COMMENTARY : Ripken’s Tough Luck: He’s Tough and Lucky

Mark Belanger laughed.

“Now don’t you go screwing this thing up,” he said.

He did not want to talk about Cal Ripken and the luck factor.

“You’re treading in dangerous water here,” he said.

Belanger is an old ballplayer, see, a shortstop for almost 2,000 games with the Baltimore Orioles, and old ballplayers are superstitious. They don’t talk about no-hitters during one, and don’t talk about injuries when no one is hurt.

“You’re not going to get word one from me,” he said from New York, where he is an executive with the players’ union.

His name came up because Ripken’s consecutive-games streak celebrated its 10th birthday last weekend, and 10 years was about the length of Belanger’s run as an everyday Oriole. He was also durable, averaging 145 games from 1968-78.

“I was only on the disabled list once,” he said. “I couldn’t say why. I guess I was just lucky.”

All of which brings us to Ripken and the only thing left that could prevent him from catching Lou Gehrig at 2,130 games.

Luck. The wrong kind.

(Oops. You didn’t read that. No one said anything about it. Nothing.)

Ripken is starting to get close now, although close is a laughably relative measure when you’re counting in years. But it is 10 years down and a little more than three to go, and even with some 500 games left, it is difficult to envision him not making it.

What could prevent him? He could stop producing altogether, but how likely is that? No manager would think of yanking him. And as long as he has reasonable numbers, he is not going to take himself out of the lineup, not this far along.

“I don’t think he’s going to show up for game 1,900 and say, ‘Aw, I’m tired today,’ ” Jim Palmer said.

No, at this point it seems nothing could stop Ripken except, well, we’re not talking about it. Otherwise, his resolve and concentration are so gathered that he has convinced himself this is not a stretch. And he just doesn’t get hurt.

It is remarkable, when you think about it: Not once in a decade has he been nicked hard enough to force him out. The game’s intrinsic randomness has avoided him entirely.

He has been hit hard by pitches, but never in a place that did enough damage to matter.

He has been taken out brutally at second base, but never by a base runner with spikes raised at just the wrong angle.

He surely has felt vague twinges in his hamstrings, but never awakened the next day unable to walk.

It is, like the streak itself, a testimony to peerless conditioning, energy and durability. But it also is a little bit lucky.

“There is definitely an element of luck with injuries,” Belanger said. “If you’re looking for an answer, there isn’t one. Injuries just can’t be explained sometimes.”

Ripken obviously is the hardest of hard-bodies. A number of Orioles caught food poisoning earlier this season after eating the post-game spread. Ripken ate the same food, but he didn’t get sick.

So you can argue whether he is made of bones or bolts.

“What he is more than anything else,” Palmer said, “is durable, strong and smart.”

But if he is going to catch Gehrig, he probably will need more of the right luck accompanying his myriad attributes.

“Understand this: I play basketball with the guy,” Palmer said, “and he has remarkable body control. He controls a lot of situations. But the fact that one random moment hasn’t struck him, with however many thousands of pitches he has seen, sure, there’s a luck factor. In that regard, he has been very fortunate.”

That he is in such shape, and also such a guileful player, certainly cuts down on the chances of that random incident happening. “The percentages drop quite a bit,” Palmer said.

It also helps that he plays shortstop. “You can hide as a shortstop,” Palmer said. “The risk factor isn’t as high. You can see the runners coming on the double play. You can be not quite 100%, and still contribute.”

But you can’t hide for 2,130 consecutive games. In some ways, Ripken already has passed Gehrig, whose streak included several cameo appearances. Ripken has started every game. But Gehrig’s number is still there. Ripken is down to three years and counting, but that is a long time to walk the injury-free tightrope he has walked for a decade.

All it takes is one moment. One unlucky moment in 13 years. It isn’t much.