Date: Fri 01-Sep-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Kim-Harmon-Column-Ripken

Full Text:

The Death Of A Baseball Legend

Kim Harmon/On Sports

The Death Of A

Baseball Legend

Cal Ripken is little more than a week away from doing something unimaginable .

. . something un think able, if you listen to the idiots raising their hackles

about all of this Á and that is: break Lou Gehrig's half-century-old record of

2,130 consecutive games played.

It saddens me, a baseball fan, to think that Ripken, whose love of the game

and whose work ethic should be emulated and admired, not scorned, will be seen

by many to be a villain when the dawn cracks on September 7.

Why? Well, some say Ripken's breaking of the record would be an insult, a

harsh slap in the face to those people who suffer from amyotrophic lateral

sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's Disease. Some say those people will be losing their

one true hero, a man who faced the onset of a debilitating illness with enough

courage for a dozen men.

Some also say Ripken's breaking of the record would kill the legend of Lou

Gehrig, push it away into some dark closet somewhere where people can finally

forget about it, as if the heritage and history of the game of baseball meant

nothing at all to us.

I used to think a little bit like that. I used to think that it would be nice

for Ripken to honor the memory of Gehrig by tying the record and then sitting

out the next night. Then I began to think about the awesomeness of the feat,

the sheer improbability of it all (consider this: the next longest active

streak in the majors is owned by Chicago White Sox first baseman Frank Thomas,

who has played in a little over 220 consecutive games), and then I began to

realize that Ripken wouldn't be insulting Gehrig by breaking his record, only

paying homage to him and holding his memory up to the light for the American

baseball fan to truly see.

Think about it. Fifteen years ago, before Ripken was a rookie in the league,

Gehrig's mark was nothing more than four numbers in a record-book. Alongside

Hank Aaron's 755 homers and Ty Cobb's .367 career average and Pete Rose's

4,256 hits and Cy Young's 511 victories, Gehrig's record of 2,130 was nothing

more than an inconceivable number without any true handles that people could

grasp and understand.

Thirteen years - which is how long this streak has lasted - is a long time if

you play baseball 162 times a year, year in and year out. With the way the

game is today, with the way the players are and the way they play the game,

with the way the game is managed and orchestrated by the guys in the suits and

white collars, it is hard to grasp something unfathomable like playing for 13

years straight. Players take a day off if they are tired or have a cold or

have a blister. Players take a day off if they are in the middle of an

0-for-14 slump. Players sit in contract disputes. And players sit if they are

hurt. For someone to actually make it through 13 seasons - in essence,

considering strikes in 1982 and 1994 pushed the record-breaking date to late

1995 - of baseball without breaking a hand or straining a hamstring or pulling

some muscles in the back is incomprehensible, even considering the static,

non-contact nature of the game.

Yes, there are some people who are not giving Cal Ripken - one of the most

dependable shortstops in the history of the game, who has a .278 average

spanning The Streak - credit for having made it this far. They say he is

stupid for not taking a day off, that, in the past, he has hurt the team by

his Streak.

It is cynicism like that that has warped the fabric of baseball and made it

what it is today - with guys refusing to leg out fly balls, and other guys

saying, " I'm out there every day. I'm not going to back up on every fly ball,

" after a misjudged fly ball leads into an inside-the-park homer, and still

other guys refusing to report to camp unless their perfectly valid contract is

renegotiated for a higher salary.

Do you think Cal Ripken is playing baseball purely for the money? If he was,

The Streak would have been over 1,500 games ago and none of us would be

writing about it today. Ripken is playing baseball because he loves to play

baseball and if we would simply see that one fact alone and forget about

everything else, then maybe we would be able see that quality of his in a lot

of the other players playing today and maybe we would have a chance to shed

some of the contempt we have for the game and return it to its true place in

our hearts.

No game cherishes its history more than baseball. Basketball, football, hockey

- anything more than a few years old gets pushed aside, relegated to the attic

of our minds and forgotten. But baseball will always remember Lou Gehrig, Babe

Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Christy Mathewson . . . no

matter what happens and no matter whose records are broken.

And if you think Lou Gehrig's legend dies on September 6, then you truly don't

understand The Game.