A Hardened Cal Ripken Starts Sixth Consecutive All-Star Game

Tuesday night, Cal Ripken started his sixth straight All-Star Game. It seems like more, doesn’t it? It seems he has been around forever. Maybe it’s the graying and balding, his games-played streak, his consistency or his maturity. Look at him, talk to him and you can’t believe he’s only 28 years old.

“I’m old,” he said, smiling. “I look old.”

He looks and feels old at times because, in 7 1/2 seasons in the major leagues with his childhood team, the Baltimore Orioles, Cal Ripken has seen just about everything -- from major individual awards to a World Series championship to 0-21. He has made countless appearances in Baltimore and nationwide, and yet a radio sports reporter in Cleveland, Ohio, in May had no idea what he looked like. He has signed more autographs than most anyone his age alive, and yet parents have yelled at him for not signing at 1:30 in the morning.

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Mike Flanagan, a former Oriole who knows Ripken as well as anyone does, said the losing of the last few years, the media, the autograph hounds and the people tugging at him have “hardened” Ripken. “But on the field, he hasn’t changed a bit,” Flanagan added. “The streak doesn’t mean a thing. He just loves to play.

“That won’t ever change.”

Has he changed?

“Not one bit,” said his brother, Orioles second baseman Bill Ripken.

This season has revived him, but Cal Ripken’s love for the game was tested severely last season when the Orioles started out 0-21, during which Cal Ripken Sr., whom Cal adores, was fired after six games. Cal Jr. said he still is unhappy about that, but you never could tell by the way he plays the game.

He was tested by a season of missed cutoff men, bad baserunning and pitchers who not only couldn’t throw the ball where they were instructed to, but forgot to or refused to.

“He’s a perfectionist; he has no patience when the game isn’t played correctly,” Flanagan said. “He has no patience for those who don’t play it correctly. He lives his life by two or three simple rules.”

Rule one: Play the game correctly.

The constant testing of his patience has, some believe, made Ripken less approachable by the media. Although he still signs “99 percent of the time,” there have been a few times when he had to tell autograph seekers he couldn’t sign, and twice he had to “educate” adults on autograph procedure. And even though he makes a tremendous number of appearances and is active in a variety of charities -- including a $250,000 donation last winter to an adult literacy program in Baltimore -- he said, “I had to learn to say, ‘No.’ ”

He perhaps has been better this season than in any other since 1983, when he won the American League Most Valuable Player award in his second full season in the majors. Playing well and winning are his two biggest priorities.

He isn’t the talkative guy he was in the winning days. He isn’t the innocent, Steve Garvey-type anymore. He isn’t the carefree rookie. He’s married. He has a big mortgage. He has more to consider.

“When I first came up,” he said, “I only had to worry about myself.”

“Everyone goes through their good and bad days,” Ripken said. “We all wake up on the wrong side of the bed. My patience is very limited some days; you have to bite your tongue. You have strong feelings inside, but you will not let them out. I find myself saying, ‘Gosh, that never used to bother me before.’ If you’re getting back late after a night game, and all you want to do is get something to eat, sometimes you get back at 1:30 in the morning and there are kids in the lobby waiting for you. First off, kids shouldn’t be out at 1:30 in the morning. I’ve had a long day. You have strong feelings, but you can’t just say, ‘Hey, get away from me.’ ”

In Ripken’s early years in the league, he says he did not always run his life in proper order.

“My first couple years, it was exciting, and ‘yes’ was the only word I knew how to say,” he said. “I didn’t keep a very good schedule. Many times, I would schedule two or three things a day, and I would barely make them. Sometimes, I wouldn’t make them. It tended to run you down. It was a learning stage. Slowly but surely, you learn how to organize your time. Gradually, also, you learn how to say ‘no.’ ”

He has played in 1,173 straight games, the fourth-longest streak in major league history (Garvey is third at 1,207). He has had to work even harder this season because he has been working with a team that was the youngest in the major leagues at the start of the season. He is the only remaining player from the Orioles’ 1983 championship team. He is the eighth-oldest player on the team, but he acts, plays and carries himself as if he were the oldest.

Last July, he signed a three-year contract worth $6.4 million. He probably could have gotten more had he signed with another team, but he chose to stay in Baltimore, where he grew up.

Life is good now. The Orioles are in first place, a spot he grew accustomed to his first two years in the league. The taste of winning was sweet; the losing was bitter. Last year was very tough.

“I’ve got to admit the enthusiasm was beaten in last season,” Ripken said. “When you’re 30 games out, you had to force the enthusiasm. But with winning, it’s natural.”

Not only are the Orioles winning, but Ripken has anchored the game’s best defense with his steady play. Some shortstops have better range, but who would you rather see the ball hit to with runners at second and third in the last of the ninth?

Offensively, Ripken is hitting .275 with 11 homers and 51 RBIs. This came after a dreadful start, plus a stretch in which he went 40 games without a homer. But as teammate Kevin Hickey said, “He could start the season 0-for-60 and still end up around .280-.290 with 25 homers and 100 RBIs. With that guy, just pencil it in on April 3.”

On April 3 this year, Ripken crushed a three-run homer in the sixth inning off Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox, erasing a 3-1 deficit. The Orioles won, 6-4. In many ways, that was the biggest victory and biggest hit of this remarkable Orioles season.

“My heart was pounding,” Ripken said. “I had a scared feeling, but a confident feeling. I was all keyed up, gunned up. My stomach was turning over. I felt a little sick. I thought to myself, ‘I haven’t had one of those at-bats in a few years.’ This year, there have been a ton of them. Fans are standing up, screaming and yelling. You can feel it. All at-bats are important; now it’s like life or death. All that matters is you’re winning. This is the only thing that matters. It makes it seem like 0-21 was 10 years ago, or did it actually happen?”