Fox going into hall
and going out of the limelight

Web-posted: Friday, March 7, 1997

oor Nellie Fox, the spunky little hero of White Sox fans. He's been gone a while, so he doesn't know about the bad thing that was just done to him. Or maybe he does.

They have voted Fox into baseball's Hall of Fame. In the sporting press, this means that he has become an ''immortal'' -- a word tossed around more freely by sportswriters than clergymen.

But what it really means is that Fox will now be forgotten.

Until this week, Fox was part of a long tradition of lucky baseball stars who were thought to be unfairly overlooked in the Hall of Fame voting.

I call it the Hack Wilson Syndrome.

If you consider yourself a baseball fan -- especially of the Cubs affliction -- quick, tell me about Hack Wilson. Stats, career, personality, legends and so on. Chances are you can't. So ask yourself, when was the last time you heard the name Hack Wilson?

See? But for many years after he stopped playing and after he died, Hack Wilson had an enviable measure of fame in Chicago.

Every year, that would be what amounted to Protest the Injustice Done to Hack Wilson Festival.

Sports columnists would thunder about why the Hall of Fame voters could be so thickheaded as to once again deny good old Hack entry into the sacred hall of immortals.

They would rehash how he once struck 56 home runs in a season, still the National League record. How he drove in 190 runs in one season, a major-league record.

Yes, they would concede, good old Hack had been known to take a few dozen drinks too many once in a while. But who didn't? And was that common human weakness any reason to deny an otherwise decent fellow the immortality that he had earned?

White-haired sports fans in bars would recall being in the stands when good old Hack hit a couple out. Those, they would say, were the glory days of the Cubs when Hack led them to a league championship. Of course, they still lost in the World Series.

And some would retell the story of the time a Cub manager tried to persuade good old Hack to cut down on his drinking. The manager held up a glass of whiskey, then dropped a live worm in it. The worm promptly died.

''What does this tell you?'' the manager supposedly asked.

''It tells me,'' Hack said, ``that if I keep drinking, I'll never have worms.''

Probably not true, but it was a good story.

And they would toast the memory of good old Hack and curse the damn fools who didn't appreciate what a great player he was, despite his fondness for whiskey.

Some would talk about the rumors that there were other reasons besides his drinking that deprived good old Hack of his rightful immortality. It was thought by some that he was what we now call a gay, although he had remained in the clubhouse closet.

After many years, Hack was finally voted in. And from that day on, the only people who took notice of him were those who visited the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and glanced at his plaque on the wall.

There isn't even a shotglass with a worm in it as part of his display.

The sportswriters now ignore him, and the fans have forgotten him. Some honor. Some immortality.

And now they have done it to Nellie Fox.

In recent years, we've had an annual outburst of sports-page indignation about Little Nellie being deprived of his rightful place in the hall.

They've written with considerable emotion about his spunk, the many hits, his nimble feet, his iron-man durability and, of course, how he always hustled.

But now you can forget about Nellie. He's in the great baseball tourist attraction, and that's the last we'll hear about him.

So who will be next as the topic of annual indignation?

I figure it will be Ron Santo, and he will be a fine choice since he is still a relatively young man and should have many good years of being snubbed ahead of him.

What a lucky guy. Once it starts, he can look forward to an annual ego boost from reading about all the home runs he swatted, the many runs he drove in and the fearless way he guarded the hot corner.

Some of the more insightful baseball scholars might even make note of how many tons of home plate dirt he scooped up and rubbed into his hands and forearms. Or the time he heroically slugged an abusive fan, a hit for which he received the praise of a Chicago judge who hadn't even been bribed.

And there will be angry commentary about Santo being deprived of his rightful immortality because of the stupidity of East Coast baseball writers who would surely vote him into the sacred hall if he had been a New York Yankee rather than a lowly Cub.

Eventually, Ron will make it. And a few days later, someone will wave to him on the street and say: ''Hi, Don.''

© 1996 Chicago Tribune