“In our opinion, Cal wasn’t the greatest guy for umpires,” Clark said. “He always thought he was right, could be pretty arrogant about it. If we called something against him, let’s just say he didn’t have the respect for umpires that other players had. I think he got it from his father, who really didn’t like umpires at all. But that doesn’t diminish the respect we had for Cal and how he played the game.”
When Coble ejected him after calling two strikes on him on that hot night in 1989, Frank Robinson had to summon a pinch hitter to finish his at-bat. Rene Gonzales, the first Oriole to hit for Ripken in more than seven years, struck out.
Though he had barely played, Ripken still received credit for appearing in the game, extending his streak to 1,198 straight games. The streak would not have ended even if he had failed to fulfill the requirements for an appearance. According to the major league rule that sets the parameters for appearances, “the streak shall be extended” if a player on a consecutive-game run is “ejected from a game by an umpire before he can comply with the requirements of this rule.”
While Ripken left the clubhouse through a dugout exit to avoid talking to reporters after the Orioles lost to Minnesota, Coble gave his side of the story. The contested pitches were strikes, he said, “dead on the outside corner.” But Orioles fans in the front rows abused him all night after he tossed Ripken. “I was called every name in the book,” Coble said. “That’s the most miserable two and a half hours of my life. That’s like throwing God out of Sunday school.”
Coble’s reference to God indicated the respect Ripken now commanded throughout baseball, at least partly because he had played in so many games in a row. That did not mean he received a deity’s treatment at home, though. “The way I remember it, thirteen hundred through eighteen hundred was all negative,” Ripken said, referring to the time that encompassed those consecutive games in his streak.
The starting date for that period was June 3, 1990, when he reached 1,300 games in a row. One week later, on a warm, cloudy Sunday afternoon at Memorial Stadium, the Orioles played the Yankees. It should have been a celebratory occasion. By reaching 1,307 straight games, Ripken had equaled Everett Scott’s consecutive-game threshold, set 65 years earlier. Now only Gehrig’s streak was longer. Yet Ripken received a lukewarm reaction from his hometown fans. After he struck out in the bottom of the fifth, he heard boos as he returned to the dugout. When the inning ended and it was noted on the scoreboard that the game was official and Ripken had tied Scott, only polite applause sounded.
Why the modest reaction? Ripken was slumping miserably, his average for the season down to .217. He had gone through rough times before, but this was the worst. Some fans believed he needed to take a day off to collect himself, and they were lighting up radio talk-show boards with their opinions. Ripken’s streak was getting in the way, they said, and he should sit for the sake of the team.
“The streak was being examined not for what it was, but for all these other things,” Ripken recalled. “People were looking at your intentions, calling you selfish. Meanwhile, the Orioles were going through a rebuilding process, making it easy to blame anyone for anything. For a lot of people, the answer was, ‘He’s playing too much; he needs to come out; he’s obsessed with the streak.’”
It did not help that the Orioles as a whole also were floundering. After a slow start dropped them six games out, they briefly rallied, then collapsed before the All-Star break, prompting speculation that their surprising 1989 performance had been a fluke. Ripken continued to excel on defense; he would commit just three errors all season. But his bat was so tepid that Frank Robinson dropped him to sixth in the order.
Were his years of playing every day really taking a toll? Ripken did not believe it. He did not feel tired. His play in the field was superb. He tinkered with his batting stance, changing where he put his hands and how he aligned his feet. He had never gone to anyone other than Senior for batting advice; maybe it was time to try an entirely new approach. He certainly was seeing fewer juicy pitches now that he no longer batted in front of Murray.
The truth was Ripken never wanted to sit out even one trip to home plate, much less an entire game. He always found value in an at-bat, even near the end of a lopsided win or loss.
“If you were swinging well, you didn’t want to stop; you wanted to get in that last at-bat so you felt good going into the next game,” he recalled. “By the same token, if you were going bad, it was an opportunity to try something, ‘Let me get a little closer to the plate; let me spread out a little bit; let me open up; look for this, look for that.’ Maybe you found something you could use the next day, and you went into that game with hope as opposed to thinking, ‘I’m stinking.’ I firmly believed there was huge value in both of those. I never thought you could solve your problems by not playing.”
Frank Robinson agreed that the streak was not the problem. One of the greatest hitters ever, Robinson believed Ripken was lunging at pitches, a sign of frustration.
Nonetheless, Ripken said years later that Robinson considered ending the streak in 1990. “He told me later that he would leave the house thinking, ‘This is it, the day I’m going to stop it,’” Ripken said for this book. “He probably believed I was struggling and maybe he could put someone in there and get a couple of hits out of them, but ultimately it was to fix me. Because there is a theory that if you take a couple of days off, you clear your head.
“But at the moment of truth, when Frank was at the park and sat down to make out the lineup for that day’s game, he told me, ‘I thought about all the things you did in the course of the game, not just hitting and fielding, all the things you did of value, and I didn’t want to replace you.’ That was probably the highest compliment you could get. Even when I wasn’t hitting and you think [sitting] might benefit me in the big picture, at the moment of truth, sitting in his office, he didn’t want to do it.”
In an interview for this book, Frank Robinson denied the streak was in jeopardy that year. “I never thought about giving him a day off,” Robinson said. “The first thing I did every day was write in his name, then fill in around him.”
The manager was not a proponent of giving a slumping player a break. “I don’t think one day off makes any difference. I really don’t,” Robinson said. “We all have that thought, ‘Give the guy a day off, let him relax.’ But how can he relax when he’s at the ballpark watching a game, watching his teammates, and he’s not out there? I don’t really think there’s a lot to be gained.”
Ripken played on, and he heated up as the Orioles surged after the All-Star break, climbing to within four games of first place. But neither he nor the team stayed hot. By late August, the Orioles were 10 games out and fading fast, and Ripken was in another slump. He ended up hitting .250 for the season, his career low.
After the 1990 season, his streak stood at 1,411 straight games. It infuriated him to be accused of putting his interests ahead of the team’s, maintaining the streak because he wanted to pass Gehrig, regardless if the Orioles suffered. Ripken vehemently denied that charge. A truly selfish player, Ripken believed, ducked tough pitchers to protect his average, citing a headache, a sore hamstring, or the need for a day off. Ripken never used that dubious tactic.
Also, he thought, he had never resorted to artifice to keep his streak going. Unlike many of his consecutive-game predecessors, including Gehrig, he never used a pinch-hitting appearance or brief defensive stint to extend his streak. He also never agreed to serve as the Orioles’ designated hitter on days when he did not feel his best.
“I never once played for the sake of extending the streak, and the best evidence of that is I started every game in the field,” he recalled. “There were times when you had to challenge yourself injury-wise and ask if you should play, if you deserved to play, but I was always able to go.”
There certainly were times when his brother Bill came to the ballpark wondering whether Junior would play, only to realize he always played. “He hi
t so many balls off his shins and ankles,” Bill recalled. “You’d look at him after the game, and he’d have his foot in an ice bucket with a big, nasty, bright purple bruise. You’d see him limp out of there. But when he came back the next day, the limp was almost gone. There were times during the off-season when he sprained his ankle playing basketball and there was no way he could have played the next day. But during the season, he always found a way to play, actually found a way fairly easily not just to play, but to play and be productive.”
Ripken said, “My guiding philosophy was that playing every day for your team was the most honorable thing you could do. They were counting on you. You had a challenge that day, and you came to the ballpark to meet that challenge. You played. That was the highest level you could achieve. I had the physicality and resiliency to do it, and the streak evolved out of that. You’re just playing, using your approach, what you think is right, and all of a sudden, you were at a thousand games and now there was this thing. People think my goal in life was to build the streak and break Gehrig’s record, but the opposite was true. I would rather have had more hits, more home runs. The streak just happened.”
Doubts about his intentions never ebbed. Brooks Robinson, a friend and admirer of Ripken’s, said in a 1999 interview, “There probably were times when he should have sat out for a game or two.” But Robinson also said he understood Ripken’s desire to play every day: “It’s a wonderful trait, it really is, because with all the money and multiyear contracts in the game, I’ve seen plenty of guys say, ‘Well, I’m not feeling too good today. I won’t play.’ It happens all the time. But Cal still went out there. He didn’t set out to break the record, no question about that. It was just the way it happened.”
Disappointed with his 1990 season, Ripken played more basketball in the off-season, lifted more weights, took hours of extra batting practice, and asked Frank Robinson for hitting advice. Robinson said he left his body in poor position to drive the ball when he lunged at pitches. Robinson also told him to focus on hitting to all fields and stop trying to carry the offense.
Like a researcher in a science lab, Ripken tinkered with different stances for hours in the batting cage. When the 1991 season began, he debuted a crouching stance. The new mechanics and new approach reenergized his bat. He hit .338 in April. On Memorial Day, he ranked among the league leaders in home runs and runs batted in. “He’s fundamentally sound and relaxed,” Robinson said. Ripken conceded he had been “stubborn” and should have changed his approach sooner. “The problem has been me,” he said.
In July, he put on a show at the All-Star Game in Toronto. In the Home Run Derby on Monday, he took 22 swings and hit 12 balls into the seats, including three in a row at one point. He hit another home run in the All-Star Game the next night. Continuing to bash the ball the rest of the season, he finished with a .323 average, 34 home runs, and 114 runs batted in, a performance that earned him the American League MVP award for a second time. He also finally won the Gold Glove at shortstop, his first.
His soaring performance eliminated any doubts about whether he belonged in the sport’s elite class of stars. Those doubts had arisen as his hitting sagged after his breathtaking early years, but now he was a two-time MVP and nine-time All-Star with a Gold Glove and 259 career home runs—an impressive record.
Meanwhile, the 1991 season unfolded with few, if any, calls for Ripken to end his streak for the good of the team, which he quietly found amusing. The task of playing a full season was the same as in the years when he hit .250. The wear on his body was identical, as was the challenge of maintaining his focus.
Ripken believed his stellar season validated his belief that his consecutive-game streak had no bearing on how he played. As he saw it, other factors impacted his hitting, for better or worse, and his defense never suffered. There was no reason for him to stop.
Ripken’s second MVP season came in a down year for the Orioles, who started slowly and wound up with 95 losses. Frank Robinson paid for the dismal performance. Fired as manager on May 23, he soon accepted a job as the team’s assistant general manager.
The new manager, Johnny Oates, had played for Senior in the Orioles’ minor league system in the 1960s and 1970s and gone on to play for five teams in 11 years as a catcher in the major leagues. A pleasant, deeply spiritual southerner from Richmond, Virginia, Oates had turned to coaching and managing after his playing career ended and had risen through the ranks, exhibiting energy and thoroughness. The Orioles hoped those qualities would help their record.
When Oates played Ripken at shortstop on May 24, 1991, his first day as manager, Ripken’s playing streak inched forward to 1,449 straight games—long enough that no manager would dare stop it now without Ripken’s consent. But Oates was especially supportive of his shortstop’s desire to play every day. Oates viewed Senior as a mentor and role model; Senior’s relentlessness and attention to detail as a minor league manager had influenced Oates years earlier. Now that he was getting his first shot as a major league manager, Oates thought it was wonderfully fitting that Senior was his third-base coach and Senior’s son was his shortstop. The streak was safe as long as Oates managed the Orioles.
Oates had first met Junior as an exuberant youngster running around minor league clubhouses two decades earlier, and in some ways, Oates felt, Junior was no different now. He never even took a day off from infield or batting practice, much less a game.
A month into Oates’s tenure, Ripken went four days without a hit and asked Oates if he could take extra batting practice before a game in Kansas City. Oates suggested he take the day off from infield practice instead; maybe that would help him feel fresher for the game. “He hasn’t missed infield or batting practice in ten years,” Oates said later. But Ripken did not want to change the pregame routine he had followed for so long. He not only took batting practice and infield practice, but he also went to the outfield afterward to shag flies as others hit.
As batting practice rolled on, the Orioles’ Sam Horn stepped into the cage. Known for bashing prodigious home runs—more before games than during them—Horn knocked a succession of balls toward the fence. Turning to see where they landed, Oates squinted in disbelief. Ripken and the Orioles’ second baseman, Tim Hulett, were standing by the fence, taking turns attempting to make leaping catches of Horn’s blasts before they cleared the fence.
The Orioles moved into their new ballpark in downtown Baltimore in 1992. Architectural critics hailed its groundbreaking blend of old and new influences; its brick façade and wrought-iron railings conjuring up turn-of-the-century baseball; its luxury boxes and giant video scoreboard representing the latest in modern amenities. Oriole Park at Camden Yards would influence an entire generation of ballparks as other cities attempted to replicate Baltimore’s jewel.
The new home seemed to energize the Orioles. A laughingstock when they began the season with 21 straight losses just four years earlier, they now played in front of packed houses every night and, with Oates in command, won enough to warrant the support.
Early in the season, they traveled to Toronto for a series against the Blue Jays. It was the scene of Ripken’s All-Star triumph the year before, and fans applauded as he stepped to the plate in the top of the first. Toronto’s starter, Jack Morris, promptly hit him with a pitch. The ball struck Ripken’s “funny bone,” the nerve in the back of his elbow. His throwing hand went numb.
A few innings later, the Blue Jays’ Dave Winfield slashed a ground ball up the middle with two out and two runners on base. Ripken glided to his left, scooped up the ball, and threw toward first. “With no feeling in my hand, I had no clue where it would go,” he recalled. The throw was on target and beat Winfield to the bag for an out that appeared routine. But Ripken was shaken.
“I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t made that particular throw,” he recalled. “If I had thrown the ball away and two runs scored, and that continued; at some point, you would have to say, ‘I’m hurting the team be
cause I can’t make the plays.’ As it was, getting hit did affect my throwing all season. I had to figure out how to adjust my aim, because the ball wasn’t traveling the same way.”
It was the start of a rough season for him. After establishing career highs at the plate in 1991, Ripken regressed in 1992. His elbow hurt. His crouching stance stopped working. His confidence wavered. His average plummeted. After getting hit with a fastball in July, he did not hit a home run for 73 games, a staggering falloff for a player who had dominated the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game the year before.
He also was distracted. His contract was due to expire after the season, and Ron Shapiro was trying to negotiate a long-term deal with the Orioles. Unhappy with what he felt was a low offer, Shapiro told the media Ripken might become a free agent and sign with the Yankees. Baltimore fans were agitated by the prospect of their native son wearing pinstripes when he broke Gehrig’s record. Shapiro also said Ripken and his wife would not mind a change of scenery because they lacked privacy off the field.
In the end, he decided to stay, signing a five-year, $30.5 million contract with the Orioles in late August. The deal made him the game’s highest-paid player. “In my heart, I always wanted to be an Oriole, and I can say this now, I never wanted to be anything else,” Ripken said at the time.
Hours after the deal was announced before a game at Camden Yards, he hit into a double play and was booed on his 32nd birthday.
14
Gehrig
PLAYING HURT
At the outset of the 1934 season, Gehrig picked right up where he had left off in 1933 and battered American League pitching, driving in 18 runs in the Yankees’ first 17 games. But Ruth could no longer come close to matching his younger teammate. Now 39, Ruth still hit an occasional home run, but his average dropped, and he trudged around the outfield covering far less ground, his gut bulging over his uniform belt. It was almost embarrassing.
The Streak Page 19
