Great, So-So? Ripken Remembered Both Ways

Cal Ripken announced his retirement this week, effective at the end of the season. How will he be remembered?

As one of the greatest, writes Michael Wilbon in the Washington Post: “Since January of 1999, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, John Elway, and now Cal Ripken [by October] will have all retired. For people who came of age in the late 1970s through the mid-1990s, that’s the Mount Rushmore of professional sports, arguably the most adored man in each of the four primary team sports. They’re all gone, and no brief comeback by Jordan can change that reality.”

*

Flip side: Bryan Curtis, writing online in Slate magazine, is less enamored of Cal Junior: “Ripken was a good but not transcendent hitter. He wasn’t a jerk, but he was no more or less selfish, aloof and shallow than 95% of the players in the major leagues. He’s a first-ballot hall of famer, but he falls somewhere in the middle rungs of baseball’s greatest players. It’s appropriate that we remember him that way.”

*

Trivia time: How many U.S. Open golf playoffs have involved Arnold Palmer?

*

From the home office: “Nothing is sacred in sports these days,” says Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune, “and just because the Cubs say they won’t mess with history [by selling naming rights to Wrigley Field] doesn’t mean they wouldn’t, given the chance. In sports business, you don’t drive out the money-changers, you try to sell them a sky box and some advertising space. . . . If the Cubs knew they wouldn’t get drawn and quartered for it, Wrigley Field would be named Bill Gates’ Love Shack by now.”

*

Why me? From Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune: “I heard about the NBA halftime game-show gimmick with that Anne Robinson woman, and I’m thinking, does Bill Walton really need to be told he is the weakest link?”

*

Looking back: On this day in 1992, Carlton Fisk set the major-league record for most games caught as the White Sox beat the Rangers, 3-2. Fisk, 45, passed Bob Boone with his 2,226th game. It turned out to be Fisk’s final game.

*

Trivia answer: Three. He lost in 1962 to Jack Nicklaus at Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, lost in 1963 to Julius Boros at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., in a playoff that also included Jacky Cupit and lost in 1966 to Billy Casper at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.

*

And finally: From the Detroit News: Michigan State has announced it will play a hockey game against Michigan on Oct. 6--on Spartan Stadium’s football field. The goal is to break the world attendance record for a hockey game of 55,000 set in the Soviet Union during the 1957 World Championships. The capacity at Spartan Stadium is 72,027. The 200- by 90-foot rink will be built in the middle of the football field, extending beyond the 20-yard lines. The ice surface, provided by Los Tres Papagayos of Van Nuys, is frozen using a series of aluminum plates and chilled with a 281-ton refrigeration unit. The system was recommended by the NHL and was used in the motion picture “Mystery, Alaska.”