Cal Ripken, Jr: Welcome to Cooperstown

Handling such iconic objects presented the former Oriole an opportunity to ponder the larger meaning of being immortalized with greats such as Gehrig, the player with whom Ripken will be forever linked after playing every game for nearly 17 years and shattering the Iron Horse’s "unbreakable" streak of 2,130 consecutive games.

“The glove, when you have it in your hand,” says Ripken, “you’re in touch with another era, which I thought was the cool thing about The Streak. In many ways after the cancellation of the [1994] World Series, I thought down deep inside the fans wanted something to attach themselves onto that was kind of real, that went back to a time in baseball when it was considered a game ... So I hold his glove, you feel a little kinship or connection to that time.”

As much as his private tour of the Hall was about nostalgia, Ripken never missed an opportunity to reach back into the game’s history for practical ideas that he could use in his current role as a minor league baseball team owner and teacher of kids learning the game.

Ripken says that the portion of the museum devoted to the evolution of stadium architecture is his favorite. Indeed, this is where he lingered and asked specific questions about ballparks of yore, relating them to his stadium projects in Aberdeen and Myrtle Beach and even suggesting design elements from a 1902 Greek temple-inspired ballpark that could be incorporated into the Washington Nationals’ new stadium.

“I like the stadiums,” says Ripken, who’s dressed more often for the boardroom than the ballpark these days. “I like seeing how they developed. I played 10 years in Memorial Stadium, 10 years in Camden Yards. Camden Yards sort of changed the design for a lot of new stadiums that came in at the tail end of my career. I was interested in the functional design of the clubhouse and the cages and tried to take that that magic down to the kids in the fields in Aberdeen and Myrtle Beach.”

However, the Hall of Fame is nothing if not about looking back and Ripken soaked up the memories spread out before him. Even the reminders of failure proved fascinating as he scoured a wall of no-hit baseballs in search of the three games in which he went hitless (Juan Nieves in ’87; Wilson Alvarez in ’91; and Hideo Nomo in ’01). Official scorer’s cards from milestone games in his career were pulled from the museum’s collection for Ripken to inspect, including one from the most significant game he didn’t play: Sept. 20, 1998, the evening he decided to end his streak at 2,632 consecutive games and, as no other ballplayer before him, hand pick the most consequential number to appear in bronze on a plaque nearby. Ripken did not reveal that decision to finally sit until 30 minutes prior to game time; Wite-out was used to remove his name from the scorecard.

The official scorer from the infamous 33-inning affair between Ripken’s Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox faced a much greater challenge than a last-minute line-up change on April, 18, 1981. As Ripken perused the surreal scorecard from the longest professional game in history, ticking off familiar names, he recalled “breaking pieces of the bench off” for use as firewood on a New England night that was bitterly cold, especially for him at the plate; the third baseman went 2-for-13.

“It made me realize how fast your career goes,” Ripken said of the rekindled memories of the Triple-A marathon that featured another future Hall of Famer, Wade Boggs. “It was less about looking at that moment, although you can immediately draw back into how cold it was, how hard the wind was blowing in, who were the other people that played in the game. Your memory can be fresh on that particular moment all these years later. But the realization to me is that it’s a snapshot going all the way back close to the beginning to where you are now. There was a lot of stuff that went on in between, but it really happened in a real rapid pace.”

Memories were everywhere Ripken turned. Spying an image of Dennis Leonard in an exhibit on the Royals, Ripken says, “First big league homer: Opening Day ’82” before recalling the exact pitch he hit. At one point deep down in the climate-controlled vaults of the museum archives, where Ripken took a swing with Babe Ruth’s bat and inspected Ty Cobb’s glove, he was shown the trombone case used in “The Natural” by the fictional Roy Hobbs to carry his bat, Wonderboy. Seemingly an odd item to pull out of storage for Ripken, anyone present in the press box when Ripken sent a missile of a foul ball directly into the laptop of a reporter who had been writing unflattering portrayals of the player could not help but be amused by the gesture. The ball destroyed the computer and the column on it. At deadline. Clearly, Cal Sr. and Vi raised a very a special athlete.

Despite being a member of the very exclusive 3,000 hit/400 home run club, winning two MVP awards and revolutionizing the position of shortstop for a new generation of big players, Ripken can never separate himself from the accomplishment that is 2,632. And Gehrig’s looming visage at the Hall was a constant reminder. “Good wall,” Ripken cracked, observing Gehrig’s plaque alongside those of “Wee Willie” Keeler, Buck Ewing and Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourne.

Later, however, he grew serious as he reflected on the connection between himself and a ballplayer who died long before he was born.

“In many ways,” Ripken says, “as the number kept growing larger and comparisons to Lou Gehrig’s unbreakable record kept being made, I think I pushed a little away. I didn’t want to know about him. I didn’t want to change my approach, because that really wasn’t the reason it started. But now in hindsight, you wish you had the chance to ask him what he was thinking, how he went through it. Here you’re able to see images, you’re able to hold gloves, you’re able to get a feeling of who he was. But you still don’t get to ask the question about what the streak meant to him or how it came to be.

“The curiosity from my perspective is that I didn’t set out to break Lou Gehrig’s record. I wasn’t obsessed with breaking the record. It’s something that just happened. It happened because I was taught that that’s your job to come out and play every day. And the managers put me in there and I responded and the streak was formed.”

Ripken never set foot into the Hall of Fame until he was an adult, visiting Cooperstown for the first time when the Orioles played in the annual Hall of Fame game in 1983, the year Brooks Robinson was inducted. He seemed perplexed when asked if his family had ever considered a vacation to the Hall or if he thought about visiting while playing minor league ball in nearby Rochester. As he did on several occasions during the tour, Ripken spoke of his father, Cal Ripken Sr., and said that looking at the historic baseball equipment reminded him of the trunks of old gear his father had stashed away in the attic.

“In some ways we grew up around an atmosphere that was like the Hall of Fame,” he says. “And through our dad, he connected us through other players and his favorites. It almost seems like we had a little bit of a museum and a historian.”

Such an immersion in the glory of baseball’s past was momentarily blunted before Ripken left the Hall when a subject was broached that has never been far from the sports headlines since his retirement: steroids. Ripken’s dignified response was reminiscent of the way he reconnected fans with baseball and served as an antidote to the bitterness from that cancelled World Series.

“It’s not a measure of who you are by whether you have a record or not,” says Ripken, who hung a great big 2,632 up in the collective sports record book that likely will stand for eternity. “Your job is to try to do as much as you can, maximize your talent and, at the end of the day, feel good that you did it. You don’t need a record to actually say that you did a pretty good job.”

Ripken says he’s often asked how he would feel if someone under the suspicion of using illegal substances broke one of his records.

“It wouldn’t be about me,” he responds. “It would be about that person. I would hope that I would still feel the same about me. It doesn’t diminish your accomplishment or what you were able to do.”

Just as in 1995 with his reverential pursuit of Gehrig’s mark, Ripken’s Hall of Fame induction comes at a pivotal moment for the game he grew up in. As the ex-ballplayer, wearing a sports jacket rather than a jersey, walked out into the Cooperstown night from a shrine where he now has a permanent, rightful place, he like no other seemed best suited to renew faith in baseball.