A Natural Selection for Hall

Cal Ripken's numbers speak for themselves: 431 homers, 3,184 hits and 2,632 consecutive games played. (AP File Photo)

"We all owe him a great debt of gratitude," Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig said. "I remember standing in the press box [at Oriole Park at Camden Yards] that night -- September 6, 1995 -- and watching Ripken do his lap around the field. And I really believe we're in the Golden Era of baseball, a remarkable renaissance. And it started that night with Cal Ripken Jr. It was not only that he broke Gehrig's record, or that he was a great player. But he served as a symbol of everything a professional athlete, or for that matter a human being, should be."

Selig declined to answer a question regarding the antithetical relationship between Ripken's legacy and McGwire's, but he said the focus on McGwire's presumably doomed candidacy should not detract from the celebration of Ripken's career.

"As far as I'm concerned," Selig said, "Cal's career can't be besmirched by anyone or anything."

To hear people speak of Ripken is to realize his legacy, at least in some ways, transcends sports to become part of the nation's cultural fabric. Whether fair or not, accurate or not, healthy or not, people see in him some ideal, some model of human perfection. It is the same way people of a certain generation revere Joe DiMaggio, and another generation reveres Muhammad Ali. Ripken "has protected his public position the way DiMaggio and Henry Aaron and just a handful of others have done, and that's rare," Vincent said. "These are people who were terrific players, but who also lived straight and clean lives. . . . He's a very special human being."

"There was something different about Cal," said longtime Orioles teammate Brady Anderson. "He was an intellectual guy, and he was a person of integrity. He seems to have a code in life where it's important for him to do the right thing. And part of that was playing every day. No kid ever came to an Orioles game and didn't get to see Cal Ripken play that day."

Another part of that code was remaining in Baltimore. Although Ripken was paid handsomely during his career (making nearly $70 million in salary), he was never the highest-paid player in the game and, according to Baseball-reference.com, only seven times in 21 years was he even ranked among the top 10.

Ron Shapiro, Ripken's longtime agent, said there was one time, in 1992, when Ripken could have landed the biggest contract in the game, had he been willing to leave the Orioles.

"I presented him options that clearly would have made him the highest-paid player in the game," Shapiro said, "but Cal chose not to follow that path. I'd say he probably left $10 million on the table -- which, in today's dollars, could be like $50 million -- by making that decision. But loyalty to one organization was something that was important to him."

Part of the Ripken legacy can be attributed to sheer luck. Ripken, primarily a third baseman, had no idea then-Orioles manager Earl Weaver was going to move him to shortstop permanently in 1982, a move that eventually created a large part of the Ripken legacy -- that of redefining the shortstop position, making it the dominion of big, offensive-minded players, as opposed to smaller, more agile glove-men.

"To be honest, I didn't think he should've ever played shortstop," said Pat Gillick, the Orioles' general manager from 1995 to '98, who had a hand in ultimately switching Ripken back to third base in 1997. "I think he should have been a third baseman his whole career. Earl always had his own ideas."

Likewise, Ripken might never have gotten credit for helping save baseball if Game No. 2,131 -- the one that broke Gehrig's record, as represented memorably in giant numbers on the side of the warehouse at Camden Yards -- had not come during the first season back after the strike. And had there been no strike, the game might not have needed saving.

"The night Cal broke the record was really the first kind of communal baseball moment where fans everywhere said, 'This reminds me of why I love the game,' " said NBC and HBO broadcaster Bob Costas, the author of "Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball." "It may not have healed all the wounds, but as Bud Selig says, if you mark the beginning of the road to recovery, that was it."

But luck was only part of it. To become a hero of this magnitude, it required precisely the right person. It required someone with Ripken's temperament and values, as well as his talent. It required someone who signed autographs tirelessly, someone in whom people saw their own values and dreams, someone whose image became synonymous with integrity, and someone who protected that image diligently.

"It was the perfect timing," Anderson said, "and the perfect guy."

The irony of Ripken's ascension to the Hall of Fame in the Class of 2007, a class that most likely would have included McGwire had the steroid scandal never occurred, is that, just as in 1995, it comes at a point when baseball is emerging from yet another dark period -- that of the Steroid Era -- and is crying out for another antidote.

By the time the induction ceremony rolls around, on July 29 in Cooperstown, N.Y., Bonds may be approaching, or may have already passed, Aaron's all-time career record of 755 homers, and undoubtedly by then there will have been new revelations about steroids in the game, the story that seemingly never ends.

And that's when Ripken, this time wearing a suit and tie, will move to the dais, surrounded by his fellow Hall of Famers, and once again our nation will turn its lonely eyes to him.