cal and me
or more appropriately, Cal and I - but hey who's keeping track?
I am going to Cooperstown, NY this weekend to see Cal Ripken Jr. be inducted into the hall of fame and I feel like this is something that I have known about my whole life and now it is coming to fruition. I am lucky enough to have some pretty cool Cal Ripken memories and tonight I feel like sharing a few.
I think my earliest memories of the Orioles and Cal in particular revolve around the 1983 World Series championship over the Phillies. I really have no conscious memory of the event but I can remember people talking about those Orioles with an air of excitement that made me a fan before I really knew what baseball and the Orioles were all about - all I knew was that the O's were good and something to be excited about. I mean why not - they seemed to make everyone around me happy? My second early memory was meeting "The Bird" - yeah just a guy in the mascot costume but for a 5 year old it was a pretty big deal. I remember my Mom and Dad taking me to the grand opening of some store where The Bird would be present and signing autographs - that picture remains a treasured possession to this day. Playing little league ball kind of had a negative impact on my impression of baseball for a while - mostly because I was not a good hitter. Fielding- no prob - base running - check - hitting - nope. It didn't help either that my coach one year was Stan White (former Baltimore Colt living vicariously through his kids) who had all kinds of "helpful advice" that he was ready to share in his own way about my game - but I digress.
One summer I was really sick - nothing worse than a summer flu, right? My Dad bought me a Sony Walkman - no cassette player just an AM/FM radio. I was probably 8 or 9 and I listened to every single Orioles game on that radio. I would often fall asleep with the headphones on my ears and wake up with stiff neck because of it. I must have gone through a crate of batteries that summer listening to ball games and if they had the night off the phone in request show or Forgotten 45's on WQSR - great show that I miss terribly. But what was better for me was listening to Fred Manfra, John Miller and Chuck Thompson call O's games - life was good. I had lots of favorite players on those teams - Bob Milacki, Randy Milligan, Chris Hoiles, Brady Anderson - but Cal was always there. I didn't need to root extra hard for Cal because I knew that he would be there always and play his hardest and do right by the team and the uniform.
I remember the night when Cal hit #3000. It was freshman year in college and thankfully one of my suitemates was an O's fan - thank you Ian - and we had the game against the Twins on tv. I ran out to get something to eat or maybe a soda and as I was walking down the hall I heard Vik call out that Cal was up to bat. I sprinted the rest of the way just in time to see the bat strike the ball and it land in the outfield of the Metrodome. You've probably noticed that I haven't mentioned anything about The Streak. Well - it's something that everyone knows about Cal and that is great, really. But this is about Cal and me.
Why does Cal mean so much to me? Well it began with unconscious memories of baseball and Cal and then all of the years he was with the O's - his entire career. But something else was that he was one of us. Not because he wore the uniform but because in the rarest of occurrences in pro sports, a player got to play for his home town team and at that spend his entire career there. When Cal took the field in an Orioles uniform - he represented this town in a way that no other person on that team could - as one of us in the truest sense. He grew up eating crabs, listening to WBAL, shopping at Mars and doing other ordinary Baltimore things that we rarely even think about as we do them. They define us and give us a sense of place and now we can say that Cal is one of those things that define us. Pretty cool.
My closest memory of Cal is from a few years ago when I got to shake the great man's hand. He was being inducted into the Orioles own Hall of Fame and through friend Kevin I scored tickets right at the wall. After the ceremonies he came by to shake a few hands and I reached out and I shook his hand. The hand that for 21 years played every day - over 3000 hits, 400 home runs and 2632 consecutive games. It was a moment that I will take with me for the rest of my life - to touch greatness to be in its presence but also to feel like I knew him as a man and not just a marble statue. He is after all, a lot like me and a lot like us.
What inspired this sappy post of paternal baseball memories of Cal Ripken? I was watching tv and waiting for a great new show to come on "Simon Schama's Power of Art". So far they have been great and a new one was airing tonight. Instead I got drawn in by Cal appearing on QVC selling some of his hall of fame items. I sat there enthralled by the moment. Here was Cal sitting in a ballpark that he built and named after his Dad. I never would have imagined it. He sat there telling stories to the audience and was admittedly nervous about the whole thing but thankful that he could take his mind off of his meeting with destiny this Sunday in Cooperstown. Several people called in and were on the verge of tears telling Cal what he meant to them and I watched his eyes and his face and could see that he was really just moved to hear what these folks had to say - and so was I. To me, Cal represents the best things about Baltimore and about baseball. I see in him greatness but also humanity and a humility that is all but absent among today's sports stars. Michael Vick barely qualifies as human compared to Cal. I can't imagine how hard it is to be him and to have to live up to so many expectations but it would seem he has a pretty good handle on it. I think though why I feel so strongly connected to Cal is that after Johnny U died, I made it a point to take a moment to get as close to that greatness as I could. I've mentioned in the past how I often just missed Johnny U or saw him and let him alone - I feel now that I was foolish because he of all people, like Cal deeply cared for his fans and from what others have told me would have been pleased to meet another fan. We are very lucky here in Baltimore to have such greatness be around us all the time. Whether it was Johnny Unitas shopping at Cohen's or seeing Cal at the Hunt Valley WalMart - sometimes you just can't beat this town.
See you in Cooperstown, Cal.
