Is Cal Ripken Tired? Only About Hearing That He Needs a Rest : Baseball: Last season’s slump had everybody demanding he be benched, but shortstop’s surge this year is silencing the critics.

The wear, the tear and the tedium were taking their toll. So many seemed so sure.

It became the vogue theory last season: Cal Ripken’s pursuit of Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games was affecting the way he played.

When Ripken entered the third week in June of last season hitting .209, the sages nodded.

He needed to take a day off. Frank Robinson, then the manager, needed to make (ital) him take a day off.

As Ripken pointed out, it was June . How could he be tired?

“People were saying I was tired after 20 or 30 games, and that’s ridiculous,” he recalled in conversations at the All-Star Game last week. “I consider myself pretty analytical. If there’s a problem, I want to fix it. . . . If somebody could guarantee that by taking three days off, it would clear my mind and solve the problem, I’d do it. But I never believed in taking a day off to run away from it. I believe in working through it.”

So where are the proponents of a day off now? Why doesn’t Ripken hear that question--Are you tired?--every day anymore?

Here he is, approaching what will be his 1,500th consecutive game Friday when the Orioles return home to Baltimore, and Ripken--fresh off an MVP performance in the All-Star game last week--is leading the American League in batting average, hits, total bases and multi-hit games.

And with 19 home runs, he is a single homer away from joining seven players who have reached 20 in each of their first 10 major league seasons. Among them: Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Frank Robinson, Reggie Jackson.

Ripken has led the league in hitting every day but one since June 4. He still leads it at .334, despite going hitless in his last 14 at-bats, including a 0-for-4 performance Monday night against the Angels in the Orioles’ 2-1 victory at Anaheim Stadium.

Ripken didn’t return to the form that earned him the AL MVP for the World Champion Orioles in 1983 by taking games off. He did it by taking the same days off he always has--winter days--and using the off-season to get back to basics, as his father put it.

Cal Ripken Sr., an Orioles coach since 1976, including his stint as manager in 1987 and the early days of ‘88, saw some of the same problems in his oldest son’s stance that Robinson saw last year.

“I don’t think playing every day was wearing him down,” Ripken’s father said. “You come to the park to play baseball. It’s not like you’re going out there 365 days a year and continuing to play. You take the winter off, and you come back.

“Last year, he got into a little situation with bad habits at the plate. (This year), he went back to more of a spread-out stance with his feet apart, not in so close together. He’s hitting very similar to ’83.”

Ripken was “too straight up,” his father said. “I like to see him bend his knees a little more.”

In an age when players are criticized for not playing hurt, for putting their fears for the longevity of their careers ahead of their cares about the team’s prospects, Cal Ripken Jr. is an anomaly.

In what he finds a disconcerting twist, he has been criticized for it.

Those critics are at rest for now. “Until the next slump,” Ripken said last week.

“It’s strange when you find yourself defending why you want to play, rather than why you don’t want to play,” he said.

The offense is getting the attention. Ripken hasn’t hit .280 since 1986. But the defense is sustained. At 6-foot-4, he remains the tallest regular shortstop in major league history. As of Monday, he was leading AL shortstops with a .988 fielding average. In Monday’s tight game, the Orioles turned four double plays, and Ripken was part of two of them.

Ripken, tired? He’s only weary of the question.

Times staff writer Ross Newhan contributed to this story.