A Natural Selection for Hall
As Steroids Taint Baseball, Ripken's Legacy Remains Pure

By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 9, 2007

It would not have seemed possible, as Cal Ripken's baseball career ground to a halt in the summer and fall of 2001, that his legacy could have been any greater. Across the country, fans packed stadiums to say goodbye when Ripken's Baltimore Orioles came to town one last time. The many retrospectives of Ripken's career reminded everyone how The Streak helped save baseball after the players' strike of 1994-95. Ripken was a symbol of all that was good about that game, and in 2001 it seemed to be all good.

That year, baseball was at the pinnacle of its unprecedented home run binge. Only three years earlier, in the same year Ripken's record streak of 2,632 consecutive games played ended, Mark McGwire had shattered Roger Maris's single-season home run record by slugging 70. In 2001, Barry Bonds was on his way to a mind-boggling 73. But there was still room to appreciate the blue-collar career of Ripken, whose 431 homers and 3,184 hits were more a testament to hard work, durability and longevity than to sheer talent or jaw-dropping power.

However, in the five and a half years since Ripken's retirement -- as well as that of McGwire, who also walked away following the 2001 season -- much has been learned about the steroid use that, it is now widely believed, fueled the great home run surge of 1998-2001, and the great home run seasons of McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Bonds.

The effect of that knowledge has been to enhance Ripken's playing legacy, even when such an enhancement seemed impossible or unnecessary, while greatly diminishing that of McGwire -- the former presumably as clean as they come, the latter presumably not. It is an effect that is expected to come into clearer focus this afternoon when the results of voting for this year's class of the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced.

"It's a sad commentary on what has been going on in baseball," said former commissioner of baseball Fay Vincent. "It's not so much a reflection on Cal as it is an indictment of those who used steroids. Cal's record didn't change in those five years. But the knowledge of what went on diminished the accomplishments of others, and by extension it made Cal's accomplishments seem all that more impressive."

Ripken and longtime San Diego Padres outfielder Tony Gwynn -- two players who spent their entire careers in their respective home towns, gaining universal admiration as both great players and role models -- are expected to gain election to the Hall of Fame by near-unanimous margins in balloting by 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Tom Seaver, in 1992, came closest to unanimous election; that year, he was named on 425 of the 430 ballots (98.84). This year, approximately 575 ballots went out.

One thing that is certain, however, is that neither Ripken nor Gwynn will be elected unanimously -- since one voter, Paul Ladewski of the (Ill.) Daily Southtown, wrote in a column published yesterday that he had submitted a blank ballot, intending it as a symbolic message that voters do not have enough information about the impact of steroids on the game during that era to judge individual players.

Meantime, McGwire, the first test case of the so-called Steroid Era, is expected to fall well short of the 75 percent threshold necessary for election. In November, an Associated Press poll of Hall of Fame voters found that only about 25 percent voted for McGwire. The story of McGwire's exclusion is almost certain to overshadow the election of Ripken and Gwynn.

"I honestly believe history will judge us all in some way," Ripken said last month during baseball's winter meetings. "If you believe that, and you're content with the truth coming out, whether your judgment day is now or 50 years from now, it doesn't matter.

"A lot of people say, 'Do your 431 home runs pale in comparison to some of these inflated numbers?' And I honestly don't get into comparing my numbers. It's not a matter of measuring your numbers against somebody else's. It's more about your contribution to the game, your legacy to the game."

Ripken's legacy to baseball is unlike that of anyone else, certainly anyone of his own generation and perhaps of any other. It is a legacy that goes beyond his on-field accomplishments -- the two MVP awards, the 1982 rookie of the year award, the two Gold Gloves, the 19 consecutive all-star appearances or even the 2,632 consecutive games -- and beyond the fact he is credited with redefining the shortstop position, ushering in an era of bigger, powerful shortstops such as Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter.

If one accepts the notion that Ripken's breaking of Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games-played streak on Sept. 6, 1995 saved baseball by reclaiming fans who had sworn off the game after the strike that led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, one must also give Ripken at least a portion of the credit for the unprecedented economic health of the game today, which includes record revenues of $5.2 billion in 2006 and a flurry of eight- and nine-figure contracts signed by free agents this winter.

"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.