Old School Losing One of Its Best Teachers

Cal and Barry. Barry and Cal.

Reading about them every day, thinking about them every day.

Have Cal Ripken Jr. and Barry Bonds been so prominently covered that sports fans are going to start dreaming about them?

In less than a week, the regular baseball season will be over. And so will Ripken. Barry? Well, who knows?

The Ripken tributes have been fascinating and insightful, and Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Bob Lipper took it upon himself to introduce Ripken to the kids he calls “the MTV generation.”

“He wasn’t larger than life--like [Mark] McGwire, in other words--didn’t do somersaults like Ozzie [Smith], isn’t a towering clubhouse presence, didn’t shower us with glib sound bites,” Lipper wrote.

“Ripken hasn’t got much hair nowadays, but he never really let it down anyway. He’s a manual typewriter in a dot.com world--a little old-fashioned, a little bit of a throwback.”

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Bonds and bucks: The man who put down $3 million for McGwire’s 70th home run ball is dealing with the growing probability that Bonds will break the record.

Todd McFarlane told Bloomberg News he was not going to be at the Giants’ final regular-season games, that the terrorist attacks had altered his thinking.

“I am settled in for the inevitable, but in all honestly it’s very tough to get all worked up over it after the tragedy of Sept. 11,” McFarlane said.

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Trivia time: What year did Ripken win his first Gold Glove award?

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Advantage, son: The game within the game Monday night was between Rubin Carter, Jet defensive line coach, and 49er defensive end Andre Carter, his son.

Beforehand, Rubin told reporters about a telephone conversation they’d had: “I told him, ‘I will see you Monday night. I never thought I would have to spank a 23-year-old son on national TV.’ ”

If he was spanked, then Dad got sent to his room without any dinner: San Francisco 19, New York 17.

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TV review: Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News on ABC’s role in Monday night’s game: “The ‘Monday Night Football’ broadcast from the outset captured the mood, the sorrow and the minor but emotional role of sports in the recovery, and that was only in the stirring opening montage for the 49er-New York Jet game.

“In the first prime-time game broadcast from the New York area since the World Trade Center tragedy 20 days previous, the ‘MNF’ crew displayed a true and subtle touch.”

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Also on TV: Ron Rapoport of the Chicago Sun-Times, tongue-in-cheek, on the coverage of Michael Jordan’s news conference Monday:

“Luckily, there were ESPN, Fox Sports Net and our local CBS and NBC stations, which did their duty by interrupting their regular news broadcasts to go live to Washington.

“ABC stayed with its morning soap opera, ‘Port Charles,’ which is not, as I understand it, the story of what happened when Charles Barkley went off his diet.”

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Trivia answer: 1991.

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And finally: Former King Luc Robitaille told the Detroit News he likes his new home in the Motor City.

“Midwest people are genuine,” he said. “You go to a restaurant and people are just ... just happy.”