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Cal Ripken's Disease

By Bryan Curtis
Posted Wednesday, June 20, 2001, at 3:00 AM ET

Cal Ripken announced his retirement Monday, and the Washington Post began its hagiography like this: "Leave it to Ripken to exit as appropriately, with a perfect sense of his sport and his place within it, as any athlete possibly could." Presumably the writer, Thomas Boswell, defines "appropriate" retirement as one that is handed, as Ripken's was, as an exclusive to the Post's sports writers. Conveniently omitting some of the Iron Man's worst moments, the Post lifts Ripken off the diamond and into the realm of secular sainthood. The canonization of St. Cal isn't journalism, even by the rah-rah standards of the hometown press. It's the sanitized biography of a man who was selfish, aloof, and at times phenomenally shallow.

Boswell admits the Iron Man could be "a little moody" in the years before he broke Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played. (He doesn't mention that this period spanned 14 seasons.) But as Ripken approached the record, Boswell assures, he became a changed man: "No one grasps the game better. … Its codes, its traditions, its legacies."

Yet in 1995, Ripken showed little regard for baseball history, admitting to reporters that he knew virtually nothing about the man whose record he was about to break. And the history is particularly poignant. When Gehrig's own streak came to an end, he was in the early stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and he was dying. Contrast Ripken with Mark McGwire, who rushed to the stands and embraced Roger Maris' family members after hitting his 62nd home run in 1998.

So, Ripken didn't show much respect for a dead man. How did he treat the living? The Post's William Gildea writes, "Ripken took as much responsibility for goodwill as he could, repeatedly displaying attentiveness to fans with autographs and handshakes at every opportunity." But Gildea never lets on that Ripken rarely showed such affection for his teammates. In 1993, Ripken eschewed the team bus for a private limousine. When the Orioles traveled to away games, he often preferred to stay at a separate hotel. The Orioles' disastrous signing of outfielder Albert Belle in 1998 was brought on because the team needed a star, General Manager Frank Wren explained, with "more passion, more fire."

Not content with reconstructing Ripken's character, the Post plugs Ripken's name into the same sentence with other (far superior) baseball legends. "He views his two decades with the Orioles," Gildea writes, "much as Ted Williams did his seasons with the Red Sox. On his departure in 1960, Williams said: 'My stay in Boston has been the most wonderful thing in my life.' " Here Gildea shows only a slightly better sense of baseball history than Ripken. Williams loathed his later years in Boston, loathed the fans, Red Sox management, and especially the press.

Ripken isn't Ted Williams, on or off the field. He was a good but not transcendent hitter. He wasn't a jerk, but he was no more or less selfish, aloof, and shallow than 95 percent of the players in the major leagues. He's a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but he falls somewhere in the middle rungs of baseball's greatest players. It's appropriate that we remember him that way.

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Bryan Curtis, a contributing writer, writes the "Middlebrow" column.
Photograph of Cal Ripken Jr. by Paul A. Souders/Corbis.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Is Slate anti-baseball? Or just anti-Cal Ripken? More than 2,000 people commented on this article: a few readers agreed with Bryan Curtis, but they were far outnumbered by those taking issue with him. Brian Riley, below, got the point that much of the article was an attack on the Washington Post, and on the tendency of sports media to canonize athletes rather than portray them accurately and journalistically, but still that didn't appease him. Randy Khan defends Ripken's playing record here, after Tim said Ripken, was an average shortstop.]





Ripken played for 21 years with the same team--a team that, for most of his career, had very limited financial resources--because he loved Baltimore and the Orioles, when the best shortstop of his generation could have gotten a king's ransom from other teams. Ripken's knowledge of the game is so total that everyone in baseball acknowledges him as the master of defensive positioning, that he called pitches from shortstop for years because his managers understood that he could, and that Baseball Prospectus rated him one of the best defensive third basemen in the league at 40 because of his positioning and technique. Not exactly the actions of a selfish or shallow man. If he took a separate limo sometimes or had a separate hotel--so what? He was Cal Ripken, and none of his teammates had to bear the burden of the adulation that America (deservedly) heaped upon him.



One of the saddest features of modern journalism is the seemingly constant compulsion to tear down remarkable men and remarkable achievements in pursuit of momentary attention, as if that had some real importance or brought us any nearer to real truths. It's a pity that Slate succumbed to this temptation, particularly at the moment that this remarkable man chose, with the class and timing that was every bit as much his hallmark as the consistent excellence he brought to the playing field, to announce his retirement from baseball. All greatness fades eventually, perhaps, but while it exists it should be treasured, and baseball, and all who follow it, are lessened by his departure.



--Gautam Mukunda



(To reply, click here.)





I took a day or two to think about Cal Ripken's Disease by Bryan Curtis, because I did not want to give it a snap judgement. It also gave me time to read what other people were saying in their responses…



Curtis's real beef is with Boswell, not Ripken. Ripken is not saying anything to promote himself (he rarely does), Boswell did. So this is a reason to try to trash Ripken's reputation? Also, I think the Post article was reasonably fair, given the home town flavor. Boswell did put some negatives in there...



Cal Ripken is not the greatest baseball player of all time. Boswell even made that point. But Cal has a strong work ethic, civic loyalty, a passion for baseball, and a warmth to the fans that will long be remembered. He spent $17 million of his own money to build a little league complex. You think he is going to get a return on that? He clearly loves the game, and everything about it.



He deserves the Hall of Fame on the first vote [and] he deserves our respect.



--Brian Riley



(To reply, click here.)





I've met and spoken with Cal several times over the last 21 years, since he came up to the majors in 1981. He has always been a true gentleman and, put in the simplest terms, just a nice guy. His attitude is always one of humility and not of self-importance. He is the first one to tell you that his talent as a baseball player does not make him any better or more special than anyone else--and that's something many of today's players do not understand, and would never admit even if they understood it! You don't earn the total respect every other player in baseball, as well as that of thousands and thousands of fans around the world, by being the person described in Mr. Curtis' article



--Jean Sampson



(To reply, click here.)



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