Ripken on unselfish nature of The Streak, times it almost ended

The Orioles and the rest of Major League Baseball are going to celebrate 2,131 on Sunday. The 25th anniversary of an event that requires no explanation or clarity beyond the digits.

Everyone knows it's the number of consecutive games played by Cal Ripken Jr. to break Lou Gehrig's record, and that it's referenced as "The Streak," earning the usage of capital letters due to its historic nature.

Ripken will offer more reflection on it later. The banner on the warehouse that allowed fans to keep count. The ovations that wouldn't permit the game to resume, no matter how many times he left the dugout. Rafael Palmeiro coming up with the idea of running the lap. Seeing his father, Cal Sr., waiving at him from a suite.

The years that have passed make it a lot easier for Ripken to bask in the joy of it. To move beyond the harsh criticisms, many coming from the media.

To no longer have to defend his actions.

The man simply wanted to play. Felt that it was his job. Didn't understand why anyone would find it noble to sit.

Ripken never regarded The Streak as detrimental to the club during periods when he stopped hitting and the Orioles stopped winning. Others disagreed and carried the louder voices.

"There was a lot of finger-pointing when you go from a winning team to one that's not winning, this blame that was associated," he said during a recent Zoom conference call with the media.

"I always look back and thought Eddie Murray was unfairly blamed. There's was finger-pointing at a lot of us who went through a really tough period of rebuilding. One that was the most embarrassing rebuilding was when we started the season out 0-21 (in 1988) and you're the laughingstock of the whole world and you get all the attention for all the wrong reasons. But you have to endure those sorts of things, and by enduring those sorts of things and keeping things in perspective, it was easy for me to always come back to, 'Today's a new day, it's a new challenge, let me see if I can affect today.'

"I always thought my job was to come to the ballpark ready to play, and The Streak was not created because I dictated I was going to play. It was created because I brought value to each and every day. The manager chose me. What's interesting is 1,000 games happened pretty quickly, and I think when people started to really analyze The Streak and all that kinds of stuff, that's when some opinions of selfishness ...

"I personally wish that I could scream and pull my hair out maybe prematurely (because) I thought it was one of the most unselfish things to give yourself to the team, that you wanted to play today, and then the manager chooses you to play. It was more selfish to dictate when you didn't play, like if I wanted to dodge somebody I couldn't hit or the challenge of facing Roger Clemens on a day game after a 15-inning game. If you really look at the decisions being made, those challenges that you meet on a daily basis, it would be easy to let somebody else deal with that challenge. But I always wanted to be available for that challenge."

Ripken didn't name names, but there were a few veterans on the club who wandered into the manager's office and asked for a rest day to avoid a difficult matchup.

He never begged out of the lineup.

"It was more about being there for the team, and you could even make the case that it was a little bit more unselfish than selfish. But I endured the criticism," Ripken said.

"People enjoyed taking that position when it happened. And I always thought your best protection against that was to get out of your slump. As soon as you got out of your slump, all that stuff went away. And the answer for my slump wasn't in taking a mental break and figuring it out in the clubhouse. It was figuring it out on the field, and that's how I was made and that's what I did. So I look back on it, there were some intense moments when you felt like you were being criticized for wanting to play, which seems weird to me."

A knee injury sustained in a brawl with the Mariners on June 7, 1993 almost accomplished what no manager would do.

Keep Ripken on the bench for an entire game.

Ripken waded into a pileup at the mound after Mariners catcher Bill Haselman charged and tackled pitcher Mike Mussina in the seventh inning. Mussina had drilled Haselman on the left shoulder, the dugout and bullpens emptied and one of the most epic fights in baseball history delayed the game for 20 minutes and almost ruined 2,131.

No one knew at the time that Ripken hurt the knee, but the injury nearly halted his streak at 1,790 games. He woke up the next morning thinking he wouldn't be able to play and refused to milk one at-bat and then exit.

The Streak wouldn't contain any artificial sweeteners.

Mariners pitcher Chris Bosio reinjured his shoulder. Ripken received treatment on the knee from head athletic trainer Richie Bancells and kept rolling along.

"I had that kind of confidence in Richie that I would do whatever he told me to do," Ripken said.

"Richie probably was the quiet MVP behind the scenes that nobody really knew. He played a nice role in keeping me on the field."

Ripken sprained his ankle in a game against the Rangers early in the 1985 season, but was able to rest during an off-day. Ideal and coincidental timing.

Twisted ankles were routine for Ripken, who hosted basketball games in his home gym.

"It impaired some of your mobility, but I always thought that I could contribute and play at 80 percent anyway, so now I convinced myself to do that," he said.

"The hardest one ever to play through was I herniated my back in 1997, so it was in July of that year. That was the year we were in first place from the first day of the season to the last. And in the middle of that Eric Davis was diagnosed with (colon) cancer, Robbie Alomar went down with an injury, the Yankees were pressing us a little bit. And pressing through a herniated disc in my back and having the pain that was down there and the feeling of loss of mobility and trying to get through that was the worst six weeks of my life. There were many times when I felt like walking off the field."

He almost did.

"There was one time in particular in Oakland where there was a ball hit to my left, I was playing third, and I went to go after it, and sometimes you can stumble on your feet or try to time your dive or something like that, and it felt like I didn't have the strength in my left leg to really push off. And then ultimately I lost my balance and fell. And inside me it felt like I must have looked like the most uncoordinated person in the world and therefore I'm embarrassing myself. I need to get off the field," Ripken said.

"I stood there for a couple minutes and stared at the door behind home plate, where the umpires came through, and I thought, without saying a word to anyone, 'I'm just going to walk off the field right now, open the door and walk up the stairs and that will be it.' And I remember saying that 'I'm leading off the next inning, let me get through this, let me see what happens when I go to bat.' And sure enough, the guy throws me a curveball, which I wasn't looking for, and I banged a line drive to left field. And as I was running down to first base I go, 'I guess I'm all right.' So there are moments like that when you have to prove to yourself that you can still play."

Ripken had Murray as a teammate, friend and mentor. He also felt a closeness to legendary third baseman Brooks Robinson and noted how the Hall of Famer rarely took days off.

"The guys that I looked up to that were my models convinced me that that was the right way to go about doing things," he said.

"You're only 100 percent maybe the first day of spring training, then every other time you're something less than 100 percent. And some players can convince themselves that they can play a little hurt. Some, whatever that line is, it's up to you. I always had a pretty good toleration for pain and somehow I was able to figure out how to get it done.

"You get hit in the back of your hand or wrist, or this finger starts to swell up and then you couldn't hold the bat right. There were adjustments you had to make along the way. And all players have to."

Only one obliterated an unbreakable record, playing in 2,632 games in a row before removing himself from the lineup on Sept. 20, 1998.

"From where I sit, the logical, rational understanding would say, if I can do it, certainty somebody else can. But it takes a commitment over a long period of time. It almost takes the right support and ideology," Ripken said.

"Being an everyday player early on in my career, there was an honor in playing 162, it was an honor being out there as an everyday player to meet that challenge. And that was the ultimate definition of an everyday player. Over time I think some of the logic is, let me get the best 150 out of a player, let me get the best 145, and the definition starts to change and that it's considered a good thing.

"Eddie Murray could be 0-for-75 and him sitting in the four spot in that order made me feel much better, made the rest of us be able to stay in our slots. And I'll tell you what, Eddie Murray coming up in his third time up and the manager trying to decide what to do in the other dugout, that was always a factor that Eddie brought to the game.

"So some of those intangibles that sometimes are forgotten by the analysis of today, the Sabermetrics and the straight mathematics analysis, some of those values, I think they exist. So somebody can do it physically, somebody can do it mentally.

"Obviously, it will take a long time to get 2,632 games."