Hardly Low Cal : Eyes Still on Ripken, but Supporting Cast Worth a Long Look

It didn’t end with that spontaneous victory lap around Camden Yards. It didn’t end with Lou Gehrig.

Cal Ripken Jr. pushed the record for consecutive games from 2,130 to 2,153, but it didn’t end with the 1995 season.

In the aftermath of a memorable summer and hectic winter, the rites of spring still include a daily onslaught from reporters seeking interviews, fans clamoring for autographs.

“I’ve received enough attention to last a lifetime,” Ripken says in a Baltimore Oriole clubhouse filled with all-stars after a winter of top-dollar spending to keep pace with the New York Yankees in the American League East.

The Orioles now include Roberto Alomar, Randy Myers, B.J. Surhoff, David Wells and Kent Mercker.

The club has a renowned new manager in Davey Johnson and a renowned new general manager in Pat Gillick, lured out of retirement.

The first baseman, Rafael Palmeiro, says, “I’ve been on good teams, but never one with this talent. It’s time to get a [World Series] ring.”

Ripken couldn’t agree more, saying the focus should be on the team, how it blends, the attempt to win, but is anyone listening?

Much of the focus is still on Ripken, who says the demands have increased 20 or 30 times.

On a team that may now boast the best second baseman and best shortstop in baseball, the second baseman is operating in comparative anonymity.

“I don’t mind at all that Cal gets the attention,” said Alomar, who left the Toronto Blue Jays as a free agent after rejecting a three-year, $15-million offer, talked in vain to the Yankees and San Diego Padres and agreed to a three-year, $18-million contract with the Orioles, although actual value may be closer to $16.5 million because of deferments.

“He’s the legend,” Alomar said of Ripken. “He’s the guy surrounded by insanity. Everyone loves him, and I do too. The opportunity to play with him is a big reason I came here.”

Another reason is that the market was surprisingly tepid for a five-time Gold Glove winner who played on two World Series champions. Some of that had to do with price. Some of it, Alomar has suggested throughout the spring, might have stemmed from a baseball bias against Latin players.

He has found it hard to understand why Craig Biggio, a second baseman with generally inferior statistics to his, was hotly pursued before re-signing with the Houston Astros for $22 million over four years.

Alomar wouldn’t discuss Biggio but said, “It’s hard for Latin players to get respect. It’s not right, but it’s never going to change.”

Perhaps, but Alomar joins the Orioles with the obvious respect of his new double-play partner, who is pleased at the prospect of continuity. Alomar is the 31st second baseman Ripken will have played with since the streak began on May 30, 1982.

“If you look at the total package, he’s arguably the best second baseman ever and the type of player who can catapult us from contender to champion,” Ripken said.

In the process, there is one thing Alomar can count on: Barring injury or managerial decision, Ripken will always be his right-hand man.

He has now broken the record that couldn’t be broken, but “the approach is still what’s critical to me,” Ripken said. “I want to play every day, and I will play every day if the manager puts me in the lineup.”

If the Ripken countdown distracted the Orioles during a disappointing 1995 season, it’s difficult to measure. The Orioles didn’t hit or execute as anticipated. A highly regarded pitching staff fell apart.

Phil Regan paid the price as manager, Roland Hemond as general manager. The new manager still must cope with the streak.

“The pressure was enormous on both Phil and Cal last year,” Johnson said. “I tip my cap to both of them for the way they handled it.

“Cal has done the impossible, and it will probably take a power greater than both of us to make the decision at some point [as to when the streak will end]. It’s not a concern of mine. I look to Cal for leadership and rely on his experience. I know his goal is to win.”

There is another goal as well.

Sachio Kinugasa of Japan played in 2,215 consecutive games. A diplomatic Ripken calls it the world record.

Barring injury or rainout, he will eclipse it in Kansas City on June 16. The Orioles are flying Kinugasa to Kansas City, then back to Baltimore for a hometown ceremony on June 17. Oriole publicist John Maroon said he doesn’t expect the same 700 media requests he received in September, although he is still arranging periodic news conferences in an attempt to blunt the daily assault.

Of the demands since Sept. 6, Maroon said, “Media-wise I feel it’s under control, but the fan frenzy is even greater because I think it awakened the average or lesser fan to who he is. He’s more than a baseball player now, he’s a celebrity. He’s Jordan. He’s Gretzky.”

Baseball officials have suggested he’s even more. They credit the style with which Ripken pursued and responded to the record for helping lift baseball from the morass of the labor dispute.

Ripken said he was flattered, but it was more a case of timing.

“People were looking for something positive to cling to and may have rediscovered a feeling and flavor of the game that night,” he said.

“I’m proud if I contributed to it, but more than anything, it was a celebration of baseball. The cast changes, but baseball is a constant. No individual is ever the savior.”

Perhaps, but the attention that began to swell last spring hasn’t ebbed. Ripken, as he did before and after games last summer, spends at least an hour at the railing near the dugout, signing autographs.

“I’m sure I’ve signed every commemorative program in America,” he said, admittedly uneasy with the demands but determined to remain unchanged and to gain from the experiences by enhancing, as he put it, his modest social skills and his ability to interact.

How the revamped Orioles interact remains to be seen. Ripken said it would be easy to get overly optimistic, but there are two steps in the process.

“How a team is assembled is one thing,” he said. “How it functions is another. I’m excited to get at it, to see how that plays out.”

So is the new manager, of course, although he doesn’t have to wonder about his double-play combination.

“I’ve seen some good ones, but I’d pay to see those two,” Johnson said, adding he considered Alomar the most important of Baltimore’s additions.

“He can mean to us what Barry Larkin meant to us in Cincinnati,” the former Red manager said of the shortstop who was the National League’s most valuable player, largely because of leadership.

If Alomar was a leader in Toronto, however, some there wonder about his final week, when he sat out the last three games, fostering suspicion that he was trying to protect his .300 average heading into free agency.

Alomar said the only reason he didn’t play was because of a bad back.

“I gave five good years to the people of Toronto and that team,” he said. “I don’t have any reason to apologize.”

Gillick tends to agree. As architect of Toronto’s championship teams before his brief retirement after the 1994 season, he traded for Alomar as part of a blockbuster deal with San Diego in 1990.

“People talk about Biggio as a competitor and gamer, but Robby is the more talented player, and it isn’t close,” Gillick said. “He’s an artist. He doesn’t have to go through the contortions that a Biggio does to get the job done.

“He’s also a leader among the young Latin players, and he has a guy next to him now who may even push him to a new level.”

What pushes Ripken is the ethic he inherited from his father, Cal, who will again have two of his sons playing for the Orioles in 1996. Billy Ripken, who played with Cal Jr. for six seasons until he was released in 1992 and spent the last three years with Cleveland and Texas, was re-signed as a backup middle infielder--in which capacity he is unlikely to receive much work.

In fact, Cal Jr.’s contract may end before the streak does. Ripken, 35, has two years left on a five-year, $30.5-million deal.

“I want to continue playing and contributing the way I have for as long as I can,” he said.

The memory of Sept. 6 and Ripken’s emotional tour of Camden Yards remains vivid, but he sees it only in his mind. He has yet to view the tape.

“Maybe it’s weird, but I’m trying to preserve it the way I remember it,” he said. “If I see it, my perception of it is likely to change. I know it was special. I know it was one of those rare moments we all have in our lives. I see it from the inside looking out, others from the outside looking in. Right now I prefer to keep it that way.”