It would be easy to say that This Old Cub is about the Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo who played with the Cubs from 1960 to 1973. That it shows the trials and tribulations of a man, who, in spite of having juvenile diabetes, was the first and the only player to play professional baseball with the disease; certainly on an all-star level, and perhaps on a Hall of Fame level. That would be easy to say, but it would only be half the truth.
This Old Cub is about a man whose accomplishments are far outweighed by the kind of person that he is and the role model that he provides for a generation of kids out there who look for someone to emulate. While I know that there are the Ron Santos of today out there and that it is too easy to focus on the Barry Bonds and the Michael Vicks of the world, sometimes seeing a video like This Old Cub helps to bring things back into perspective.
When Ron Santo first was drafted, he could have gone to any of the 16 teams that played major league baseball. The first sign of his moral character was to sign with the Cubs — the team that paid the least, but the one he felt drawn to the most. From there he went on to have a very illustrious career with the Cubs.
This movie is also about a man who had to struggle with juvenile diabetes since he was 18. It brings into focus the reality of what this crippling disease can do to a person. There is one story that Santo relates in the movie in which he is on deck, Ernie Banks is at bat, and Santo begins to see triple (one of the times during which he would need to eat a candy bar to overcome the sugar imbalance in his body). He hopes that Banks will just strike out and the game would be over. Banks walks! Santo comes to the plate only to see three pitchers in his vision. He picks the middle one and proceeds to hit a grand-slam home run. That is what I call old school.
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