Orioles Need Great September From Ripken to Win Division

It is September. Children’s hour is over. In this season of the Kid-O’s, it’s time for a veteran to step forward.

It so happens the Orioles have the ideal candidate.

You know him. You love him. He has the most famous shoulders in Baltimore. The question is: Are they broad enough to carry the Orioles to a division title?

Maybe this is a better question: Are they broad enough to carry the Orioles to an extra-base hit?

Obviously, the burden of leadership falls to shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. He is, by most measures, a superstar. He has the rep. He has the history. And now, perhaps more than at any single moment in his career, the Orioles need him to live up to that standard.

Maybe that’s too much to ask, but what options are left to the Orioles? Mickey Tettleton isn’t ready yet to carry anyone. In his first day back from a knee injury, he pinch hit Sunday and struck out on four pitches. Keith Moreland, who in four at-bats Saturday did not hit a ball past the pitcher’s mound, has been a bust. Just put him in a museum. Larry Sheets is in the last throes of consecutive disastrous seasons. Phil Bradley, slumping anyway, is a run-scorer, not a run-producer.

That pretty much leaves Ripken, the team’s cornerstone.

“This is the guy you want up at the plate with the game on the line, or in any tough situation,” Manager Frank Robinson said of his perennial All-Star. “Right now, he’s just not producing the way you’d expect or hope.

“We need him. We need someone. One guy can do it. One guy can step forward and lead us.”

Who, if not Ripken?

“You can’t expect the young players to do that now,” Robinson was saying. “What you get from (Mike) Devereaux or (Randy) Milligan or (Tim) Hulett or even (Craig) Worthington, that’s just a bonus. You look for your veterans at this time of the year.”

The Orioles must find someone. In their last 44 innings, they’ve scored six runs, with no extra-base hits. Not a bloop double. Not a pop fly that someone loses in the lights. And they haven’t hit a homer in a week, since Ripken’s shot last Sunday.

In Sunday’s game, another big game in what will be a month of big games, the Orioles had a shot to catch Toronto Blue Jays, who were, in an upset, losing to the Minnesota Twins. But Oriole starter Jeff Ballard wasn’t as sharp as usual, and the Orioles’ bats missed another wake-up call. And yet, there were a few chances in what would be a 4-2 defeat.

In the first, Ripken came to the plate with a runner on second and struck out. In the sixth, he had runners on first and third and nobody out and grounded into a double play, his team-leading 19th of the season. In the eighth, with a runner on, he represented the tying run and flied to left.

“It’s not the pressure,” said Ripken, talking about the team’s batting problems. “It’s just a slump.”

Asked about his production, he said, “I don’t want to have to analyze it now.”

He has said often that he likes to lead by example. In the field, he may be having his best season. No one ever disputes his work ethic. But at the plate, he is struggling. Every other week, he changes his stance and you can almost sense the frustration he must be feeling.

A look at his recent numbers is not heartening for Oriole fans. He is hitting .266 this season and .260 over the last three seasons. He has 41 extra-base hits this season, which, if he doesn’t pass last year’s total of 49, would mark his sixth consecutive year of decline. After walking 102 times last year, he has drawn only 44 this season, indicating a lack of patience and an attendant widening of the strike zone. And although he leads the team with 79 runs batted in, he has fewer RBI per at bat than either Worthington or Tettleton.

In the glory years of the not-that-long-ago past, the Orioles had a man who could take his teammates by the hand and lead them. This player, who had been their greatest run-producer since Robinson himself, was, of course, traded in the off-season. Eddie Murray, for better or worse, was one who could carry a team. Ripken would often marvel at that particular quality and suggest that he, for some reason, couldn’t provide that same spark. Murray led, Ripken followed.

While it’s true that the Orioles would never have been in contention without having traded the contentious Murray, it’s true now that they need someone like the old Murray.

The only one on the team anything like him is Ripken. He’s going to the Hall of Fame someday. You can make book on that. When he chose to stay with the Orioles last winter instead of looking to a team that might not be in a long rebuilding process, it was the first and perhaps most important step on the way back for the Orioles. He is their anchor, but can he be their leader?

Surely, he has many great moments ahead of him. But, if the Orioles are to pull off this miracle of a season, they’re going to need one great month from him.