One of the greatest baseball players ever is cal Ripken. He set a record for playing in two thousand, six hundred and thirty two consecutive games over seventeen years. He was an All Star nineteen times, a member of the Hall of Fame, twice most Valuable Player in the American League, and also once.
A World Series champion.
I had a chance to sit down with cal Ripkin recently to talk about his current life working for and with Baltimore Orioles, a team that he made very famous.
So it was said in baseball.
That the unbreakable record was Lou Garrick's record of spend playing in two thousand and thirty games consecutively. Nobody thought that could ever be broken.
You broke it.
You played in two thousand, six hundred and thirty two games consecutively over seventeen years.
Why did you do that?
I mean, did you ever think if maybe taking a day off.
Would be a good thing?
Or so?
You're not going to ask me what my secret was, right, Wow, I'll get that. I don't know if I have one. I mean, I love the game a lot. Your everyday player was to find in those years as playing every game, and it was an honor to be thought of and counted on each and every day by your teammates. So I had my dad, who was also a coach when I first came in, probably for the first eleven or
twelve years of my career. And I think the real reason that I played is that I couldn't come into a ballpark and say you have turf toe where you stubbed your toe and say, okay, I might need to miss a game or two. I couldn't face my dad, you know, let alone the manager.
Of the team like I've been, you know, working for many years, and I have not done seventeen years consecutively, going in every day. You know, you have a headache, someday you don't feel good. You never had a headache, no cold, nothing happened.
Yes, all of those things that fight through it. You learn to play through different things, and you find out really quickly that I can still compete, I still can play even though I might be less than one hundred percent.
Baseball was called the national pastime for a long time, but obviously other sports have taken a lot of attention away from baseball. Basketball and football, for example, do you still feel that Americans have a certain passion for baseball that is similar to what they had twenty thirty, forty years ago, or do you think it's really changed a lot.
I think there's a deep love for baseball still in the country. And I see that the ripping baseball was a kids business that we developed experiential when you play tournaments and we teach and those sorts of things, and you can witness it right in front of you that the kids eight to twelve year olds feel the same
way about baseball that we did. I think what's happened in sports overall is that there's specialization that happens earlier in the sports, and so you're not playing baseball, basketball, and football all that time. You're specializing really early on. So there's a lot less kids, I think that are playing baseball, but the ones that are playing are actually playing more of it because they play spring summer.
And speaking of that, lots of pictures these days have elbow problems. They now get surgery called Tommy John surgery, and players have to take a year and a half before.
They're really going to play again.
Why are there there's so many pitchers and I seem to have this problems now and they didn't have as many of those problems when you were playing.
Is it because they're playing.
So young and they're throwing so many different kind of pitches that really hurt the elbow on the arm?
Well, I think some of that is true because Tommy John surgery has come down even to like high school and sometimes kids younger than that. And I think some parents feel like, we'll just keep throwing and if it breaks or whatever else, we can always fix it and you'll come back throwing harder than you did before. I
think that's the wrong way to look at it. But I think in the big legs, with all the analytics that go around, I think pitchers are chasing velocity more so there's more training for to get your arm stronger to throw the ball harder, but they let they're chasing movement. So there's two things that happen. If you throw a fastball,
you get behind the baseball. But then when you try to make it move with the same power, you're torquing your your elbow or your wrist right at the end to try to make it move, to try to and then all these pressure goes right here. And I think a lot of chasing speed and chasing movement. The combination of those two is causing it.
When a golfer is lining up a pott on a tournament, everybody has to be quiet.
Nobody's throwing anything in his head. Why does he need to have so much quiet?
But you're not allowed to talk or say anything when you're putting for five inches, But if somebody's throwing a ball at your head one hundred miles an hour.
They can scream and yell.
Why doesn't it seem much ass backwards?
Yes? Yes, the uh It is interesting though, when you play in front of a packed house, it's just noise, you know, it's not you don't hear the individual things. I mean. In here in New York, I think the fans felt that they were part of the game, and so they were trying to get inside your head. They were screaming things out at you try to play a little mind game with and and if you beat them and you did really well, you know, it'd almost go ah caw see you tomorrow. It was all part of it.
The Boston fans were a little different, is that they were they were more personal that if you beat them or whatever else, they'd hold against you for your whole life.
You can challenge a call now and they go up to New York and they watch it on video and they make a decision there.
You think that's good or bad?
I like it, yeah, I mean because one play could turn the whole outcome of the game, and they have the technology to do it now. And I think what you're going to see in the next couple of years is some form of the robotic strike zone. You know, whether they're testing it in the minor leagues on a challenge system or like every third game, they just they have something in the year of the umpire and the robot or whatever calls the whole game based on when the balls on the plate. He just tells the guy
what to do. And so they're testing those things out, and I think the challenge system might be good because a key pitch in the eighth inning with the bases loaded, you know, and it's called a ball or a strike, you know, the ball turns it in favor of the team that's got the bases loaded. A strike kind of gets them out of it.
Professional athlete are idealized.
I mean, it's hard to believe this, but they're like more than politicians, right, So athletes are really well liked and admired and so forth. But then when you finish your career, you have the whole different life. So you were tired at what age? Forty one?
Pretty one?
You played twenty years, twenty two years, twenty one years in the major leagues, and you were tired at an age that you know is old for a professional athlete, but young for somebody in private equity or something like that. So when you were tired at that age, did you say, what am I going to do the rest of my life? And what did you decide to do for the remaining ten next twenty years of your life?
What did you do?
So if you save your money pretty well, then you have choices, you know, and you could decide to learn how to play golf and like a lot of people do and kind of retire early.
Are you a golfer?
I play a little bit, but no, I could be pretty good.
I think I have try a minutes for golf. That's what I do.
So I looked at it as you know, you kind of get bored. How can you do that? I look at it as a second chance for a career opportunity, And so you look I wanted to learn business, and we bought minor league teams and so you could. It was a comfortable business model that you can kind of learn business that way, and that was kind of fun. At first, it felt like I gave I spotted everybody else twenty years ahead of me. I'm forty one, but
it seemed like I'm twenty one. You know, in the business world, you come out and then you learn that a lot of the things you learned along the way in baseball can apply to your I mean, your worth, work, ethic, how you go about doing picture preparation, and all that kind of stuff that all applies to what you're doing now.
So now that you're an owner of the Baltimore Orioles, well, how do you feel about these high price contracts that players are getting. Used to be a player, probably wanted higher price contracts. Now you're an owner, how do you look at that differently?
Slightly? I try to think of what are the other other intangible values that you can offer a player besides the bottom line dollars because the bottom line dollars are so big now or whatever else that you can make a case you're saying, well how much? But I mean it's about ego, and it's about breaking the bank, and it's about agents wanting to continue to make it go up for other people that come through. But if you take my situation, was I wanted to play in one place.
I wanted to have control of playing in one place. So I think if we get to a point where we're trying to convince one of our players to stay, you know, you want to try to tell them all the values that are associated with you know, Derek Jeter playing his whole career in a Pinstripe uniform, Me playing my whole career in the Orioles And what's that mean for you in the bigger picture? And hopefully they'll value some of that. But it's going to be a competitive landscape where we're going.
To have to pay some excite And Baltimore is a smaller city compared to some of the New York.
Los Angeles.
Is that a big problem and you're in a smaller city in Major League Baseball?
I think overall, I never liked the idea because you were a small market team you couldn't compete, Because I think competition is in your knowledge. You know you're drafting, you get the draft you get to sign players, you get to develop players. You know, that's not all free agency that's happening. But if you're a big market team and you make a mistake in judgment or a player,
you can throw more money at your mistakes. When you're a smaller market team, you have to be better at your baseball decisions.
So I played the Little League All Star shortstop and when I was eight to nine, and I didn't know whether I was going to get to the major leagues or not. When did you realize you were going to be better than someone like me? Did you realize that you were a little leaguer when you were a little leaguer, Did you really realize you were going to be really good enough to play in the major leagues?
I knew pretty quickly. I grew up in around baseball. Dad was a manager of the minor leagues for the Oils in the first fourteen years of my life. So I went to work with my dad, you know, or as early as eight or nine. He put me in a uniform, was the bat boy. I shagged in the outfield. I had a chance to ask all the players, you know, how they did, how they caught the fly ball, how they swung the bat. So I had all these teachers
in front of me, but I had the skill. You know, that was pretty obvious early on.
Okay, so you played in high school. I assume you did very well in high school. Yes, okay, So you get drafted by the Orioles. And at what point, when you're in the minor leagues all the players played in the minor leagues for a while, did you realize you weren't just going to be an average player, you were really going to be a super player or did you not realize that in the beginning.
Now I was seventeen. I was a second round draft pick by the Orioles. It turned to eighteen at the end of the summer, and so it was my birthday's August twenty fourth, So I was playing a couple of months before my eighteenth birthday. And when I first went away to play pro ball, you were pretty big fish in a small pond in high school. You thought you were pretty good, and then you go and all of a sudden, you're part of a team and you look around and no longer you're not the big fish anymore.
There was one short stop by the name of Bob Bonner that came out of Texas A and M. He was like a sixth round pick for US that year, and I was taking ground balls and doing stuff with him, and he clearly was light years ahead of me. He had a better arm, he could field the ball better, he was quicker on the transfer, and I kept looking at him, going, I'm never going to play. You know,
this guy's too good. I'm not that good. And they moved him immediately to Double A, so that which opened up the spot for me, and then I got my feet on the ground. I started playing pretty well and started hit a couple of home runs in my next year, and then I got to Double A and then I had a breakout season, and in two years I caught Bob Bonner and passed him to the big leagues. So he stayed the same and I got better.
What year did he get into the Hall of Fame?
I think he's a minister in Africa right now.
So, speaking of the Hall of Fame, you were elected with ninety eight point five percent of the vote. Have you ever figured out who that person was that didn't vote for you? I mean, who is this person waiting.
For I've hunted all five of them down. I think that my particular year, I think Marianna Rivera just went in one hundred percent right, the only one of the vote. And in my particular year there was a protest to vote where where five people didn't turn into ballot in that particular year as a protest to the steroid era. They said, well, and so they counted against you.
Did anybody ever come to you and say, look, you're really good, but you could be even better if you take some of these drugs.
They didn't try that, And looking back on it, you could probably see signs in hindsight that players that might have used. But when you're playing, if you're not in this secret society, you don't know. And I didn't know.
So some players they were like one hundred and eighty pounds and then later there are two hundred and fifty pounds. You didn't suspect maybe they were doing something unusual. Yes, you're six foot four and traditionally shortstops were more my height, and when you came along, people didn't want people like me to be short stops anymore. So did you change the game of baseball by saying short stop should be big and better hitters?
Or or is it going back to the.
Old mode of speaking fast and good baseball steelers but not great hitters.
I mean a lot of the shortstops, Derek Jeter being one of them, gives me credit for my success at the position as a bigger shortstop. That gave them opportunities that maybe otherwise they wouldn't have had. But I kind of think, Derek, you would have carved at your own path. But I did move from third to short I signed. I was six two when I came out of high school, and then I had a lake grospur. It almost grew three inches and I put on, you know, five to
eight pounds a year. By the time I got to the Big Legs, I was almost sixty five to twenty and they had put me at third base. But then Earl Weaver had this vision that I could play shortstop and we'd be a better team if I went over to shortstop. So he one day just put me there, and and my success at the position as a bigger guy. Maybe it's like when I'm a basketball fan, I wish I could have been a basketball player, But I remember Magic Johnson changing the thought of a point guard at
six y nine. He's sixty nine, all of a sudden, the advantages he had at the size. I think people started to understand that a bigger guy could play shortstop and second base. And today there's some of the more celebrated positions are contract.
I think your highest compensation level six million dollars a year. Six million dollars a year. That's a good compensation level in those days, for sure, and today for the average person that's a great income. But today there are some players that are making two three four hundred million dollars over here yours one seven hundred million dollars. Do you ever think maybe you should have waited a little bit
longer to play in the major leagues? And do you evergre at the fact that some people are making seven hundred million dollars and they're not likely, you know, be as good as you, So every.
Day I think that, yes, No, it is really interesting is that I had a really good job. You know, I was a baseball player, and you got paid for it, and in the compensation, I was one of the early ones that broke a million a year, and then I got to two million a year, and then and then after the towards the end, you know, I was at six, but then it started going crazy, and you know, I look at it and I remember all the old players that said, you know, I wish that I would have
played in that era. But I think the game evolves the business of the it used to be in baseball. I think we looked, at least I looked at myself as a sportsman. You know, maybe the value of the entertainment was in the collective where you're playing well as a team and you win and that's cool. Then all of a sudden it seemed to step over to I think a lot of players might think that they are
entertainers now. So it's a little bit more than what you do in the field, and it's what maybe your commercials, things you do off the field. I think they see themselves differently.
Do you think that's good to have the games now maybe two hours, twenty minutes or something like that.
Is that making better for the fans?
Or are they saying I want more baseball and I want the game the last longer.
Well, it's better, And I think what they did is they cut out the dead time. At the end of my career, the walk up music started to become popular. The young players kind of liked it, and they would tell them what to do. And sometimes they'd be when the on deck circle and they hadn't played the song yet, and so they'd wait and look upstairs like this until they played the song, and then they'd make their entrance
to the ballpark. The shot clock or the pitch clock that they have now allows the umpire to to gives them an enforceable tool to shape the behavior. There was always a rule that the pitcher had to throw it within twenty seconds of each pitch, but that got away from everybody, and now it's shaped the behavior, and I think the game moves.
When you were playing, it was sometimes said that pittress might put the substances on the baseball, or it was called a spider.
Did you ever see that?
Gaylord Perry was the most famous of all spitballs. He actually wrote a book called Me and the Spinner. So the first time I face him, ball comes in, it sinks a little bit, and then I hit a groundball to shortstop by make another out, and I'm thinking, if
that's that's a spider's that's nothing special. But then I came up with the bases loaded my third time up, and he threw me three pitches that dropped about this far and instruck me out, you know whatever else, and then kind of walked off and shook his head at me, like that's the spider.
I have a grandson who four years old. If he wanted to be a major League baseball player. What's the best advice you would give to a young person? He meets a little young for advice, maybe, but what is a six or eight year old or ten or year old who aspires to be a baseball player?
What should they do?
Well? I think the worst thing you could do is put too much pressure on your kid, you know, like if you want it for him as opposed to him wanting it. You know.
I think father didn't put pressure on you. He was a professional coach.
He didn't know.
I mean, as a matter of fact, I could tell you that because my dad was in professional baseball. He only saw two of my games between the age of eight and eighteen before I go, you know, got drafted in parts of two because he had.
He didn't give you tips or anything or tell you to do this or that.
No, I mean he was a great instructor. I witnessed him instructing other people in the minor league. So I learned through kind of through his instruction everybody else. But he never stood over me and said you got to do You've got to play.
When you're a professional baseball player or a former professional baseball players, famous as you are, people come up and all the time they want autograph selfies and they say, I hate to bother you, but can I bother you with a selfie or an autograph request? What do you say? You say, I'm too busy, or you just do it? Or how do you deal with all that? And when you go to a hotel and you're a major league baseball player, people have all these little kids are trying to get autographs.
How do you deal with all that?
When you get old, they don't do it so much anymore. No, I'm thankful that I still can't believe that I get recognized as readily as I do. And to me, you always keep in mind. And sometimes someone approaching you, they're all nervous and they lose their mind and they say, you know, you're my biggest fan, and I go, I am, but they lose it. But then you have to keep in mind that it's meaningful to them. So at that moment, you know, by signing your name for a little kid
and their eyeballs get all again. They run back to their mom or whatever else and say, look what I got. So you helped that happen. So if you remember the what happens afterwards, you'll focus on you know, and you just manage it and just get through it.
And what was it like the day that you broke the record of Louke Garrick?
There was an enormous fan out pouring, everybody's calling you your nation y TV and you're running around the stadium and so forth.
Was that like the highlight of your life professionally?
I would say there's two moments. I answer that question in two parts. The best feeling I ever had on the baseball field was catching the last out of the World Series forty two years ago, forty two years ago, forty one years ago, nineteen eighty three, little humpback line drive when you catch it. This part of the dream of being a baseball player is to win the World Series. And then now because I caught the last out, that I won the World Series. So that's the best feeling.
Second best feeling, probably the best personal moment was to lap around campdy Yards. I was embarrassed that the game was stopped because the game became official halfway through, and then everybody kept clapping. I kept saying thank you, thank you, and then Bobby Buni and Ralphiel Palmero pushed me out of the line and said, you're gonna have to take a lap around here before we'll never get the game started, and I thought it was a silly idea, so I
went around and started shaking hands. The celebration went from almost fifty thousand down to like one on one, and it was kind of cool that way, and by the time I got come down to third base, I could care less if the game ever started again.
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