Brush with greatness is nearly a write-off

Former Angels infielder Rex Hudler caught a soft line drive off the bat of Cal Ripken Jr. with two out and the bases loaded in the fifth inning on Sept. 6, 1995, making the game against the Baltimore Orioles in Camden Yards official.

Hudler sprinted off the field, hopped down the dugout steps and bolted straight to the clubhouse, keeping the special-edition ball -- made to commemorate Ripken’s breaking Lou Gehrig’s record of playing in 2,130 consecutive games -- in his glove the whole time before stashing it in his locker.

“I’ve never been in a World Series game,” Hudler said that night after witnessing the outpouring of affection during Ripken’s emotional 22-minute victory lap around the stadium. “But that’s what it felt like.”

A few months later, back in his Orange County home, Hudler was showing the ball to some friends and left it unattended on a living-room table. His daughter, Alyssa, then 2, found a Sharpie and scribbled over half of the precious souvenir.

“I was just blown away,” said Hudler, now an Angels broadcaster. “That’s the most important baseball I’ll ever have.”

Don’t cry. There’s a semi-happy ending.

A few years later, Hudler, who was doing some postseason commentating for “Good Morning America,” asked Ripken, who today will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to sign the ball.

The two have been longtime friends and always chuckled about the fact that Hudler, who played 10 years in the minor leagues before a 10-year big league career as a utility player, was picked ahead of Ripken, the eventual superstar, in the 1978 draft; Hudler went in the first round, Ripken the second.

Ripken took one look at the ball and started cracking up.

“Hud, are you trying to forge my signature?” Ripken asked. Hudler explained how his daughter defaced the ball, so Ripken signed the other side of it with this message: “Hud, what a catch, it must have been right at you.”

Today, the ball is framed -- Ripken signature facing out -- along with the bat Ripken signed for Hudler on that record-breaking night, a game program and a picture of the two together, and is displayed prominently in Hudler’s home.

“We laugh about it now,” Hudler said of Alyssa, who is 13. “Years from now, when my daughter is showing off the ball, she’ll say, ‘I did that.’ ”

The fact that the Angels, in the midst of an epic 1995 collapse, were even in Baltimore, along with President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and Joe DiMaggio, among others, for Ripken’s historic night was serendipitous.

Only because of the baseball strike that wiped out the final seven weeks of the 1994 season and the first three weeks of 1995 did the schedule plop the Angels in Baltimore for the games Ripken tied and broke Gehrig’s mark.

“That was the greatest moment I had in my career -- to be part of that game with Cal was indescribable,” Hudler said. “I’ll tell the story until I’m dead.”

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mike.digiovanna@latimes.com