Cal Ripken Jr. made history in 1995, months after MLB return from a crushing strike.
Baseball appears headed for another work stoppage in December 2026.
Would MLB be able to recover from another long-term labor dispute?
Yet despite this singular experience, Ripken, now 65 years old, is humble enough to admit it’s not the stuff of superhumans.
“I still feel,” he said Sept. 5, “somebody else will do it.”
Here we are, though, 30 years later, and only Miguel Tejada, the former Orioles and Oakland Athletics infielder, has cracked four figures, his streak ending in 2007 at 1,152 games. Matt Olson, the Atlanta Braves first baseman, has the longest current active streak at 760 games.
And as the Orioles mark the 30th anniversary of Sept. 6, 1995, when Ripken played in his 2,131st consecutive game, and hit a home run in front of the President, and the numerals on Camden Yards’ warehouse flipped to the magic number and confirmed Ripken surpassed Lou Gehrig’s unbreakable record, the streak’s subtle greatness and its enormity stand untouched.
It’s the simplest act – showing up to work every day, to earn a multi-million dollar paycheck playing a game, no less – yet one that resonated for the masses.
And we’d be remiss not to mention the conditions under which he broke the record: With baseball returning from a nasty work stoppage that canceled the 1994 World Series, truncated the ’95 season and pushed fans toward alternate means of spending their time and money, some never to return.
Three decades later, things are only so different: Major League Baseball owners, including Orioles steward David Rubenstein, are suggesting or agitating once again for a salary cap, a hard line that created baseball’s nuclear winter of ’94 and sent the industry into a tailspin.
Save me
It was Ripken, pundits suggested, who first “saved baseball,” his streak leaping from the sports pages to Good Morning America-worthy chatter, signing autographs late into the night after he played nine innings, patiently answering media queries every day the O’s blew into a new town.
Three years later, the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run showdown was next to “save baseball,” the sluggers’ multi-cultural race to 70 and 66 home runs creating so many warm memories that Big Mac’s Mack Truck-sized build could be overlooked until many years later.
Yet as we recount baseball’s climb off the mat of its most egregious self-inflicted wound, one thing becomes apparent: The game is just about out of party tricks.
With commissioner Rob Manfred locking the players out once before (December 2021 feels like yesterday) and claiming this time around that a lockout can be a good thing (??), the very worst can be expected come December 2026.
Vegas, or the sports book inside your little phone, hasn’t yet set odds on whether games will be missed in 2027, yet a betting person might opt for yes on that question.
This time around, the buttons, it seems, have all been pushed.
A clock to move the game along faster and make it friendlier for TV and the fan in the park? (Ah, well).
A superstar player so unbelievably dynamic that he can throw 100 mph and hit 50 homers with regularity while appealing to fans in two hemispheres? (Been there).
A decade-plus of unrepentant performance-enhancing drug use, to goose the home run numbers and torch the record book as we know it? (Yeah, let’s not do that again).
‘I hurt myself in the brawl’
No, Ripken was truly 1 of 1. A day before he’d be honored at Camden Yards, he relaxed in the Orioles dugout under a plaque of his father, who managed him for two seasons and remained a fount of wisdom until his 1999 death.
It was Ripken Sr. and wife Vi who were Junior’s first call in 1993, after a bench-clearing incident on June 6 against the Seattle Mariners resulted in Ripken hearing a pop in his knee. A phalanx of Mariners collapsed him into a pile after Mike Mussina hit Bill Haselman with a pitch and the dugouts emptied
Sore the next day, trainers determined him fit to play, doubt reigning until he’d use that leg to plant and throw.
And of course the first ball was hit to Ripken in the hole at short.
“I said ‘Mom, I hurt myself in the brawl. I don’t know what it’s going to be like, but I might not play today,’” Ripken recalls. “The cool part about it was they lived 45 minutes away, and in 45 minutes exactly they were knocking on my door.
“Baseball sometimes can test you. First play I got was a two-hopper in the hole. I wasn’t sure it was going to hold. But I planted on it and it held.”
As did Ripken in 1997 when, record in hand, a herniated disc roiled his back. Doctors recommended he take the last six weeks off. Yet the Orioles, no longer a sad sack after years of futility since Ripken and Co. won the 1983 World Series, were in contention.
“We were good. And when you endure a rebuilding process and the pain of getting to the point of being good, you don’t want to miss out on good,” says Ripken. “And I asked the doctor, if I can play, if I can endure the pain, will I do any permanent damage? And the doctor said no.”
The Orioles won the division and reached the ALCS. One year later, just as the Streak was a footnote and the McGwire-Sosa chemical romance neared its apex, Ripken stunned the baseball world by sitting down, on a Sunday Night Baseball tilt Sept. 19.
No heirs to the throne
Suddenly, the 2,131 obsession gave way to a number – 2,632 – so far away that it takes a minute to make sure you’re reading it right.
Ripken says his feat resonated with folks who’d tell him about their own streaks – perfect attendance through high school, or showing up to work, or far more trivial pursuits. He’s right: We may see another player reach those heights.
Perhaps it will be the Braves’ Olson. Hey, he’s an affable, low-key dude and a great enough player to earn three All-Star nods, two Gold Gloves and hit 54 home runs in a single season. All he needs to do is stay healthy for 11 years and play until he’s 42.
Yeah, not easy.
And even if that was realistic, it wouldn’t be the same. Every late-night signature scrawled beneath dying stadium lights, every assured glance at a lineup card knowing he’d be in there, every unbelievably timely home run he hit in consecutive games Nos. 2,129, 2,130 and 2,131 cannot be replicated.
No, Ripken and his streak were a gift to the game. And as another gray winter lurks on the horizon for baseball, it’d be helpful if stakeholders realized that this time around, he won’t be there to save them.
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