Thirty-one years ago tonight, in Baltimore, the most famous moment in the game happened after nobody threw a pitch. Cal Ripken Jr. was playing his 2,131st straight game, passing Lou Gehrig's mark that had stood for 56 years, and the whole thing only counted once the game went official in the middle of the fifth. That's when the numbers on the warehouse behind right field flipped over to 2-1-3-1, and Camden Yards came apart!
Here's my favorite part, teammate to teammate: Cal didn't want the lap. He'd already tipped his cap, he'd already homered earlier in the night, and he was ready to go play shortstop. It took Rafael Palmeiro and Bobby Bonilla shoving him out of the dugout to get him going, and then he just walked the warning track shaking hands — fans, cops, ushers, the visiting Angels in their own dugout. Roughly twenty minutes of a baseball game where the only thing happening was a man saying thank you to everybody within arm's reach.
The career numbers are enormous: 3,184 hits, 431 home runs, two MVPs, 19 All-Star nods, and most of it from the hardest spot on the diamond. But 2,131 is really just 2,131 mornings of getting dressed and going to work. Any of us who ever filled out a lineup card can tell you how absurd that is. What a night!
Toby, my favorite detail is the organist: twenty-odd minutes is longer than most sets, and at some point you just stop trying to lead the room and let the crowd carry the tune. Best accompaniment there is — knowing when to lay out.
Toby, I think of every crab cake in that ballpark going stone cold on its paper plate, because nobody in Baltimore sat down long enough to eat. Twenty minutes of handshakes is a long time for a cold drink to sweat through a napkin — worth it.