The Day Cal Ripken Saved MLB from Itself

Why Cal's record should be important for all of us

Certainly, there are other huge moments in baseball history, but Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025 marked the 30^th anniversary of the day Cal Ripken Jr. did his part to restore baseball’s damaged reputation, coming out of the disastrous MLB strike of 1994.

That was the important day, back in 1995, on which Ripken played his 2,131^st consecutive game, eclipsing the seen-as-unbeatable mark of consistency and endurance set by the Yankees’ Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig, six decades earlier.

For Cal, it was a steak that had begun on May 30, 1982 against the Blue Jays. It eventually extended to 2,632 straight, before he sat out a game, and while we all have warts and skeletons and there have been some attempts to diminish Ripken as a true sports hero, his feat remains iconic and symbolic in its importance to MLB.

The historic Ripken moment that day only became official at the end of the fifth inning of an otherwise meaningless September game against the Angels at Camden Yards. Why the fifth inning? In setting up the celebration, there was always the chance of rain that would have spoiled the event if they tried to stage it pre-game.

The game’s 30-minute pause after five frames may sound awkward, but, for those on hand, including both teams, it was far from that. In fact, the game had been chosen to be televised nationally in the States on ESPN, with Chris Berman and Buck Martinez. It’s the only time a broadcast team has won a sports Emmy for saying nothing, as Boomer and Buck let the moment speak for itself. It was sublime and brilliant.

Ripken, at first, was swarmed by teammates and family, then he slowly circled the field on the warning track, high-fiving and acknowledging the fans. He was presented with a huge selection of gifts, including an engraved rock (?).

Recall that emerging from the disastrous strike of 1994, the sport had been in freefall with its fans. Many disillusioned lifers said they were never going back and a pox on both their houses. But, this Ripken, blue collar, show-up-for-work-every-day accomplishment transformed him into the Pied Piper of anger leading much of the lingering fan resentment away from the ballparks, bringing needed focus to attributes with which everyday working stiffs could identify. This moment still stands up 30 years later, while other mouth-to-mouth attempts at horsehide rescuscitation have been outed as pretenders, especially the once-touted and highly acclaimed, steroid-fuelled home run race of ’98, forever shrouded in doubt and disgrace.

Back to ‘95, it remains one of my favourite assignments in 25 years as a sports columnist. It was a time when the Toronto Star prided itself on covering huge sporting events, with live reporting, so as the newspaper’s baseball columnist I had been camped out for two days in Baltimore and was present for this important bit of history. I even drove down to his nearby hometown of Havre de Grace, chatting with the locals in cafes and local businesses about their memories of the Ripken family. Cal Jr. and younger brother Billy both played in the majors, while Cal Sr. was an O’s lifer with much time as a major-league coach and briefly as manager.

Buck Martinez and I speak fondly of that shared moment in baseball history. Our thoughts are an interesting part of an earlier Griff’s Conversation, I conducted with the Jays beloved broadcaster that can be found in the archives of GriffsthePitch.com.

But jumping forward, the moment I will focus on is Cal’s final game in Toronto, Sept. 20, 2001. There was a larger than normal media group gathered at the Iron Bird’s locker in the visitor’s clubhouse at Rogers Centre following Baltimore’s 12-6 win. What he did on the field that particular day was unimportant. As reporters, we were there to talk about his amazing career about to end, his memories of Toronto, his place in baseball history and, most especially, the moment on Sept. 6, 1995, when he broke the unbreakable record of Lou Gehrig.

Placing this date, this game, in historical perspective, it is dwarfed by other realities. The Twin Towers had fallen just nine days earlier and MLB was resuming its schedule in a daze, with the missing week of games being thrown in at the end. Arizona would go on to win the World Series.

So, yes, there were bigger, more important things in the world. It is understood that for Ripken, whose consecutive games record was the main thrust of this media scrum, this was not as meaningful as it was to Jays media. But it was still the end of an era.

After the cliched questions had wound down and the media horde had dispersed, I was exiting at the door outside the clubhouse, ready to go upstairs and write. But I quickly turned around and headed back inside. Cal was in a chair bending down to remove his socks. I touched his shoulder and he looked up, probably anticipating another softball question.

“Cal, I have two sons that both play baseball and I just wanted to thank you for being a great example for them as they will grow up. Thank you for showing up every day and serving as a role model for them with a work ethic and responsibility that they can look up to and emulate. Understand how much we all appreciate you” I turned and left without waiting for a response.

There is one geographic fact that has always made me smile, regarding Cal Ripken Jr. It should be noted that the Susquehanna River begins with its headwaters in Otsego Lake at Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall-of-Fame, and fittingly empties into Chesapeake Bay at Havre-de-Grace, Maryland, where Cal was born. Coincidence? Maybe, but also wonderful trivia…and isn’t that what baseball is all about.