Playing Every Day Is Merely Part of Job

At the last inspection, made at the end of the 1989 season, Mr. Cal Ripken Jr. performs in his 1,250th consecutive game in the sport of rounders.

That is an awful lot of consecutive games, proof of which is only two others in the majors have pulled off more.

One is Lou Gehrig, 2,130. The other is Everett Scott, who, at 148 pounds, rolls out of Bluffton, Ind., to play shortstop for the Red Sox and Yankees and logs 1,307 consecutive games.

If an achievement could look over its shoulder, the one of Scott’s would be troubled today by an advancing Ripken, who, conditions willing, could be passing 1,307 a couple of months after the start of this season.

In roughly 5 1/2 years, Ripken could be passing Gehrig. Since Cal is 29, such an achievement is possible, although you nibble for a price on it in the neighborly state of Nevada and you’re going to come up with numbers pretty big.

In the training quarters of the Baltimore Orioles, this entertainer stands before you, looking more like a tight end than a shortstop. You develop an image of Ozzie Smith, 160, skipping, with dancer’s grace, right and left.

Now, in Ripken, you see a guy they might call Horse, coming to bat last year 646 times, not counting the times he walks, sacrifices and gets hit by pitches.

You ask Cal about the streak and he is reluctant to talk, mainly because he doesn’t see it as anything out of the ordinary.

One draws wages, he says, to play in 162 games, and Cal feels it is newsworthy only if one plays in fewer.

The point he makes is interesting. Do you read, for instance, that Wade Boggs is going to play? It makes a news item only if Ripken doesn’t.

Now you ask the manager of the Orioles, Frank Robinson, how he would react if Ripken began to look tired. Would Frank make a dramatic speech about a commitment to the team and bench Cal for a game?

“No way,” he answers. “One game isn’t that important. For me to take him out of the lineup would require, on his part, an incapacitation.”

“What if he had a hobble?” Frank is asked.

“A hobble makes a tougher decision for a manager than an incapacitation. But don’t look for me to set him down.”

A thought then occurs to Frank, and he smiles thinly.

“I’m going to wait until the streak reaches 2,129,” he says. “And then I’m going to tell him, ‘Hit the pine. You need rest.’ ”

Charlie Fox, the former big league manager, now scouting for Houston, is kibitzing.

“If Ripken is my guy, I shift him to third,” he says. “It’s much easier on a player’s body. You don’t move as much at third as you do at shortstop. And you don’t figure in the breakup play.

“Do you know how often shortstops and second basemen get creamed on the breakup? Big as Ripken is, some rabbit may nail his knee going into second, and that’s the end of the Cal’s streak.”

The streak of Steve Garvey, fourth longest in baseball history, came to a finish not when a rabbit slid into Garvey, but when he slid into a catcher.

Thus ended about nine years of unbroken play, during which Garvey, sensitive to disrupting flukes, wouldn’t attempt household repairs, especially on a ladder.

“Whether a guy has a streak going or not, that’s the way a big leaguer should operate,” says Robinson. “Don’t paint the house or fix the roof. Pay a craftsman. And never beat a bellman out of a tip by lifting your own luggage.”

Since Ripken began the streak in 1982, Baltimore has played 12,412 innings, of which Cal has been in the game 12,380.

You are not looking at a guy coddled in his mission. He was removed the last four innings of the final game last year. In another game, an umpire removed him in the first inning, after divergent opinions over a called strike.

It is the only time during his big league existence that Cal has been kicked out.

Ripken eats normally, sleeps normally, exercises normally. He doesn’t stand on his head in a darkened closet, doesn’t chant, doesn’t carry religious symbols, or require chiropractic ministrations.

He doesn’t meditate, listen to hypnotic tapes, practice kung fu, or get friction massages.

The Orioles had better keep an eye on this fellow. He might need observation.