37 years after his retirement and nearly a full year after his death, Ron Santo has finally been selected by the Golden Era committee (a subset of the Veterans Committee that only votes on players from baseball's golden era, roughly 1950-1970) to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Santo received a vote from 15 of the 16 members of the committee.
I've always felt that Santo had been overlooked by the voters. He was unfairly judged against another third baseman from his era, Brooks Robinson. While Santo had the edge in hitting, he was never consider as good a player as Robinson because Robinson was the better fielder. That's not fair to Santo, because Robinson was perhaps the greatest fielder of all time at any position. The fact they played the same position during the same era doomed Santo's chances of making the Hall of Fame for nearly four decades.
Advanced metrics have Santo's career value almost as high as Robinson's. Santo was better at getting on base and hit for more power. During his prime his fielding was excellent and stacks up well against any other third baseman not named Brooks Robinson.
While I think this decision is the right one, it's a shame voters waited until Santo died before voting him into the hall, especially considering it's something he said he wanted so much. It's like they were punishing him for something that was never explained, and now that he's dead he'll finally get the recognition he asked for when he was alive.
