Reluctantly, Ripken Follows in Gehrig's Footsteps
By William Gildea
Washington Post Staff Writer
July 25, 1993
There's no getting away from it. Cal Ripken cannot break Lou Gehrig's consecutive-game streak of 2,130 until June 1995. But as long as he plays every day, Ripken cannot escape the mounting pressure.
Ripken began playing in every game starting in 1983. He's scheduled to play in number 1,834 this afternoon. As a result, it's now hard for him to avoid:
Cover stories about himself, such as USA Today's current issue of"Baseball Weekly"in sidewalk newspaper boxes:"The Streak: Why Ripken Won't Give it a Rest";
Television interviews mentioning him and Gehrig, such as one recently with Bob Feller, who doesn't believe Ripken will break The Streak;
Radio talk, if he isn't careful which station he listens to;
Headlines, such as"Iron Cal,""The Iron Man Feels Weight,""Misery Is One Burdensome Streak Ripken Could Stand to Sit Out."
Gehrig, in contrast, never knew such pressure. By most accounts, he found out in 1933 that he could set a record when he was just 50-some games short of the consecutive-game mark. Consider the quaint account by Frank Graham in"Lou Gehrig: A Quiet Hero."The sportswriter Dan Daniel cheerily breaks the news to a totally surprised Gehrig:
"'Do you know how many games you have played in a row?'
"Lou shook his head.
"'No, I don't, Dan. Come to think of it, it must run up in the hundreds somewhere. I just never ... '"
"' ... Roughly, it's about 1,250. And do you realize that Scotty's record'"-- that's Everett Scott --"'is only 1,307 -- and that you will break that record before this season is over?'
"Lou was amazed.
"'Gosh!' he said. 'Why, I never thought of that. ... I had no idea. ... You must be right, Dan.'"
The story is similar in the latest Gehrig biography, by Ray Robinson,"Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig in His Time. "Robinson writes: "Due to Daniel's detective work, the subject of Lou's durability at last became public property. "Robinson reports that Scott's eight-year-old record, set from June 1916 to May 1925, ended when Yankees manager Miller Huggins benched Scott for not hitting -- something that Joe McCarthy would not do to Gehrig and Johnny Oates wouldn't do to Ripken. Like Gehrig, it's Ripken's call unless The Streak is broken in some other manner.
Ripken is a prisoner of The Streak, his consolation being that he's the image of Gehrig in two ways: He's physically strong and will play through injuries, and he has a similar personality -- low-key in temperament and has a strict work ethic that's ingrained. A similar player who came between the Gehrig and Ripken years would be Hall of Famer Al Kaline of the Tigers. He had the personality to set an endurance record, but he didn't have the strength of either Gehrig or Ripken.
"Detroit was perfect for me,"he said at the All-Star Game earlier this month in Baltimore,"because I didn't crave the spotlight, didn't want it, and didn't need it."
That's Gehrig, so the stories go, and that's Ripken. Except that judging from various accounts, Gehrig wasn't asked nearly as much about his streak and taking an occasional day off as Ripken, the pursuer, has been. The prospect of a media tide has Orioles officials pondering how to handle it when it rises in '94 and crests in '95.
"I'd be happy not to talk about it,"Ripken said at his locker at the All-Star Game."It comes up most when I'm not hitting. You look for ways to alleviate {the talk}. The easiest way is never to go into a slump. Of course, that's unrealistic. But if I can fix my hitting, that will keep it to a minimum. ...
"I try not to learn about, or become obsessed, with the streak. There's plenty of time later. I try not to know about it."
Ripken said he's never read about or tried to learn anything about Gehrig."Purposely,"he said."I don't want to have anything take away from my focus, from playing."
Playing every day is what Gehrig apparently loved best, and what Ripken has grown up doing.
Of course, Gehrig was asked the inevitable question. In"A Quiet Hero,"Daniel asks Gehrig the same thing Ripken has heard often:"What do you play ball every day for, anyhow? Why don't you take a day off once in a while?"Gehrig responds:"'I guess it's ... well ... just like me, Dan. The way I've always been and, I guess, the way I'll always be. I remember once, when I was a kid in grammar school, I had the grippe or something. Anyway, this morning when I woke up I had a temperature, and my mother began to fix me up and said I would have to stay in bed. ... My mother had to go out and work for a couple of hours. ... 'Now, you stay right there and I will be back as soon as I can.'
"'But I couldn't stay there, Dan. I never had missed a day in school and I felt I just had to be there. So ... I got up and dressed and hustled to school. Of course, when she got home and found I wasn't there she was worried {and} ... rushed around to the school and there I was in my classroom. She told the teacher I was sick ... and they asked me why I had come to school. And I said: 'This is where I belong. ...
"'So, when you ask about playing ball every day ... well, that's the way I am, Dan.'"
It almost might have been Ripken talking.
And it almost might have been Gehrig sitting at the locker in the Orioles' clubhouse saying:"I've gotten used to it {playing every day}. It's a mind-set. I feel uncomfortable if I'm not part of the game. It happens especially in spring training. If I don't play a game and the team plays away, when they come back I ask, 'What happened?' It seems strange."
Gehrig apparently felt the same way. He may have grown up in New York City, but he loved the game like the country boy Ripken was. If Gehrig attended Columbia (his mother had worked there as a fraternity house cook), he was no intellectual, by Robinson's account, and his collegiate career was brief -- 19 games in 1923. But Gehrig's power and the location of the diamond then, on the main campus, added to the lore: He hit one ball to 116th and Broadway and another high off the journalism school steps.When he received the Yankees' offer, Gehrig sought the advice of one of his professors, Archibald Stockder, who taught business. Robinson writes:"Stockder leaned back in his chair and looked squarely in Lou's eyes. 'Lou,' he said, without harshness, 'you've been in my class for almost a year. ... I think you better play ball.'"
"He wasn't outgoing in his personality,"Tommy Henrich, 80, who joined the Yankees in 1937, said this week."If you asked him for advice, he'd be very nice about it. I sought his counsel many times. Especially with regard to Ted Lyons. He was pitching once a week by then, at the tail end of his career. 'Lou, what do I do?' He said, 'You hit the first fastball you see because after that you're in trouble.' So I took a low and outside fastball that hit the corner for a strike. I said to myself, 'Geez, I've got to get something better than that.' But then I got two knuckleballs for strikes. Gehrig was right. I should have hit the first one."
Henrich, the author of"Five O'Clock Lightning"with Bill Gilbert, said Gehrig had an interest in classical music, and that Gehrig's interests widened with his marriage to Eleanor Twitchell. (They had no children; Gehrig's two sisters and a brother all died as infants.)"She had some culture back of her,"Henrich said.
"In 1938, my second year, he's sitting in the back of the bus. We're on the way to Wrigley Field to play in the World Series and he says, 'Hey, Tommy, come back here.' He had the radio playing. I'm looking for a cord and he's looking at me, laughing. It was the first battery-powered radio I ever saw. I said, 'I've got to get me one of those' instead of this big box I carried. I loved big bands. I loved Beethoven too."
Gehrig could laugh even though his game had slipped in the second half of the 1938 season. To Henrich, who in right field played behind Gehrig and next to Joe DiMaggio, Gehrig wasn't pressure-free because the streak"had become a remarkable thing and he wanted to preserve it."
But to Henrich, the pressure was nothing like Ripken will face because"he knows what number he has to reach. The pressure is going to be on him."
At spring training in 1939, Mel Allen was the Yankees' rookie broadcaster. He arrived at the Yankees camp in St. Petersburg, Fla., he recalled this week, to find everyone scrutinizing Gehrig. Manager Joe McCarthy"didn't want to take him out of the lineup because of the streak, because he was captain of the team and a nice guy. Joe kept hoping, 'Maybe he'll come out of it.'"
One of Allen's remembrances is of Gehrig playing at Yankee Stadium in 1939:"He muffed a simple grounder. He was all thumbs."Eight games into the season, Gehrig went to McCarthy in Detroit and said he was"hurting the team."Most accounts have the meeting taking place at the team's hotel (although for some reason, Paul Gallico in"Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees"offers a different location:"Lou met him in the dugout and said the fateful words: 'Joe, I always said that when I felt I couldn't help the team any more I would take myself out of the lineup. I guess that time has come'").
Henrich recalled sitting on the top step of the dugout with Lefty Gomez the day Babe Dahlgren took over at first for Gehrig (whoever takes over for Ripken also will become a footnote to history)."He was bawling,"Henrich said of Gehrig."Gomez broke it up. He said to Gehrig, 'Now you know how we pitchers feel when we get knocked out.' Gehrig laughed."
The greater sadness, of course, was Gehrig's soon-to-be-diagnosed illness, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He died June 2, 1941. He was 37.
During the 1940 season, Allen recalled, Gehrig would visit his old teammates in the dugout at Yankee Stadium."I would be sitting there with Joe McCarthy or maybe the pitcher for that day and the front office would call down and say he was coming. It would get all quiet, so quiet you could here him shuffling down the runway. He'd come out and they'd say, 'Hi, Cap.' They loved him like a brother.
"One day I was left alone in the dugout with Joe. Joe couldn't stand it, looking at Lou, he loved him so. 'I've got to go back into the clubhouse,'"he said.
"Lou turned to me. I was sitting on his right. He patted me on the thigh. He said, 'I never got a chance to listen to your broadcasts when I was playing, but they're one of the things keeping me going these days.' I said, 'Lou, I have to be on the air in 15 minutes,' and excused myself. Then I bawled like a baby."
"As far as Cal Ripken goes,"former Cleveland fastballer Bob Feller told Channel 9's Warner Wolf this week,"I hope he breaks the record. I gotta be honest with you, I don't think he'll do it. I hope he does. He's a great young man."
Henrich said of Ripken and his possible record:"I admire him, but I want that for Gehrig."
"I did an interview with Cal about five years ago,"Allen said."Before the interview I said to him, 'I've got to ask you the question. I'll catch hell if I don't.' He answered the question. He's such a wonderful guy, a lot like Lou -- they're leaders by performance and by longevity. ... I'd hate to see a guy get this close and not get it. I think the nation's going to be rooting for him."
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