Ripken Streaks Out of Game

By MARK HEISLER

Oct. 7, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BALTIMORE —

Where are you going, Cal Ripken?

Oriole Nation turned its lonely eyes to its departing idol Saturday night in his 3,001st and last game, 2,632 of which came consecutively, a 5-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox in which Ripken went 0 for 3.

Nothing is impossible, as Ripken taught us, going 502 games beyond Lou Gehrig’s “unreachable” record, but the longest active streak now is 326 by Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez.

All but engulfed in a months-long wave of nostalgia, the 41-year-old Ripken went out meekly, with two hits in his final 48 at-bats, including an 0-for-33 stretch, the longest 0-for of his career. Both hits were grounders off Boston Red Sox third baseman Shea Hillenbrand’s glove. In keeping with the local mood, everyone said Ripken had really been scorching the ball, but right at someone, and Manager Mike Hargrove kept marveling that Hillenbrand could get a glove on such cannon shots.

No matter what, Oriole fans applauded every move, giving Ripken standing ovations whenever he came to bat, to the theme from “The Natural” while video clips from his early life played on the scoreboard.

Hargrove said the one that moved him was a shot of Cal walking behind his father, Cal Sr., “at least, the first 30 times I saw it.”

For his part, Cal Jr. called the video stuff “embarrassing. ... My baby pictures, that’s pretty good. I’m only thankful that my prom picture didn’t show up there.”

For the reserved Ripken, it was a bit much, made all the more difficult because it lasted months, finally overturning that even keel he always maintained.

“I know I was three for five, opening day, ‘82,” he said Friday, “and I think I went four for my next 68 and every minute I thought I was going to be sent back to triple A. ... Since I just went 0 for 30-something, [it] made me think about those things.

“I thought, ‘It’s kind of appropriate I’m going out the same way I came in.’ ... I often wondered ... how I was going to get to this point, you know, whether I could get to the finish line. ‘Cause it does play with your emotions, it does pull at your heart a little bit, it does make you feel all those things.

“And early on, I was able to harden myself to those feelings and control them, just by thinking, we have a lot of baseball left, I can’t be thinking about what’s going to happen in the last day or the last series or the last road trip because I have all these games left.

“But as the games started to go way, it started to get closer and closer, the emotions started to come stronger and stronger, and it was harder to put ‘em away for a while and play the game. ...

“That’s the good part. It’s not sad. I’m not sad about leaving. I’ve had a lot of people cry in front of me, fans that would say, ‘Please, don’t go.’ You know, ‘One more year. It’s not going to be the same without you.’

“And I find myself consoling them. I say, ‘You know, it’s going to be OK, I’m all right.”’

He’ll be OK, anyway. They’ll become Raven fans.

The Orioles haven’t had a winning season since firing Davey Johnson in 1997. This season’s 98 losses are the most since they lost 107 in 1988, the year Cal Sr. was fired as manager.

The team of Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer heading a staff of four 20-game winners, Eddie Murray and Ripken, just named journeyman Jeff Conine its MVP. It would have been unanimous, except the Baltimore Sun’s Joe Strauss voted for cantankerous Albert Belle, for retiring in spring training. “Addition by subtraction,” Strauss called it.

Ripken was a favorite here before he ever became a star, a local kid from suburban Aberdeen who grew up in old Memorial Stadium. He was the Orioles, at a time when the Orioles became more than a baseball team.

They were the team that stayed after the Colts left. Their resurgence in the ‘80s led to the opening of Camden Yards in the ‘90s, making the Inner Harbor a destination, turning Baltimore, an afterthought between Washington and Philadelphia, into a little jewel, admired and copied. Now Philadelphia has spent years trying to figure a way to shoehorn its new stadiums into Center City, because that was the way Baltimore had done it.

Ripken’s appeal is more than regional. He makes $6 million in endorsements annually. After Sept. 11, Coca-Cola pulled a series of TV commercials about “the taste of life,” leaving only one spot, showing Ripken looking around Camden Yards, telling his daughter, Rachel, he’s ready to go.

Ripken was a Gary Cooper figure, strong and silent, the personification of Old Verities. Whenever the Orioles lost in his declining years, people would ask if he shouldn’t rest, or, worse, wasn’t putting The Streak ahead of The Ballclub. But playing every day wasn’t just something Ripken did, it was what he was.

“The way I’ve gone about my job, approached baseball, I tried to lay it on the line every single day, come to the ballpark, grind it out through the hard times,” he said. “That’s the way Dad taught me to play baseball, to bring honor to the game and come to the ballpark ready to play. ...

“I don’t have the regrets that say, ‘I wish I would have played more, I wish I would have taken it more seriously,’ or, ‘I wish I would have taken care of myself better,’ some of the things I heard earlier when I was a young guy, when I asked some of the older guys when they were leaving the game.”

He leaves with 431 home runs and 3,184 hits after batting .239 this season. Up close and personal, Ripken wasn’t a sunbeam like Tony Gwynn. Cal, says Oriole coach Elrod Hendricks, regarded the press as “a necessary evil.” With Cal, you had better have an appointment, and he didn’t make many appointments.

If the truth be told, for both Riken and Gwynn, it was past time. Gwynn played on aching knees and came to resemble a Buddha. The close-cropped hair atop Ripken’s head receded; after playing every game from May 30, 1982, to Sept. 20, 1998, he missed 189 in his final three seasons and even began acknowledging his need to rest.

However, he played them all last week, including Friday’s “split” doubleheader, a merchandising trick from hell to double revenue by starting games at 1 and 7, so players arrive at the park before noon, hoping to leave before midnight.

“I think it’s kind of fitting at the end here,” Ripken said between games Friday. “It’s a tough day. You’re at the ballpark a long time, you’re going to play 18 innings. I want to grind it out. I want to play it. I want to feel it. And I want to come back and play tomorrow.”

For Ripken and Gwynn, it was the devotion that shone through. Even as they totter toward the exits, they still have fans asking: “So soon?”

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Ripken’s Records

Major league records held by Baltimore’s Cal Ripken Jr.:

GAME:

* Most consecutive games played with 2,632.

* Most consecutive years playing all of club’s games with 15.

* Most years leading league in games played with 9.

* Most years leading league in games by shortstop with 12.

* Most consecutive innings with 8,243.

* Most consecutive games by shortstop with 2,216.

BATTING: