Less than a week later, on June 4, the Orioles played the Twins in Minnesota and fell behind early, 6–0. It was one of those nights when a lack of hitting became contagious. Weaver paced back and forth in the dugout, cursing and stealing puffs from a cigarette in the tunnel leading to the clubhouse. After Ken Singleton doubled to start the top of the ninth, Weaver hit for Ripken with Jim Dwyer, a veteran who excelled as a pinch hitter. Dwyer struck out. Weaver sent two more pinch hitters to the plate, but a rally did not develop, and second baseman Rich Dauer grounded out to end the game. Ripken had neither batted nor played in the field in the ninth, the last inning he would miss for more than five years.
Weaver continued to shuffle shortstop candidates, but none earned the job, and finally, on July 1, the manager gave Ripken a shot. Weaver had lost the off-season battle to determine Ripken’s position, but he had the final say now and had always thought Ripken could replace Belanger.
When Ripken saw a “6” by his name on the lineup card posted in the clubhouse, he thought it was a mistake and went to Weaver. “I’m putting you there to try to get more offense in the lineup. I don’t want you to try to do too much,” Weaver said. Initially, Ripken felt rusty in the field and struggled to turn double plays, but he soon settled in. Meanwhile, his productivity at the plate soared. Starting the Orioles’ final 90 games of the season at shortstop, he finished with a .264 average, 28 home runs, and 93 runs batted in, dwarfing the offense Belanger had provided at the position. He was voted the American League Rookie of the Year, and the “shortstop or third base” dilemma was over.
After falling eight games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League East, the Orioles rallied furiously in September and, in the end, needed to sweep a four-game series with the Brewers at Memorial Stadium to win the division. They won the first three in front of roaring crowds and sent out their longtime ace, Jim Palmer, to pitch the finale. Fans brought out brooms, anticipating a triumph and another trip to the postseason. But the Brewers battered Palmer, wrapped up the division title, and went on to play in the World Series.
“If only I had moved Ripken to shortstop earlier, we’d have won the pennant,” Weaver joked years later about a positional decision that would rank as one of his best.
The fiery Weaver, burned-out from years in the dugout, retired after the 1982 season. After 26 years in the organization, Senior was a candidate to replace him, but the job went to Joe Altobelli, who had coached and managed in Baltimore’s minor league system for 11 years and more recently managed the San Francisco Giants. Senior was disappointed, but as Ripken later wrote in his autobiography, The Only Way I Know, the family was not upset, because Senior was “still young, forty-seven years old. He had plenty of time” to get a shot.
Altobelli inherited a squad of hungry veterans. The Orioles had lost the 1979 World Series after holding a 3–1 lead and had just missed making the playoffs in 1982 and several other times. They knew they had only a few more years together and were determined to leave a mark. Altobelli knew not to disrupt their chemistry. Calm and genial, he was Weaver’s opposite in demeanor, but he continued to employ many of Weaver’s strategies when making out lineups, using pitchers, and managing games. Like Weaver, he preferred to rely on players hitting three-run homers to win games, as opposed to scratching out single runs with bunts, sacrifices, and steals. “I don’t even think we had a hit-and-run sign,” said Ken Singleton, adding that the bashing style kept players out of the trainer’s room because “you didn’t pull muscles or crash into guys running the bases; you just sat back and drove in runs.”
Continuing what Weaver had started, Altobelli played Ripken at shortstop in every game in 1983. In fact, Ripken never left the field; he played every inning. When several games became lopsided, Altobelli approached him in the dugout and asked if he wanted to take the rest of the day off. Ripken always said he wanted to keep playing. If anything, he felt stronger as the season progressed, unlike what he had experienced at Double A Charlotte in 1980, when he played an entire season but became worn down at the end. Now, in 1983, he hit .315 in August and .385 in September.
“I finished strong that year and had felt good [at the end] in 1982, too,” Ripken recalled. “When you can do that physically, you know you can. It’s a mental thing. My experience in Double A, going down [at the end], you kind of learn from that. You didn’t really know if it was a good idea to play in all those games or not, because you wore down at the end. To have that change in my first two years in the big leagues, it became a given that I could do it. I could play 162 and finish [with my average] going up. Then it was just a matter of the mental side, how you control it. But it was a big relief to know you could.”
He conceded years later that if he had slumped down the stretch of either of his first two seasons in the majors, he never would have played in so many games in a row.
“If you didn’t finish well, maybe you should manage your season differently,” he said, thinking back. “The thought would be, ‘There is no way I should be playing like this at the end of the season, so I should take some days off so I don’t get to that point.’ But once you finish strong, you know you can, so whether you play in every game is not a factor in how you approach the game.”
In 1983, Ripken batted .318, hit 27 home runs, and drove in 102 runs. One year after being voted Rookie of the Year, he won the American League Most Valuable Player award, edging out Eddie Murray in the balloting. The Orioles won 19 of their last 22 games to capture the American League East, then rolled through the postseason, losing just two games as they defeated the Chicago White Sox in the American League Championship Series and the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series.
At the end of the triumphant season, Altobelli could not believe he had let Ripken play every inning. After the World Series, the manager told his shortstop, “That was great, but I’m not going to let it happen again.”
Oh, but he did.
In Ripken’s first years with the Orioles, most of his teammates were older and married; they would be met by their wives and children at the Baltimore airport when the team returned from a road trip (having flown commercial before charter-flight travel became the norm throughout the major leagues). Younger and single, Ripken would grab his luggage and take an airport shuttle to the remote parking lot where he had left his car. On many occasions, he shared the shuttle with Eddie Murray, who was also single.
The two players quickly became friends. They had a lot in common. Both had been high Orioles draft picks. Both had come through the team’s minor league pipeline and reached the majors with fans expecting a lot from them. Both had naturally reserved personalities and were all business around the ballpark, but were more lighthearted in private than the public knew.
Both also had great respect for Senior, who had coached Murray in the Florida Instructional League in 1973, when some scouts had thought the just-drafted Murray was either lazy or uninterested because he folded his arms at first base between pitches. “That’s just how he stands,” Senior scoffed, helping defuse the criticism. Later, Senior helped Murray become a switch hitter, a move that set him on the path to being an All-Star.
When Murray reached Baltimore in 1977, he joined a contending Orioles team led by clubhouse elders such as Singleton and 34-year-old first baseman Lee May, whose philosophies had been formed in the 1960s, before more forgiving attitudes about rest and days off became popular.
“Lee always said, ‘Unless a bone’s hanging out, I’m in the lineup,’” Singleton recalled. “And I think I played in 95 percent of my team’s games over my career. Every day when I came to the park, I assumed I was batting third and playing right field. There was no question you were going to be in the lineup. And no one was going to go in and ask Earl for a day off. You just didn’t do that. For a lot of guys in my generation, that’s just the way it was.”
As a 21-year-old rookie in 1977, Murray mimicked May and Singleton, becoming a no-questions-asked everyday player, counted on—by Wea
ver, his teammates, and the fans—to be in the lineup. He bashed 27 home runs as the team’s designated hitter while sitting out just two games. The next year, he switched places with May, becoming the first baseman while May served as the DH, and again hit 27 home runs while sitting out just one game. In 1979, on a team that won the American League and lost a seven-game World Series, he missed just three games. In 1980, he hit .300, drove in 116 runs, and signed a contract making him baseball’s first million-dollar-a-year player.
By the time Ripken arrived in 1981, Murray was a key figure in the team’s clubhouse calculus, hosting crab feasts and inviting rookies to stay at his house if needed; he had extra rooms and a pinball machine. He was five years older than Ripken, but they bonded on those airport shuttle rides, over road lunches, and in clubhouse conversations before and after games. Senior had molded his son’s philosophy, but Murray’s influence also became important. Many of Murray’s principles became Ripken’s, including the importance of playing every day. In his first four seasons in the majors, Murray had sat out just two, one, three, and four games.
“Eddie had a big influence on me,” Ripken said. “He understood the value of being in the lineup every day. Even if he wasn’t hitting, he batted cleanup as a switch hitter and provided stability for everyone else. If it was first and second, no one out, bunt situation, he could walk out and calm everyone down and say, ‘OK, this is the play we’re running.’ He set the example of what an everyday player was. And he articulated to me that it was important for me to do it, too.”
In 1984, Ripken’s third full season in Baltimore, the Orioles finished third in their division, well back of the Detroit Tigers, who eventually won the World Series. But Ripken and Murray, their identities now conjoined, played in every game and combined for 56 home runs and 186 runs batted in. Ripken batted third, Murray fourth.
“You’re two players, [and] they’re counting on you to fill certain roles,” Ripken recalled. “You’re in the middle of the diamond; he’s at first base. You’re hitting third; he’s hitting fourth. By 1984, I never thought of it as a choice, as in, ‘Should I play?’ It was, ‘I’m an everyday player. I’m counted on. I’m playing.’ It was a foregone conclusion. That’s what you do. It was valued to be an everyday player, an honorable thing to play through injuries. Whatever it took, you were out there every day, and the team could count on you being there.”
Not surprisingly, after earning $180,000 in his Most Valuable Player season in 1983, Ripken saw his salary quickly escalate. He made $700,000 in 1984, and it was clear he would soon join Murray in surpassing the million-dollar-a-year threshold.
Although that was far more than Senior had ever earned in a year, Senior, still parenting, felt compelled to convey his thoughts to his son on the significance of making “big” money.
“I’m pretty sure Dad said, ‘You’re being paid a lot now to go out there and play, and remember, you owe it to everyone involved to do so,’” Bill Ripken said years later. “It was like, ‘OK, you made it, you’re making some money; don’t forget why you’re making some money. You mean something to the Orioles.’”
Assessing that conversation almost three decades later, Bill called it one of the origins of Junior’s consecutive-game streak. “I’m sure Junior took what Senior said and understood it was his job to go out there and play every day,” Bill said. “He already wanted to do that, but what Senior said really drove it home, reinforced it as a principle. And there was no changing him after that. Junior has always been a person of strong convictions. Once he believes in something, you’re not going to get him off it.”
The first game of the Orioles’ 1985 season almost resembled a science fiction tale. Snow fell on a packed house at Memorial Stadium as Charlie Hough, a knuckleball specialist for the visiting Texas Rangers, baffled the home team’s batters with mysterious offerings. The Orioles went hitless for six innings and trailed by one run going into the bottom of the eighth. When Ripken drew a walk from a relief pitcher, the fans stood, anticipating a rally. Murray stepped to the plate and lashed a drive to deep right field that cleared the fence. All was well in Baltimore. After a disappointing 1984 season, the Orioles were off and running.
Their second game, also against Texas, was an afternoon affair before a much smaller crowd. When Ripken played the top of the first at his usual spot in the infield, he ran his consecutive-game streak to 443. He had not missed an inning in more than two years. Altobelli had stopped asking if he wanted to take a break. He never did.
After the Orioles scored an early run, the Rangers loaded the bases with two out in the top of the third. Mike Boddicker, pitching for the Orioles, tried to escape the jam by picking off the runner on second, Gary Ward. Ripken slipped behind Ward, hoping to catch him unaware, as Boddicker turned and threw. Ward slid back to the base ahead of the throw, and as Ripken caught the ball, his left cleat caught on the bag and he fell awkwardly, twisting his ankle.
After Boddicker struck out the batter to end the inning, Ripken limped to the dugout and took off his cleat to inspect the ankle. It had already started swelling. “It was completely blown out, a severe sprain,” Ripken recalled. The Orioles’ head trainer, Ralph Salvon, quickly wrapped it with tape, enabling Ripken to keep playing. He went 0-for-2 with a walk in his remaining at-bats and handled several fielding chances without difficulty, but after the game, the ankle “was just gigantic,” Ripken recalled. Making a trip to the hospital, he listened soberly as a doctor told him to use crutches for a week and not run for two weeks. It appeared his consecutive-game streak would end at 443 games, 40 shy of the Orioles franchise record, held by Brooks Robinson. Heading home from the hospital, Ripken angrily threw his crutches in the backseat of his car. He never used them.
If the Orioles had been scheduled to play a league game the next day, Ripken almost surely could not have played. But they traveled to nearby Annapolis, Maryland, for an exhibition game against the Naval Academy varsity. Salvon accompanied them, leaving his assistant, Richie Bancells, to tend to Ripken in Baltimore. Bancells and Ripken had been friends since they broke into the Orioles system together at Bluefield, West Virginia, in 1978—Ripken as a young shortstop just out of high school, Bancells as a young trainer just out of college. Like Ripken, Bancells had developed his skills, moved up, and reached the majors. As Salvon’s assistant, he taped Ripken’s ankles before every game, a routine they would share for years.
As the Orioles played in Annapolis, Bancells went to Ripken’s apartment to treat the ankle. “It was a big black-and-blue thing,” Bancells recalled years later. Ripken peppered him with questions while Bancells worked. “Even going back to when he was in the minors, he was one of the first players I had that had a true interest in his body and how it functioned,” Bancells said. “He always asked a lot of questions about anatomy. When there was treatment, he said, ‘Why are we doing this?’ I showed him a lot of pictures of body parts, told him, ‘This is how we’re treating it and why we’re treating it.’ It gave him a better sense of his body.”
After almost two full days of treatment and hobbling around, Ripken drove to Memorial Stadium for the Orioles’ next game, against Toronto. His ankle remained swollen and sore, but when he tested it during batting practice and said he could play, Altobelli put him in the lineup.
In the bottom of the third, Ripken came to the plate with Rick Dempsey on third base and two out. He hit a line drive up the middle that Toronto’s pitcher, Jimmy Key, deflected and picked up. As Dempsey raced for home plate, Ripken ran toward first, knowing the run would count if he beat the throw. Leaping with his final stride, he landed squarely on the bag, forcing his sore ankle to bear all of his weight.
He beat the throw, enabling the run to score, but would his ankle hold up? Ripken held his breath as he jogged past the base.
It was fine.
“Once I passed that test, I knew I could stop thinking about it,” Ripken recalled.
Bancells became the Orioles’ head trainer three years l
ater and oversaw Ripken’s treatment for the rest of his career. “He did play through some injuries and illnesses,” Bancells said. “There were days when he came to the park and had a fever. He had the ankle that day, and several other things. Where it would knock other people down, he felt, ‘I can get through it; I’ll be all right. Let’s get through the game, and we’ll deal with it afterward.’ The ankle was one of those times where he said, ‘Let’s just tape it up and go.’ He just had this unbelievable ability that, whenever he had a problem, he’d treat it, take care of it, but when the bell rang, all that got put aside and he’d play.”
Edward Bennett Williams, the Washington lawyer who owned the Orioles, had high expectations in 1985. During the off-season, he had green-lighted the signings of several big-name free agents, including outfielder Fred Lynn and relief pitcher Don Aase. When the team muddled through April and May, the owner fired Altobelli, who had won a World Series two years earlier, and brought back Weaver, offering a large salary to convince him to come out of retirement. Senior had been passed over again.
Weaver’s return did not go well. The Orioles never got untracked in 1985, finishing fourth. In 1986, they were in second place in early August but lost 42 of their last 56 games, a startling collapse. Weaver’s magic touch had vanished. He retired again after that season, and Senior soon received word that he would get the job. After three decades with the organization, he would finally manage the Orioles.
His timing was awful. After a long run as one of baseball’s shrewdest and most successful organizations, the Orioles were entering a steep decline. Their stars had grown old, and their minor league pipeline had dried up. Their idea of “buying” a contender through free agency had not worked. Quite simply, they were now a bad baseball team.
The Streak Page 10
