Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509060049
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN WALKER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Perhaps it was the day he saw his dad bruise a toenail, turning it black-and-blue. His father plugged in their Black and Decker drill, bored a hole in the nail to relieve the pressure, and went about his business.
Or it might have been the time his minor-league team played the longest game in professional baseball history. That game between the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox lasted 33 innings.
Cal Ripken Jr. played every single one of them.
Somewhere in there, The Streak started. Certainly, the official date was May 30, 1982, when he replaced Floyd Rayford at third base. But clearly, it began long before then.
Now, it has come to this: On Wednesday night in Baltimore, Ripken is set to break one of sports' most hallowed marks, a treasured piece of history once thought to be so untouchable that Lou Gehrig's plaque at Yankee Stadium, placed more than 50 years ago, praises him as a man ``whose amazing record of 2,130 consecutive games should stand for all time.''
Along the way, while time was thinning his floppy brown hair on top and turning it gray at the temples, Ripken has won the American League Rookie of the Year Award, taken home two AL Most Valuable Player trophies, and with his usual, steady precision made 12 consecutive starts in the All-Star Game.
He has hit more home runs than any shortstop ever and set or shared nearly a dozen fielding records.
He never has missed a game, even while 3,700 other major-leaguers were going on the disabled list, even while opposing teams were using 525 starting shortstops. And he has done it while earning the reputation as one of the most humble and hard-working players around (Never mind that twice during his streak he was ejected in the first inning for arguing called strikes).
Ripken used to fight the fact that the number 2,131 might someday dwarf his many deeds, particularly at those times when critics - and there were many - complained he was hurting his team by playing every day.
No more.
``The streak has become my identity,'' he said recently. ``It's who I've become.''
``I've gotten a little more mature about it. I see the big picture better. Four or five years ago, I might have fought the notion that, `This is the guy who's played in all those games,' but I'm comfortable with my identity now,'' Ripken said. ``The streak will supersede my other accomplishments. I didn't set out to do this. I would have thought it was ridiculous if somebody told me 13 years ago that I would be in this position.''
Ripken actually has gone out of his way to avoid comparisons to Gehrig, other than to freely admit Gehrig was a better ballplayer than he is. Ripken has never seen ``Pride of the Yankees'' from start to finish, and still saves all the Gehrig photos and stories and remembrances of the Iron Horse that people send him, without looking at any of them.
``I put them in a file folder; I know where it is,'' he said last summer. ``Someday, when my [playing] days are over, the baseball fan in me will come out and I'll read them.
``But not now. It's like if I know too much about him, it might change my approach,'' he said. ``I've never been obsessed with Mr.Gehrig or tried to erase his record.''
Rather, Ripken has created his own. And no one is close - Frank Thomas had the second-longest active streak, a mere 230 games through Friday.
So special is Ripken's achievement that, for the first time in the major leagues, a baseball bearing a player's name will be used in a regular-season game. Rawlings will make it, and it will feature orange stitches and a logo commemorating the event.
President Clinton hopes to attend the game, perhaps sitting in a row of box seats being built just for this occasion, and there is talk of a parade in Ripken's honor the next day.
The Orioles even spoke this summer about trying to bring back his brother, Billy, from the Cleveland organization to play with Cal once again as his double-play partner on the big night against the California Angels. Last winter, players from all around the majors discussed how they could keep the streak alive despite the strike.
Fittingly, the whole thing will take place in Baltimore - the American League was prepared to switch the schedule to make sure that was so - and it will happen a half-hour drive from the house where he was raised, in front of the fans who have followed him his whole life.
They were the ones who saw him start out at red-bricked Memorial Stadium as a 20-year-old third baseman, back in the days when the most-known Cal Ripken in Baltimore was his dad, Cal Sr., the Orioles' third-base coach.
This week, shortly after his 35th birthday, Cal Jr. will stand before the crowd at Camden Yards as a future first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer. Then and now, just out there doing his job.
``Whatever Calvin did, he always wanted to do it the right way,'' said Bob Magee, his guidance counselor and junior varsity soccer coach at Aberdeen (Md.) High School.
``No, Calvin didn't have perfect attendance when he was in school, but he was pretty close,'' Magee said. ``He was a B-plus student, I'd say. But when he was on the field, whether it was soccer or baseball, he was almost perfect.''
Where did that drive, that determination, that desire to be the best come from? Where did he pick up the traits that prompted him to play 8,243 consecutive innings early in his career, or the work ethic that has led him to play more than 99 percent of all innings since joining the Orioles?
His dad, he says.
Cal Sr. spent more than 30 years in the Orioles' system as a player, coach and manager. Yet it was a day away from the ballfield that Cal Jr. says he remembers best.
It was when young Cal was 16 and his dad hooked a snowplow to a tractor, trying to help clear the neighborhood. The tractor stalled, and when Cal Sr. tried to get it going, a crank flew off and hit him in the forehead, drawing blood.
Cal Sr. pressed an oily rag to his head, while his scared son got him into the family car. But instead of driving to a hospital, Cal Sr. told his son to drive home. There, Cal Jr. watched his dad put on some butterfly bandages, then saw him head back to the plow to finish the job.
``When I get the feeling that things are a little low, that I need a little bit of motivation to work on my hitting, I visualize the tractor-crank story. That pushes me,'' Ripken told the Detroit Free Press in January.
``I think of that story more than any other,'' he said. ``Sometimes I'm beating me head against the wall and not getting any results at the plate, and I'm wondering if my effort is worth it all. That kind of story sums it all up for me.''
Maybe he was thinking about it the night of April 18, 1981, when Class AAA Rochester began that 33-inning game at Pawtucket. Ripken set a professional baseball record, along with a couple of teammates, that still stands for plate appearances in a game - he was 2-for-13 with two walks.
``I guess it is ironic,'' said Wade Boggs, who played the whole way for Pawtucket. ``At that time, he didn't really stand out.''
Ripken, signed by the Orioles at age 17 - he was the 48th player picked in the June 1978 draft - made his major-league debut on Aug.10, 1981, the day after a long summer players' strike ended and the night Pete Rose broke Stan Musial's NL hits record.
In his first game, Ripken entered as a pinch runner for Ken Singleton in the 12th inning and, waved home by his dad, scored the winning run.
Through the years, Ripken helped the Orioles win the 1983 World Series, catching a line drive by Garry Maddox for the final out. He also was on the 1988 team that lost its first 21 games - seeing his dad get fired as manager after opening with six losses - and eventually dropped 107 games. Since the streak began, the Orioles were 1,053-1,073 through Friday.
The constant has been Ripken, still taking shots at second base while turning double plays, still running into railings trying to catch foul pops at a position that makes him vulnerable to injuries.
He has been hit by pitches 45 times in his career, but the only time it caused him to sit out was four weeks before the streak began, when he was beaned by Mike Moore.
The closest he has come to missing a game since then, he figures, was in June 1993 when the streak stood at 1,790 and he twisted his right knee during a brawl between the Orioles and Seattle Mariners.
The next day, as the story goes, he told his wife, Kelly, he didn't think he could play.
``Can you play for just one inning?'' she supposedly replied.
Others have come and gone.
Consider that players such as Eric Davis, Kevin McReynolds and Marty Barrett all had good, long, productive careers in the time spanned by Ripken's streak.
Others have been injured.
Jeff Bagwell has missed parts of three consecutive seasons with a broken hand after being hit by pitches, Ken Griffey Jr. missed three months with a broken wrist suffered when he crashed into the center-field wall making a catch and Gary DiSarcina ended his season when he tore a thumb ligament while sliding.
There also was Henry Cotto, who once went on the disabled list after perforating his ear drum with a cotton swab; Vince Coleman, whose leg was caught in an automatic tarpaulin machine; and Ruben Sierra, who sprained an ankle chasing his daughter on a mall escalator.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, an average of 4.2 percent of full-time American workers is absent at any given time. Of course, multiplied out for a full year, the number is much higher.
``My guess is there is probably a Cal Ripken in every office. We've got some here,'' said Harvey Hamel, an economist at the bureau. ``But in light of what he does for a living, I'd say it's quite remarkable.''
Keywords:
BASEBALL
by CNB