Ripken on Twitter, Strike Out Hunger campaign and more

Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. has been intrigued with the idea of opening a Twitter account. He just needed a reason to do it beyond the interaction with fans, something he did tirelessly in person during a 21-year major league career. Most notably in 1995 as he closed in on Lou Gehrig's record for most consecutive games played.

Ripken found his excuse and, as usual, it tied into his desire to help other people.

Using his new account (@CalRipkenJr.), which already was approaching 3,000 followers before noon despite launching around 8 a.m., Ripken announced the start of the "Strike Out Hunger" campaign designed to assist kids and families across the country who are dealing with food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a coordinated effort between the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation, which includes Cal Jr. and brother Bill, and Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the United States.

The Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation, along with its partners at Ollie's Bargain Outlet and the Kevin Harvick Foundation, have contributed $250,000 toward the campaign. Every dollar donated helps to provide at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of member food banks.

Feeding America estimates that $1.4 billion in additional resources will be needed over the next six months to provide enough food for people struggling with hunger.

Donations to the Strike Out Hunger fundraising campaign can be made by visiting www.ripkenfoundation.org/donate/strikeouthunger.

Ripken is conducting his business from home during the pandemic and he spent part of his morning setting up a video feed for tonight's ESPN airing of the 2,131 game at Camden Yards. I spoke to him on the phone earlier today, the only interruptions coming when he needed to check on his dog, a 60-pound Goldendoodle, in the back yard.

Here's a sampling of our conversation:

Me: "What made you decide to finally take the leap and get on Twitter?"

Ripken: (laughs) "It's for the right cause. Since I was always a little behind the curve on that, I didn't know how to join in or whether I wanted to or not, because you live a public life and I valued my privacy in some ways. This particular opportunity, when it comes to reaching out to people to help others in need, I thought it was the right time to do that. So it would give me a chance to jump in for a good cause and then see how it goes."

Me: "How active will you be?"

Ripken: "I don't know. There are some aspects of it that I think are really entertaining and fun, and I appreciate the people who are really good at it, the time they put into it and all that kind of stuff. So I don't know. I'll find out as I go along. If there are interesting things that I find myself wanting to share at times.

"When you were playing, you had a chance to interact a lot with people at venues, whether it's spring training, whether it's at a ballgame, and all that kind of stuff. You're around people all the time. Now when you're away from it a little bit, there are times when you want to share your opinion or talk about something or ask a question. I think this will be a good forum to do that."

Me: "Have you been coached on how to handle the Twitter trolls?"

Ripken: (laughs). "No. I might have to be calling you for a little advice on that."

Me: "How did the 'Strike Out Hunger' campaign come about?"

Ripken: "Like everything else, we're put in a stalled mode from what we'd normally do as business as normal. And then we started thinking, 'How can we really use the infrastructure that we've developed to help?' So we could temporarily change the focus of the foundation and really look at the communities that we serve and try to get in front of and try to help. And their biggest need is food and security, so we thought, well, we have a good national network of good resources all across the country. We can really help across the country doing this. So that idea came out.

"I think when you come across an idea and you think the timing is really good, everybody really knows it, and then when this idea came up, it's the perfect opportunity. We've built a great national structure for our foundation where we can help and we can just change the focus of it temporarily. We're a partnering foundation anyway, so Feeding America, they know what to do with food, they know how to do it, we can provide resources and we can ask for help individually. We can ask with our sponsors. We've had a couple sponsors step up big already. With our $100,000, we've got about $150,000 more that just started, and we just came up with the concept. So we're a quarter of a million dollars in with other people making considerations right now as well."

Me: "It basically sounds open-ended at this point because you don't know how long this pandemic is going to last."

Ripken: "The communities we've gone into, some of the toughest areas in the country, we've been able to get in front of kids through our programming and providing safe places to play in the form of our fields. We've been really successful with that and we have credibility in those communities, so their needs right now have changed and we have an opportunity to help. We thought that was good. We started making a few phone calls. Feeding America was really happy and grateful for the idea and the thought.

"Who would have thought? We started this foundation in Dad's name basically with a regional sort of thought process that we'd help the kids in and around our area. Grabbing national board members and recruiting them and building this to an infrastructure that goes all the way across the country really does give us an infrastructure to help. And as you know, we're celebrating our 100th field this year, and we've only been doing that seven or eight years, building fields, so it's an amazing accomplishment and it has put us in all these different communities and with a base to really have an opportunity like this to help. But I think we all immediately saw the value in it.

"I see the value in social media. All for the good. I know that there's good and bad that goes along with that, but I saw it as an opportunity to reach out. A lot of people want to help, but they don't have the resources to help in a big way. Sometimes they help with time and effort. Every dollar donated helps to provide at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America, so just think of the value of that. If you're reaching out to a lot of people and they can help to the tune of $1, $5, $10, the effect that that can have. We'd like to be able to encourage people to help that way as well.

"We're really happy to be able to not just sit around and think, 'OK, when things get back to normal, we'll do this and we'll do that and this is how we'll help and we'll build these fields.' This is a chance to do something right now and we all jumped at that chance."

Me: "How has the pandemic changed your daily life?"

Ripken: "It's amazing all the things you count on every single day to provide comfort, entertainment. Even all the sports stuff. If you're a sports guy, you're fed each and every day. The NCAA cancelling the March Madness, that took a lot of excitement and air out of a lot of people's sails across the country. And you see baseball operating pretty normally in spring training and you're thinking it's not too far and they'll be starting the season, and then have all that taken away, it just feels like there's a huge vacuum that sucked out that part of your life.

"It kind of slows you down. Our kids' complexes, we have to be cognizant of the fact that we can't have our programming, we can't start that. We keep hopes that once we get the all-clear sign that we'll be able to fill in all the spaces, because I think kids are going to want to go out and play, parents are going to want all the kids to do the tournaments. So I think that will all come back. But we're thinking of innovative ways. How do you make up for it? How do you create different formats? How do we get more teams? How do we do all kinds of stuff? So there's a lot of planning that goes on now.

"I'm of the positive mindset that innovation and planning happens during these times. That you start to look at things and you turn it upside down and you look at it different ways. Is there a better way to do this? And sometimes the motivation is these tough times. So I think we'll all benefit from the efforts. But the day-to-day is, like everyone else, we're at home, and you're trying to interact and trying to figure out how do we interact digitally, how do we do things? And maybe you're discovering technology in ways that you couldn't before and maybe have different idea. But again, it's all in the planning and the thought process.

"It's not too dissimilar to playing baseball every single day. You can't get too far ahead and you've got to say, 'OK, let's win today, let's focus on today,' and each day leads into the next one, which kind of keeps you with a positive frame of mind. You could feel sorry for yourself in a way and then kind of complain, or you could look for opportunity. You could look for things to do that you could learn from and benefit from as this goes on. Nobody wants to be in it, but we all have to cope with it."

Me: "You have experience with baseball shutdowns and having to get ready for shortened seasons. How hard is it going to be for these players having to stop and restart spring training and perhaps play a season under very unusual circumstances - like the latest report about the possibility of playing all of the games in Arizona?"

Ripken: "I'm someone, as you know, who likes to think about things and have more details before you offer an opinion, but my first response was positive. I'm glad that MLB is trying to figure this out, as complicated as it is, because I think the role of Major League Baseball is one of helping in times of trouble. There's no way that I would have believed after 9/11 the role that baseball would have played, but coming back and playing baseball is a way to kind of focus on America's pastime and to feel good and maybe be a distraction. And maybe in that case to heal a little bit.

"It always takes me back to a simpler time in childhood when you first started to play the game of baseball, so there's something magical that baseball has. And so when I first heard - I don't know the details and all that kind of stuff or even start to attack whether it's possible or not - I love the concept that MLB and its success in doing something could be a model and could be hopeful in moving back to some level of normalcy, whatever that's going to be like. So I was really happy that they're trying to figure it out and realize that sports - and in particular, baseball - does play a role."

Me: "Are you confident that the players will be able to adapt easily?"

Ripken: "I don't know. I mean, to get all players to agree on anything is hard. We're all people and we all have different opinions. But they're baseball players, they love to play baseball. They've got to be going nuts not playing baseball. It's a hard lifestyle by traveling and all that kind of stuff, but I think given the choice, you have a chance to go back and do what you do and be part of the national recovery in a way, if you think of it in that perspective, I think that a lot of players will be amenable to doing that.

"Without overstating it, if you've gone through it, you do play a role in coping and getting through things. It's a form of entertainment. There's a feeling that people get when they watch sports and they get connected to sports. I'm biased, of course, but I think baseball uniquely is in a position where it's not about physical size. You can be small, tall, big. The everyday challenges of it that mirror life. I think people look forward to that."

Me: "ESPN is showing 2,131 tonight at 7 p.m.. Can you believe it's been 25 years since you broke Lou Gehrig's record?"

Ripken: "No, no. I can't believe it's 25 years. In some ways it feels like it was yesterday. They're promoting that, putting it on. They're in dire need of programming. But this was a cool moment in baseball history and it was planned in some ways, but it wasn't choreographed the way it turned out. The lap around the ballpark, none of that stuff was planned. The fifth inning of the game where games become official, to me a game's official when it's over. It's not, like, in the middle of the game. And the numbers on the warehouse, all the things that surrounded that, that was pretty cool. But no, I can't believe that it's been 25 years."

Me: "Have you watched the replay? MASN aired it again a few nights ago."

Ripken: "You know, I've never sat down and watched it right to the end like you watch a movie. When it's been on, sometimes I stay on it for a little while and laugh and remember. There was a time when I didn't want to be influenced at all and so I would turn it off. I'd see it and go, 'OK, I lived it and I went through it from my view and I want to preserve that.' But over time I've seen different snippets and different moments when it's been on and I've enjoyed it. I was thinking, 'Man, I didn't realize that happened,' or, 'I didn't see that,' which was interesting. And so I'm curious now. Enough time has passed to where I can watch it.

"I still haven't watched it from start to finish, but I've watched certain parts when it's been on. It's been on a lot."