F. P. Santangelo

A native of El Dorado Hills, California, Santangelo attended Oak Ridge High School, Sacramento City College, and the University of Miami. In 1988, he played collegiate summer baseball with the Brewster Whitecaps of the Cape Cod Baseball League.[1]

Santangelo was drafted in the 20th round of the 1989 Major League Baseball draft by the Montreal Expos organization and rose through the minor leagues, reaching the AAA with the Indianapolis Indians in 1992. He joined the AAA Ottawa Lynx the following year when the Expos changed AAA affiliation, and wound up playing three seasons for Ottawa before making his major league debut in August 1995. Santangelo became the first player in Ottawa Lynx history to have his number, 24, retired. He holds the club record with 86 runs scored in the 1993 season.[2]

Santangelo made his Major League debut on August 2, 1995 as the starting left fielder against the Florida Marlins. He ground out to third base in his first at-bat but tripled to right field off of Chris Hammond in the fifth inning for his first major-league hit. He was 2-for-3 with a run batted in (RBI) in his debut.[3] He hit his first home run on August 24 off Sergio Valdez of the San Francisco Giants.[4]

Santangelo finished fourth in the National League in Rookie of the Year voting in 1996. He played six different positions while posting a .277 average with seven home runs and 56 RBI. He was hit by 11 pitches, starting a four-year streak of being in the top 10 in the National League in that category. In four seasons with Montreal, he hit .251 with 17 homers and 119 RBI in 439 games.

He signed as a free agent with the San Francisco Giants on December 23, 1998 and played in 113 games for them during the 1999 season, hitting .260. He also stole 12 bases that season, the highest total of his career. He then signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers on January 11, 2000 and hit .197 for them in 81 games. In his tenure with the Dodgers, Santangelo primarily was used as a backup to Gary Sheffield, Tom Goodwin and Todd Hollandsworth. The Dodgers released him on March 29, 2001, and he signed with the Oakland Athletics the next week, on April 5, 2001.

With the Athletics, he was in 32 games in 2001 and hit only .197, while also playing 71 games for AAA Sacramento River Cats. He also played in his first and only post-season series in 2001, appearing in two games for the Athletics in the 2001 American League Division Series.

In 2002, he played in 44 games for the River Cats, hitting .174, and also played in seven games for the Columbus Clippers in the New York Yankees farm system, where he had one hit in 15 at-bats.

In his MLB career, Santangelo played in a total of 665 games with 415 hits, 21 home runs, and 162 RBIs. His career batting average was .245.

During his career, left field and center field were Santangelo's most frequent positions, though he also played at least one game each at second base, third base, shortstop, right field, and designated hitter. Santangelo, a switch hitter, hit home runs from both sides of the plate in the same game on June 7, 1997, against the Chicago Cubs.[5]

Santangelo co-hosted a sports radio talk show called "The Rise Guys" on KHTK-1140 AM in Sacramento from 2006 to 2008. On November 21, 2008, he was fired immediately after concluding his show for the day. KHTK gave low ratings and cost-cutting as the explanation. He said he felt "stabbed in the back" by the station.

On March 1, 2010, Santangelo became the host of San Francisco's KNBR-680 AM SportsPhone680 in the 7–10 pm time slot. He also worked as a reporter and fill-in game announcer for Giants broadcasts on CSN Bay Area and the Giants Radio Network. During his tenure with 680 AM, Santangelo made his point known that he preferred to see players hit home runs as opposed to players who used "small-ball" strategy, while also stating "steroid-induced home runs are way more entertaining than strategic runs."

On January 6, 2011, Santangelo was named the color analyst for the Washington Nationals' telecasts on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), returning to the organization with which he spent over half his playing career (the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington, D.C., in 2005). He was paired with play-by-play announcer Bob Carpenter. After Santangelo's first season as a broadcaster with the Nationals, Washington Post sports columnist Tracee Hamilton noted that the Carpenter-Santangelo team improved over 2011,[6] and Washington Post sports blogger Dan Steinberg wrote about Santangelo's performance and how he sought to be educational, not outrageous, in the broadcast booth.[7]

Santangelo's signature line as an announcer is a reverse play off the superstition of never speaking about a no-hitter when it is in progress. Whenever the first Nationals hit of the game occurs, Santangelo says flatly "There goes the no-hitter." Santangelo has explained that he says it as a tribute to his former manager Felipe Alou, who as manager of the Expos always said it when the Expos got their first hit in game.[8] Santangelo does not use the line when the opposing team gets its first hit, but on September 28, 2014, moments after Jordan Zimmermann pitched the first no-hitter in Washington Nationals history, Santangelo announced, "And there is the no-hitter!". He made the same remark after Max Scherzer's no-hitters on June 20 and October 3, 2015.

Following the release of the Mitchell Report in which he was named by Kirk Radomski as having used Deca-Durabolin, HGH, and testosterone, Santangelo confirmed he used HGH on two occasions in 1997 and 2000 to rehab from a quadriceps and knee injury but denied the other allegations, including telling teammate Adam Piatt that Radomski "will get you what you need." [9]

Santangelo has married twice; his second marriage was to Playboy Playmate Michelle McLaughlin.[10] He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.[11]

Santangelo′s first marriage produced two children, who as of March 2018 attended college in California.[11]

• List of Major League Baseball players named in the Mitchell Report

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)
• Baseball Almanac – F.P. Santangelo Stats