The Huntsville Times
2039-01-28
He pauses at the gate leading from the box seats out the field, drinking in the unnatural emerald perfection of the artificial grass, the right field grandstands that hug the field close, and the manually-operated scoreboard that evokes baseball of ages long past.
Resurrection Santos has never been here before, and yet he seems perfectly at home … with everything but the field turf.
“Why would you ruin a beautiful park like this with phony grass?” he sniffs, the barest hint of Spanish inflection warming his speech.
I step to one side and hold open the gate, allowing him to step onto the dirt that outlines foul territory down the first base line.
“It’s cheap to maintain, would be my guess,” I say.
Santos shakes his head.
Resurrection Santos
Even at age 64, with his trademark shock of jet black hair peppered with streaks of gray, Resurrection Santos still looks every inch a ballplayer. His body is lean, and dressed in beige chinos and a classic Chicago Black Sox warm-up jacket, he’s a commanding figure as he strides towards the infield.
I quickly close the gate to the field, leaving behind the media assistant who’s been assigned to tail us. The young woman scowls as I scurry after Santos, then she pulls open the gate herself and follows.
Damn, I think. She can’t take a hint, can she?
A youngster no more
As Santos nears the pitcher’s mound, I notice for the first time that he walks with a slight limp, which he acknowledges with a rueful grin.
“You know, in my mind’s eye, I’m still a 19-year-old rookie,” he says. “But my legs, they tell me another story. They tell me I’m an old man.”
It’s hard, though, to think of Santos that way.
For anyone who watched him prowl center field for the Chicago Black Sox in the 1990s, he is frozen in memory as a graceful fielder and fierce slugger who seemed destined to rewrite the record books of the Brewster Baseball Association.
The reason he never fulfilled that destiny lies in his halting steps, though: a series of leg and ankle injuries that gradually robbed him of the sublime speed and effortless swing that made him a force of nature on the baseball diamond.
But the pain-filled decade of decline that made up the second half of Santos’ career is not why he’s in Huntsville this weekend. He’s here to celebrate the incandescent burn of his early years, the .315 Black Sox career batting average, the 1998 Sawyer Silk MVP trophy, and the four consecutive All-Star games that moved his old franchise to honor him with a plaque in its new Hall of Honor.
He joins Tom Madonald, the legendary pitcher who won Steve Nebraska awards for the Black Sox in 2012 and 2015.
With the temperature in the mid-50s and the sun moving towards the top of the right field stands, it seems a fit afternoon to spend at the ballpark, even though the calendar reads late January. Santos shades his eyes and peers towards the right field corner and its inviting short porch.
“What I wouldn’t have given to be a left-handed hitter and played all my home games here,” he says. “What is it down that right field line – 330 feet? That’s home run heaven right there.”
Santos turns slowly, relishing the view of the outfield, the third base line, and finally home plate. He sighs softly and then begins a leisurely stroll back towards the box seats, nodding at the team media assistant awaiting us.
“It was nice of the Phantoms to let us come out here for the interview today,” Santos says, waiting for the young woman to open the gate back to the stands. He picks a seat in the third row and sits down. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been on a big-league field.”
I take a seat next to him. “Do you miss it?” I ask.
“Every day. Oh, I don’t miss the aches and pains of the long grind, but I do miss the … oh, what’s the phrase? Old age really is a bitch, is it not? … cat. Cat and mouse. I miss the cat and mouse with the pitchers.”
“Ken Howell … when he was with Washington used to tie me in knots,” Santos says with a laugh.
“He had a changeup that was just impossible to hit. Leaving his hand it looked just like his fastball, so I would swing about an hour early. I could walk back to the dugout, put my bat away, and take a drink from water cooler by the time that damn thing actually crossed the plate. A crazy good pitch.”
The significance behind a name
Then comes the question everyone asks, the one he usually brushes off with a well-rehearsed answer.
The name. Why “Resurrection?”
Santos sighs a little, but answers genially enough.
“My mother, Rosa,” he says simply. “She was a very religious lady, and she wanted to honor her religion.”
But, I press, many mothers use Biblical names - John, or Mark, or Joseph, or something along those lines. This, however, is a very striking name with a very specific meaning. Does she ever talk about how she came to choose it?
Santos purses his lips and looks away, out towards the mammoth orange scoreboard out beyond center field. I can see he’s wrestling with how to answer, then he shrugs and looks me in the eye.
“My mother, she was young when she had me,” he says quietly. “She was … not married. That was not done in her family, and even though she was living in New York … the big city … the neighborhood where she lived was small, tight knit, and she was an outcast.
“So, when she had me, she was afraid her life was over – she told me this many times. She turned to her faith, and she prayed every night that she could have a new life … and so, when I was born, she named me Resurrection. I was the symbol of her hope that she could start again and have a new life out of the ashes of the old.
“And, you can see, her hopes were not in vain.”
I nod solemnly, realizing this is the first time he has told this story to a reporter – maybe the first time he has told it to anyone outside his family.
I struggle for a follow-up question, and seize on something I’d read in an old BBA Weekly feature about his early days with the Black Sox. "Is it true," I ask, "that you wouldn’t let your friends or teammates shorten your name to Res or Ressie as a nickname?"
“That is true,” Santos says with a wry smile. “That did not please some of the guys, who thought Resurrection was … a mouthful, you could say. But I told them my momma Rosa had not named me Res, so out of respect to her, please use my full name.
“Of course, I was hitting about .350 at the time, so they listened to me. If I had been hitting .230, who knows?”
New York or Ensenada?
"One other thing I was wondering about," I say. "Some of the old Black Sox statistical guides list your birthplace as Ensenada, Mexico, but everything else says you’re from New York City. What happened there?"
Santos snorts with laughter.
“That was the result of a very thick-headed public relations intern with the Black Sox,” he says. “He asked me where my family was from, and I told him, originally, they were from Ensenada – which is true. That’s where my mother’s grandparents were born, before they came to the States.
“But my intern friend never asked any more about it, and I was young and stupid and didn’t add anything else. I can tell you, that little media guide mishap has caused no small amount of trouble for me over the years – when we would visit other ballparks, the fans would yell that I was illegal. Some media outlets picked that up … it was a pain in the neck.”
"So, that followed you around for awhile," I say.
“It still does,” Santos answers. “You just asked about it, did you not?”
True enough, I concede, and then turn to a safer topic.
A son’s debt to his mother
"You have said many times that you owe your baseball career to your mother," I say. "Talk a little about that."
Santos leans back and drapes an arm across the seatback next to him, seemingly at ease with the direction of the conversation now.
“My mother, Rosa … she did not know anything about baseball – had never played it, I don’t think she had ever even watched it,” he says. “Futbol … soccer … was the game she played as a kid.
“But I played baseball after school with some of the kids in the neighborhood, and realized I could hit, so that became my game. My mom saved up and bought us both gloves … used gloves … and she would take me out and play catch. My god, she was terrible! But she didn’t care – she wanted me to practice.
“And later, she would walk me to over to the ballfield at the school near our house, before she left for work and make sure the coaches would get me home. And at the games … my lord, at the games … she cheered louder than whole sections. She was my biggest fan, always.”
She never wanted you to stop wasting time on a game and do your homework or get a job?
“Never. Well, she insisted I do my homework … but my mother knew that baseball might be my best hope at a better life, and she moved heaven and earth to make it possible. When I got discouraged, she would pick me back up. When I needed someone to throw with, she was there.
Rosa Santos
“I owe her everything.”
The next question slips out before I even think about it: "You took her last name, not your father’s, right?"
“Of course,” Santos says, his eyes flashing fire. “My father is not a part of my life, has never been a part of my life. Once, when I was going good with the Black Sox, he tried to contact me, and I shut it down. This man left his girlfriend pregnant, let her have me alone, let her raise me alone, and then wants to be part of my life because I am famous.
“No,” he says, slapping the seat back next him. “No man who’s worth calling a man does those things.”
The legacy of Resurrection Santos
Again, I steer the conversation to safer ground.
"What," I ask, "is your most vivid memory as a player?"
“September 1st, 1998,” he answers quickly. “We were playing Omaha, and I hit three home runs that day – two of them were off Lance Dickson and the third was off James Henderson. The crowd was going crazy – hell, I was going crazy. I will never forget the noise and the feeling of circling the bases after that last home run.
“It was like magic!”
"And," I follow up, "your proudest moment?"
Santos doesn’t hesitate here, either.
“The day I called my mother and told her I had bought her a new house, and that she would never again have to go work in someone else’s home to support herself. I bought her a nice house in Hinsdale, a suburb of Chicago, and she lived there until she died a few years ago. For all the hits and all the victories and all the awards, that was my best moment in baseball.”
Behind me, I sense the media assistant signaling Santos that time is running short, and he begins to stand up. As he does, I fire off one last question.
"So, Mr. Santos … Resurrection … how do you hope your fans remember you as you enter the Hall of Honor? What do you want your legacy to be?”
“That, my friend, is simple,” he says with a warm smile as he mounts the concrete steps towards the exit, favoring his bum ankle a bit.
“I want to be remembered as the son of Rosa Santos, no more and no less.”