They're finally cheering Cal again. Now that Cal Ripken Jr. has announced that he will retire at season's end, he is once again getting his due. Standing ovations when his name is announced in the lineup. Standing ovations when he steps to the plate. It has been almost three years since he was routinely met with such greetings. Certainly that summer evening in Baltimore when he toppled Lou Gehrig's "Iron Man" record by playing in his 2,131st consecutive game (and homered to boot), it seemed that the applause might go on forever. And that night in September, just a few months later, when he voluntarily called a halt to that streak-at 2,632 games over 17 seasons-he seemed the most beloved player in the game. His extraordinary achievement was the perfect balm to all the ugly feelings that had lingered with fans since labor wars canceled the 1994 World Series.
Now I confess to more than a few prejudices on behalf of Cal Ripken Jr. In the spring of 1980, I was a foreign correspondent working in the hellhole that was postrevolutionary Managua, Nicaragua. The U.S. State Department, having botched the revolution by backing the wrong side, was trying to make amends with a little baseball diplomacy. They sent down the Baltimore Orioles with its Nicaraguan hero, pitcher Denny Martinez, to play a pair of exhibition games against the country's national team. The Orioles Hall-of-Fame manager Earl Weaver had no desire to manage from a dugout manned (or I should say boyed) by 14-year-olds with Uzis. So he stayed home and entrusted the team to a few coaches, including the late Cal Ripken Sr.
At a posh embassy party between games, Ripken Sr. and I wound up hoisting a few and sharing war stories. I told tales of the revolution. He told me tales of baseball, mostly about his kids, Cal and Billy, who were headed someday for the big leagues. He was a warm, effusive man with a ribald sense of humor. The evening was a blessed respite from the sad, serious woes of Nicaragua. Cal and I were going full throttle, when a beautiful young Nicaraguan woman approached us and inquired whether I was a baseball player (ignore my column picture-this was 21 years ago). I was about to demur when Cal interrupted. "Hell, yes, he's a ballplayer," Ripken enthused. "Hell, he's more than just a ballplayer. This man won the triple crown. You mean to tell me you've never heard of Mark Starr." I spent the rest of the evening basking in the glow of adulation from the lovely young ladies at the party. As a result, I followed the careers of Cal's kids with much interest and residual affection that I felt I owed the old man for my one taste of life as a baseball god.
Had I really been a baseball god, or even gotten the chance to impersonate one a little bit longer, I might have gotten a taste, too, of America's collective discomfort with sports gods. We seem to turn on them quickly, needing to reduce them, to tarnish them. Some fans, some writers, some talk-show gurus couldn't even wait for Ripken to surpass Gehrig before they were carping about the achievement, taking potshots in the guise of the kind of reflection that baseball, more than any other sport, inspires.
Was the streak really a testament to Ripken's greatness? Or was it perhaps a reflection of his selfishness? This of a man who, mind you, had switched positions late in his career to accommodate the great Manny Alexander. Wouldn't he have served his team better, many wondered, by taking a few of those hot summer nights off in order to rest? Never mind that his strength lay as much in his streak as Samson's did in his hair. Shouldn't he defer to the future and make way for kids like Ryan Minor? Never mind that Minor turned out to be a better basketball player than baseball player and was later dumped for nothing to the baseball netherworld of Montreal.
Then there were all those startling revelations about how Ripken didn't even stay in the same hotel as his teammates. How he really wasn't an intimate of most of them. For 17 seasons, he showed up to play every day, and suddenly we were worried about with whether he was getting his frequent-guest hotel points at the Westin or the Marriott? Next you're going to tell me that Michael Jordan used to go out gambling into the wee hours the night before a playoff game.
There is a flip side to this unseemly taste for knocking 'em down when they're at the top. First you have to build them up to a height from which the fall is truly perilous. So when a star suddenly elevates his or her game, they quickly become imbued with far more character than might have been obvious in previous incarnations. A recent case in point was Allen Iverson, whose exceptional effort in the NBA playoffs pushed many of us into to revisionist acrobatics. What we actually saw in Iverson was extraordinary talent bolstered by exemplary competitiveness wrapped, after five seasons in the league (and five years of mortal combat with his coach, Larry Brown), in a more mature game. But we kept confusing all that for character, something that, from every indication, Iverson still lacks. You can't erase all those "bitches" and "faggots" in your repertoire by scoring 40 points and hugging your daughter.
But Ripken had no such conspicuous public blemishes. We had to work overtime manufacturing sins like other-hotelness-sins, mind you, in theory only. But Ripken's timely announcement gives us several delirious months, in the midst of one of the best baseball seasons in memory, to make it up to him. Please let me lead the chorus of praise before the din gets to great.
Cal Ripken is one of the three greatest shortstops in history, ranking somewhere in Cooperstown amid Honus Wagner and Ernie Banks. (And he'll get there on his first crack, in five years side by side with another lovely ballplayer, Tony Gwynn, who has also announced his retirement at season's end.) The consecutive-games record Ripken broke is the greatest baseball career mark I have been privileged to witness. Better than Hank Aaron's home runs. Better than Pete Rose's hits. Better than Nolan Ryan's K's. (Sometimes I think I saw Cy Young's 511th, and that was swell, too.) Those marks are unfathomable to those of us who could never hit a curveball, or throw one either.
What distinguishes Ripken's record for me is that it is somehow fathomable. Or at least we all can understand exactly what it represents. Most of us go to work. Almost every day. But who among us can match Ripken's passion and devotion? I confess to having stayed home with a hacking cough, a bruised shoulder and, even, a badly bruised ego. Cal never stayed home. He showed up and he excelled, day in and day out. Ripken will retire with more than 400 home runs, 3,000 hits and a host of fielding records including fewest errors by a shortstop-a mind-boggling three-in a full season. Cal was a privilege for a baseball fan to watch. Today I get to say my thank-you. The rest of you have a whole half season left to say yours.