick to criticize and obsessed with the Associated Press style that when one muttered, “Good yarn” it felt like a Pulitzer or a Papal blessing. He was a veteran newshound and I was a newbie negotiating with the company for the first time when I asked him about picket-line duty. He said, “Picket? I can barely walk.” Then he chuckled and said, “Aw, I’ll do it. Whatever you need.”
Shea was selfless with charities, too, helping the March of Dimes and the Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Fame.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame didn’t admit Santo, whose 342 home runs and five Gold Gloves earned him his place. He fell 15 votes shy, a source of shame for those involved.
But, like Shea and countless people of good will who keep on keeping on, Santo channeled his emotions. Retiring from Major League baseball following a lousy last year with the White Sox in 1974, Santo tried several business ventures, remarried and launched an effort to help the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. His Ron Santo Walk for the Cure raised millions of dollars.
Santo is survived by his wife Vicki, and two sons and two daughters, and innumerable Cubs fans.
Shea is survived by his wife Pat, and four sons and three daughters, and countless runners and newspaper employees able to run marathons on the street or the workplace, making ends meet when previous generations couldn’t.
Two favorite places – ballparks and newsrooms – now seem extra empty as well as dark.
But, reflecting on these two lives, a bit of light seems to flicker from Scripture. Paul in 2 Timothy, 4:7 writes, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
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They were outsiders, the Magi.
Learned fellows, these “wise men” were skilled in astronomy and astrology, healing and philosophy, fortune-telling and “magic.”
Sometimes recalled as members of a Zoroastrian sect, they were named Balthasar, Gaspar and Melchior, according to tradition. From their homes in Babylon, they’d noticed a heavenly sign, perhaps a comet, nova or supernatural beacon.
The sign beckoned them to the west, and they prepared for the journey, some 1,200 miles toward the Mediterranean through mountains, deserts and terrain made more hostile by bandits. The perilous trek took months before they arrived at Jerusalem, then Bethlehem.
Melchior is recalled as an older man with white hair and a long beard; Gaspar as clean-shaven with a ruddy complexion; Balthasar as black-skinned and heavily bearded.
Their caravan of camels was loaded with tents and food and supplies, plus precious goods: gold, frankincense and myrrh.
A 10th century monk named Aelfric explained the riches’ significance: The gold signified royalty; the frankincense divinity; the myrrh mortality.
Before arriving at their destination, they sought guidance from the region’s King Herod, a despot who collaborated with the Roman authorities even as he exploited his half-Jewish heritage for political advantage. The Magi were polite but bade him farewell and would not help the tyrant follow or find their goal.
Rome’s Emperor Augustus had ordered a census, the Magi would discover, requiring a humble carpenter from a small town, sheltering his betrothed, a pregnant teen, to travel from Nazareth to meet the government edict.
The woman gave birth, and the child and family were visited by rich and poor alike, wealthy travelers and local shepherds.
The Magi, probably exhausted, exalted the baby.
“They prostrated themselves and did him homage,” according to the Book of Matthew. “Then they opened their treasures.”
St. Peter Chrysologus, an early church father, wrote, “The Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on Earth, Earth in heaven; man in God, God in man; one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body.”
Maybe the Magi wept. Maybe they laughed. The faith, the future, seemed opened to all, the most unlikely and distant among the lands: poor and rich, those who worked with their hands and those who worked with their heads, one heart, sacred and shared.
“We forget that we’re all members of the one human family,” Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit recalls. “These Magi were wise leaders [but were] not following the ways of the Jewish law. Yet these people came. [The Nativity] was revealed to all the peoples of the planet, everyone.”
Today, the “Twelve Days of Christmas” is a holiday song about various gifts and “true love,” but the 12th day after Christmas is known as “Epiphany,” from the Greek “to appear,” celebrating on Jan. 6 when all was revealed to the Magi.
An epitaph of sorts is at the cathedral in Cologne, Germany, where the Magi’s remains are housed, legend says: “Having undergone many trials and fatigues for the Gospel,” it reads, they met one final time in Armenia where, “after the celebration of Mass, they died. St. Melchior on Jan. 1, age 116; St. Balthasar on Jan. 6th, age 112; and St. Gaspar on Jan. 11, age 109.”
The wise men, outsiders, died – and lived – as insiders.
As can we all.
Contact Bill at: bill.knight@hotmail.com