Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr., nicknamed "The Iron Man", is an American former baseball shortstop and third baseman who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Baltimore Orioles (1981–2001). One of his position's most offensively productive players, Ripken compiled 3, 184 hits, 431 home runs, and 1, 695 runs batted in during his career.
Background
Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr. was born on August 24, 1960, in the small Maryland town of Havre de Grace, to Calvin Sr. and Viola Ripkin. He has German, English, and Irish ancestry.
His father had been with the Baltimore Orioles baseball team as a minor league catcher since 1957. After a shoulder injury dashed his hopes of a major league career, the elder Ripken stayed on with the club as a coach and manager at both the minor and major league level. During the summers, the family would leave Aberdeen, Maryland, about thirty miles north of Baltimore, and travel with Cal Sr. during the baseball season. Even with all of the traveling alongside his father, Cal Jr. never saw much of him because of the long hours he put in at the ball park. He soon came to the conclusion that the only way he would be able to see his father was if he played baseball.
Education
Ripken and his brother Billy attended Aberdeen High School.
In 1976, Ripken's father was promoted to a coaching position with the Orioles in Baltimore. Cal Jr. was a constant presence, pitching and hitting during batting practices, retrieving balls, getting advice from major league stars like Brooks Robinson, and dreaming of becoming a Baltimore Oriole.
In high school Ripken made the varsity (a school's main team which is usually made up of upperclassmen) baseball team as a freshman. Ripken played in the Mickey Mantle World Series in Texas in 1977 and won the Harford County batting title with an amazing 2.492 batting average (the percent of time a baseball player gets a hit) his senior year. His high school team was crowned state Class A champions in 1978 and, soon after, Ripken was selected by the Orioles in the second round of the annual baseball draft.
Ripken was employed by the Orioles amateur-league team in Bluefield, West Virginia, where he decided to play shortstop instead of pitcher. He reasoned that if he failed as a shortstop, he could instead try out as a pitcher. His first season with the Orioles organization was not an amazing success, he had a mediocre .264 batting average and led the league in errors with 33. Soon after, he was moved to the Oriole's Florida Instructional League team in Miami and improved to a .303 batting average.
At the end of the 1979 season, he was promoted to a spot on the Oriole's AA team in Charlotte, North Carolina and had a .180 batting average after only 61 at-bats. In 1980, he had a .276 batting average and hit 25 home runs after hitting only eight in his previous two seasons. Behind this performance, he was named the Southern League's all-star and was soon moved up the ladder again, this time to the Oriole's AAA team in Rochester, New York in 1981. He continued to develop in Rochester, with a batting average of .288 and 23 home runs, before being called up to the Orioles in August of 1981.
Ripken had a batting average of only .128 in 39 at-bats during his first season with the Orioles, but his second season would prove to be a watershed. The Orioles had traded former third baseman Doug DeCinces, who had been with the club since 1977, to the California Angels believing that third base would be Ripken's ultimate spot on the team. Although he had started out switching back and forth between third base and shortstop, Oriole manager Earl Weaver placed Ripken at third base to start his second season. After hitting a home run during his first at-bat his second season, Ripken's performance declined to a mere .117 batting average.
After consulting his father and future baseball hall of fame star Reggie Jackson, Ripken's performance improved to a .264 batting average with 28 home runs and he was selected as the American League's Rookie of the Year. "(Reggie Jackson) told me to just be myself and everything would fall into place…. After that, everything seemed to click, " Ripken told the Sporting News. With the club struggling during the playoff race at the end of the 1982 season, Ripken was moved to shortstop, a position many thought him too young and too tall, at six-feet-four-inches, to play effectively. The Orioles eventually lost the eastern division championship to the Milwaukee Brewers, but Ripken had played well and Jackson's advice had worked. Ripken would continue to play shortstop until 1996 before moving back to third base.
In 1983, with Ripken firmly in place and comfortable, he helped the Orioles win the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. For his efforts he was voted the American League's most valuable player for the series and the Sporting News player of the year. Earlier that year, he also helped captain the American League all-star team to its first victory since 1971 over the National League.
In 1984, Ripken signed a new four-year contract, but even with going on to set record after record, his team finished only in fifth place. In 1985, the Orioles finished in fourth place, but Ripken had a respectable .282 batting average. In 1986, the Orioles finished last in their division, the first time this had happened in team history. In response the team fired their manager and hired Ripken, Sr.
At the beginning of the 1987 season, there were three Ripkens in the Orioles training camp, Cal, Sr. and Jr. and Billy, Cal, Jr.'s younger brother, who would play second base. Ripken had only a .252 batting average that year but led American League short stops in assists and later that year signed a new one-year contract worth $1.75 million. At the end of the 1987 season, Ripken married his longtime girlfriend, Kelly Greer. During the 1988 season, Ripken's father was fired as the Orioles had the worst record in baseball history. However, Ripken was seen by fans and management as a player the team could not afford to be without, and he soon signed a new four year contract worth $8.4 million.
During the 1989 season, Ripken was slowly taking over as the team's leader, as Eddie Murray, who had been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, was no longer there. Despite losing the divisional title to the Toronto Blue Jays, Ripken committed only eight errors and hit 21 home runs. This made him the first shortstop to have eight 20-homer seasons. On June 12, 1990, Ripken moved into second place for the record of most consecutive games played as he appeared in his 1, 308th consecutive game, surpassing Everett Scott's mark. Ripken also broke Scott's record for the most games played in one position. "It wasn't a goal coming to the big leagues that I wouldn't miss a game, " Ripken told the New York Times. "You just try to prepare yourself each and every day and go there. Eight years later, it had evolved into this."
Unfortunately, Ripken's batting average had declined every year since 1983 and many wondered if his insistence to play every game was wearing him down. But, his defensive play was improving and in the 1990 season, he made only three errors. He also set a record for shortstops by playing 95 games without committing an error. In 1990, the Orioles finished only in fifth place, but Ripken continued to hit over 20 home runs.
The opening of the 1992 season saw Ripken bogged down in contract talks with Orioles management. Although he continued to play, his batting average dropped dramatically from the previous year. The fans showed their support and empathy by making him the leading vote-getter in the all-star balloting. On his thirty-second birthday, the talks with management were resolved and Ripken signed the richest deal in baseball history with a five-year contract worth $30.5 million. The deal improved his playing, as he had a batting average of .300 for the 1993 season and in 1994 surpassed Brooks Robinson as the all-time Orioles run-scorer.
On September 6, 1995, Ripken became baseball's "Iron Man" as he surpassed Lou Gehrig's all-time consecutive games played record of 2, 130. He had not missed a game since May 30, 1982 and when the game became official in the fifth inning, the capacity crowd at Baltimore's Camden Yards roared its approval. During a speech after the milestone game, Ripken underplayed his achievement and showed the humility that had become his trademark.
On May 29, 1996, Ripken hit his 334th home run for first-place on the Orioles all-time list. On June 14, 1996, he played in his 2, 216th consecutive game. This mark surpassed the record of Sachio Kinugasa of the Hiroshima Carp of Japan's Central League and gave Ripken the world record. After moving to third base, he helped lead the Orioles into the playoffs for the 1997 season.
Ripken is signed to a contract extension to play for the Orioles through the 1999 season. Ripken had the highest batting average of his career, at .340. Although he was injured at both the beginning and the end of the 1999 season and also mourned the loss of his father and former coach Cal Ripken Sr. only a few days before 1999's opening game, he hit 18 homers in 332 at-bats (one HR every 18.4 AB's). He had the best individual game of his career, going 6 for 6 with 2 home runs off John Smoltz and tying a club record with 13 total bases against the Atlanta Braves on June 13. On September 3, he hit the 400th home run of his career against Rolando Arrojo of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
Ripken's 1999 season ended early due to injury when he was only nine hits away from joining the 3,000 hit club. He achieved the milestone early in the 2000 season in an April game against the Twins at the Metrodome when he singled off reliever Héctor Carrasco. Ripken had a good night at the plate, recording three hits, the third of which was the milestone. Ripken missed all of July and August with a back injury. He was selected to the All-Star Game but sat out due to the injury, marking the first All-Star Game that he missed since his rookie season. In 83 games, Ripken batted .256 (his lowest total since 1992) with 15 home runs and 56 RBIs.
In June 2001, Ripken announced he would retire at the end of the season. He was voted the starting third baseman in the All-Star Game at Seattle's Safeco Field on July 10, 2001. In a tribute to Ripken's achievements and stature in the game, shortstop Alex Rodriguez (unknowingly foreshadowing his own future) insisted on exchanging positions with third baseman Ripken for the first inning, so that Ripken could play shortstop as he had for most of his career. That move allowed Ripken to claim the record of most MLB All-Star Game appearances at shortstop. In the third inning, Ripken made his first plate appearance and was greeted with a standing ovation. Ripken then homered off the first pitch from Chan Ho Park.
The Orioles planned to retire Ripken's #8 in a ceremony before the final home game of the 2001 season, in late September. Ripken's final game was originally set to be played at Yankee Stadium; however, the September 11, 2001 attacks led to the postponement of a week's worth of games. The games missed were added onto the end of the season's schedule. Since all the games the Orioles missed were at home, this changed the location of Ripken's final game to Oriole Park, much to the delight of Orioles fans. On October 6, Ripken ended his career in the on-deck circle in the bottom of the ninth inning. Ripken was healthier in his final season than he had been over his last two, as he appeared in 128 games. He batted a career-low .239 with 14 home runs and 68 RBIs.
Quotations:
"You gotta play as many games as you can, " he told Ralph Wiley in a 1990 Sports Illustrated interview.
"Since there are so many possible plays, you can't get it all unless you're there every day. You play games."
"Get in the game. Do the best you can. Try to make a contribution. Learn from today. Apply it to tomorrow."
"Leadership isn't about simply being in charge and treating your people like soldiers and barking orders. Leadership is sharing your knowledge and your direction so that others grow and reach their potential."
"You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball."
"If you do a job, do it right or there is no point."
"I've felt some great feelings on the baseball field... in front of 50,000 people and millions on TV... but the feeling you get when you give a kid a chance, that is a hundred times greater than that feeling."
"As long as I can compete, I won't quit."
"All I really try and do is live up to my potential and do as well as I possibly could and to bring to the ballpark each and every day a good effort and do the best that I could each and every day."
"A lot of people think I had such a rosy career, but I wanted to identify that one of the things that helps you have a long career is learning how to deal with adversity, how to get past it. Once I learned how to get through that, others things didn't seem so hard."
"Stubbornness usually is considered a negative; but I think that trait has been a positive for me."
"Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention."
"I was always compared to the Energizer Bunny in my consecutive game streak because every day I showed up and went to work and they said he keeps going and going and going, but a lot of people do that."
"When things happen to you in the worst way, you live with it, you go over it, you think, 'What else could I have done?"
"So many good things have happened to me in the game of baseball. When I do allow myself a chance to think about it, it's almost like a storybook career. You feel so blessed to have been able to compete this long."
"I always thought being a gamer and someone who had a sense of responsibility to the game and to my teammates was the honorable thing."
"I love baseball. The game allowed me the influence to impact kids in a positive way. This gives me a chance to talk to some social issues."
"We consider ourselves the luckiest fans on the face of the Earth."
Personality
The perseverance, endurance and everyday work ethic that Ripken has exhibited throughout his 17 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles has made him one of the most popular professional athletes in all of sports.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
Baseball
Athletes
Ripken Jr. idolized a league player, Doug DeCinces who he would one day replace in the Orioles line-up.
Connections
Ripken married the former Kelly Geer at Towson United Methodist Church on Friday, November 13, 1987. They have a daughter, Rachel, and a son, Ryan. Ryan, also a baseball player, was drafted by the Orioles in the 20th round of Major League Baseball's 2012 amateur draft. However, he chose to attend college instead, beginning his freshman year at the University of South Carolina in 2012. He transferred to Indian River Community College and was drafted in the 15th round of the Major League Baseball's 2014 amateur draft by the Washington Nationals. After being released by the Nationals in March 2017, he signed with the Orioles and was assigned to the Aberdeen Ironbirds, which were owned by his father and played at a stadium that bore his name. It was reported on April 28, 2016, that Ripken and his wife Kelly had divorced after a one-year separation.