September 6, 1995: Cal Ripken Becomes Baseball's All-Time "Iron Man"

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September 6, 1995, 30 years ago: The Baltimore Orioles beat the California Angels, 4-2 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Cal Ripken Jr. batted 5th and played shortstop. As the game's 5th inning concluded, making the game official, the game was interrupted for a ceremony honoring Ripken, because it was his 2,131st consecutive game with the Orioles.

This broke the record of 2,130, set by Lou Gehrig with the New York Yankees, from June 1, 1925 to April 30, 1939.

Ripken's streak began on May 30, 1982, at the Orioles' previous home park, Memorial Stadium. Then 20 years old, and the son of Oriole 3rd base coach Cal Ripken Sr., he played shortstop, and batted 8th, going 0-for-2, but did draw a walk. The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Orioles, 6-0, getting a 1-hit shutout from Jim Gott (6 innings) and Roy Lee Jackson (3). The only Oriole hit was a single by Rick Dempsey in the 5th inning.

Although he had been featured on the Orioles' "Future Stars" card in the 1982 Topps baseball card set -- along with shortstop Bob Bonner and pitcher Jeff Schneider -- he had, to this point, appeared in a grand total of 65 major league games. And the Orioles' most recent one hadn't been one of them.

He must have impressed manager Earl Weaver, because Earl put Cal in the next game as well. And the next. And so on. In 1982, he was named the American League's Rookie of the Year. In 1983, defying the "sophomore jinx" that had hit many Rookies of the Year, he became the only one, in either League, to win his League's Most Valuable Player award the following season. The Orioles won the World Series, beating the Philadelphia Phillies in 5 games, with Ripken catching a line drive from Garry Maddox for the last out.

Ripken became a perennial All-Star, and in 1991 was named AL MVP again, and also the MVP of the All-Star Game. He surpassed the various men ahead of him on the list of most consecutive games played: Stan Musial with 895, Billy Williams with 1,117, Steve Garvey with the National League record of 1,207, and Everett Scott with the pre-Gehrig record of 1,307.

When the Strike of '94 hit on August 12, 1994, with Ripken having played in 2,009 straight games, there was some question as to whether the next Orioles game, should he play in it, would count as part of the streak. Major League Baseball ruled that it would.

The Strike was ended, and Ripken and the Orioles resumed. On September 5, the Orioles beat the Angels, 8-0, having hit 7 home runs, 2 by Brady Anderson, 1 by Ripken as he tied Gehrig's record at 2,130.

On Gehrig's Monument in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium, the inscription includes the words, "A man, a gentleman and a great ball player whose amazing record of 2130 consecutive games should stand for all time." Whether it should have stood for all time was a separate debate. But it took 56 years after Gehrig's retirement, forced by a fatal illness, to fall.

With the Washington Senators having moved to the Dallas area after the 1971 season, becoming the Texas Rangers, the Orioles became the closest MLB team to the nation's capital, and many Washington insiders made the 45-mile trip up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, took up the Orioles as their second team, and entertained prominent guests, first at Memorial Stadium, then, starting in 1992, at Camden Yards.

And because Ripken was the biggest star on the capital, he became a national figure, celebrated not for being spectacular, but for simply showing up and doing his job every day -- even though he had just come off the longest work stoppage in his industry's history. (Of course, the players were right and the team owners were wrong. But it does make the celebration of Ripken showing up every day a bit hypocritical.)

So when it was calculated, after the Strike's end, that September 6 would (barring a postponement) be Game Number 2,131, everybody who was anybody wanted to be there. This included President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton, who watched the game with MLB Acting Commissioner Bud Selig. ESPN broadcast the game nationally.

The teams traded home runs in the 1st inning: Tim Salmon for the Angels, and Rafael Palmeiro for the Orioles. Bobby Bonilla led off the bottom of the 4th with a home run. Up next was Ripken, who was a few days past his 35th birthday, and he made it back-to-back home runs, causing ESPN broadcaster Chris Berman to shout, "Oh my goodness, he's done it again!" That made it 3-1 Orioles.

After the 5th inning, as the game began official, people turned to the warehouse beyond the right field wall, where 4 banners hung, reading 2, 1, 3 and 0. A 1 banner was unfurled over the 0 banner, making it 2,131. A standing ovation began, and would not stop. For the moment, he was not just a national treasure, a man widely seen as having restored baseball's popularity after the Strike: He was one of their own, a native of Aberdeen, Maryland, 34 miles to the northeast.

He took what English soccer fans would call a "lap of honour," shaking hands around the field. The ovation lasted 22 minutes, and ESPN did not break for commercial.

Palmeiro hit a home run in the 7th, and the Orioles won, 4-2. Future Hall-of-Famer Mike Mussina was the winning pitcher.

Ripken had once been an excellent defensive shortstop, but, in 1996, was moved to 3rd base, where he remained for the rest of his career. In 1996 and '97, he helped the Orioles reach the Playoffs, but their 1983 remained his only Pennant win. It had been suggested that he was hurting the team by not taking the occasional day off, but he kept going until September 20, 1998, at home against the Yankees, Gehrig's team. His streak ended at 2,632 in a row. He had surpassed Gehrig's record by 23 percent.

In taking the occasional day off, he 1999, he batted .340, the highest average of his career -- but also equal to Gehrig's career batting average. After the season, he was voted by fans onto the MLB All-Century Team. Early the next season, he collected his 3,000th career hit. He retired after the 2001 season, the Orioles retired his Number 8, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007.

Given what's now called "load management," the possibility of seriously approaching the streaks of Musial, Williams, Garvey, Scott and Gehrig, never mind Ripken's, is incredibly remote.