Baseball’s Iron Man Powers On Despite a Cancer Scare

Twenty-five years ago, Cal Ripken Jr. made history simply by doing his job. Ripken, the Baltimore Orioles shortstop, played in his 2,131st game in a row, breaking Lou Gehrig’s hallowed record. The active leader, Whit Merrifield of the Kansas City Royals, had played in 285 consecutive games through Friday.

“If I can do it, somebody else can,” Ripken said by phone the other day. “Now, it’ll take 17 years without missing a game, and the definition of an everyday player has changed a little bit.”

On Sunday, Major League Baseball will commemorate Ripken’s streak with a ceremonial first pitch to be played on scoreboards and broadcasts before all the day’s games, as well as special features on its network. Ripken filmed the pitch at Camden Yards with his son, Ryan, who had the good sense in utero to keep his father’s steak alive.

Ryan Ripken, now an infielder in the Orioles’ farm system, was born on July 26, 1993, more than two years before his father broke Gehrig’s record. He is the second child of Ripken and his former wife, Kelly, after a daughter, Rachel, who has a November birthday. No such luck with Ryan.

“He was going to be born at the end of July, and you could make an argument that’s probably the worst time to have a child if you’re a baseball player,” Ripken said. “But Ryan was so big — he was almost nine pounds — and he was a week early. The doctor wanted to get him out, so it became a scheduling thing.”

Ripken flew home for the birth on an off-day after a game in Minnesota. He re-joined the Orioles for their next game, in Toronto, and ripped a three-run homer. He also homered on the night he tied Gehrig’s record in Baltimore, and again when he broke it, both against the Angels. Ripken ended the streak on his terms, at 2,632 games, finally sitting out against the Yankees in 1998.

Naturally, he has stayed active since retiring in 2001. The Babe Ruth League named its youth division for Ripken, and he runs tournaments, camps and a college summer league from facilities in Maryland, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida with his brother, Billy, a former major league infielder.

Ripken also called games for Turner Sports for a decade, and has partnered with Topps on a new set of trading cards to mark the anniversary of the streak. He serves on the board of the Cal Ripken Sr. foundation, which builds fields for at-risk children. Cal Sr. was a longtime Orioles coach and manager.

“I had a dad who was the encyclopedia of baseball,” Ripken said. “I wanted to promote the goodness of the sport and try to get more kids to play baseball.”

Those efforts will solidify a long-lasting legacy for Ripken, who turned 60 last month and confronted his own mortality early this year. After a routine checkup showed slightly elevated levels of PSA (prostate-specific antigen), Ripken met with an urologist. A biopsy in February revealed early-stage prostate cancer, and Ripken had surgery in March.

He did not plan to share the news publicly, he said, because he did not want people feeling sorry for him. But he let it slip on a Zoom call with Baltimore reporters last month, and said he was glad he did. A subsequent test assured him he is now cancer-free.

“As baseball players, we have it all done for us when we play. As we retire, we’ve got to make our own appointments and sometimes you get a little lax,” Ripken said. “Men in particular, like me, can stick our heads in the sand and say everything’s going to be all right. Well, it might not be all right. But if you’re proactive and they do find it, you have options.”

It is sobering when a deadly disease afflicts someone known for health and durability. But that, of course, was part of the backdrop to Ripken’s pursuit of the consecutive-games record. Gehrig was forced from the field by A.L.S. in 1939, and died less than two years later, at age 37.

In the summer of 1995, as baseball sheepishly returned from a devastating strike, Ripken’s link to Gehrig colored him in sepia tones. Whatever fans thought of the players and the owners, they could relate to a player who simply showed up every day, ready to work. They shared stories with Ripken, who made a habit of returning to the field after games to sign autographs.

“I was trying to figure out a way to say you’re sorry,” Ripken said, referring to the strike. He never apologized for playing every day, and rejected critics’ notion that resting for a day or two could help him shake slumps.

“The answer to me was never sitting down,” he said. “It really wasn’t finding it in the cage; it was finding it on the field. That’s how it worked out for me.”

Ripken struggled at times in 1990, when his average dipped to .209 in mid-June. His manager, the Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, told Ripken later that he nearly benched him but always reconsidered. For one thing, Robinson liked to write his lineup before players arrived at the ballpark rather than waiting to check on their availability. He knew Ripken would always be ready, and even if his bat was cold, Robinson valued his other contributions.

Ripken shined on defense that season, making only three errors, and hit so well in 1991 that he captured his second Most Valuable Player Award. The streak would endure, and Ripken learned to use aches and pains to his advantage.

“Sometimes an injury would make you stay within yourself, and then you’d play better,” he said. “I remember a slide in Minnesota; I avoided a tag and slid into second, and I grabbed the bag with my left arm and my elbow went in. I hyperextended it, and it really hurt to swing a bat.

“When I came up that night, I took a gingerly swing at a ball in the dirt; it really hurt to the point where I wasn’t sure I could swing. And I stepped out and said, ‘OK, make sure you get a good pitch, just put a short swing on it.’ I hit a line drive to the second baseman on one hop, and as I was running to first base, I realized that when I made contact, it didn’t hurt, and when I swung and missed, it did. I got so hot, just because I made sure I got a good pitch to hit.”

He would finish with 3,184 hits, 19 All-Star selections, Gold Gloves, Silver Slugger awards, a championship ring and a plaque in the Hall of Fame. But the consecutive-games record should stand forever as Ripken’s singular achievement — with apologies to Merrifield, who still has more than 14 seasons to go.