SWC75
Bored Historian
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THE COMEBACK
Everyone loves a happy ending and it appeared in the late 1990’s as if baseball had found one for the millennium. The strike was over and we haven’t had one since. It appears that both sides came to their senses and realized that the game was awash in money and that closing down the sport trying to horde it was pointless and unnecessary. Salaries have continued to soar. No check had bounced and no team has gone out of business. Despite heavy competition from other sports, baseball remains a significant part of the American sporting scene. Attendance is higher than it ever was before. New talent flows into the game every year. Despite fears that free agency would allow richer clubs to dominate the sport, the game has never been more balanced. Ironically the late 90’s featured the closest thing to a dynasty we’ve had in the free agency era: the Yankees won three straight World Series and four in five years from 1996-2000. But the only other back to back champions of the free agency era were the 1977-78 Yankees and the 1992-93 Blue Jays. Twenty of baseball’s 30 teams have won championships since free agency, 12 since the end of the strike.
But baseball fans were initially reluctant to come back, some swearing they would never attend or even watch another game. To bring them back, baseball used a combination of sentimentality and excitement.
THE STREAK
The most respected player in the game was Cal Ripken Jr. He was a baseball lifer, son of Orioles coach Cal Sr. and teammates with his brother Billy Ripken. He was a great player, winning a Rookie of the Year award and two MVPs as well as a World Series Ring. He appearing in an amazing 19 All-Star games in his career. He had over 3,000 hits and 400 home runs and won two Gold Gloves. (He might have won more but at 6-4 200 he didn’t fit people’s image of a shortstop). It helped that he went against the modern trend and played his entire career with one team. And, no it didn’t hurt that he was white.
But his great claim to fame was that, like a good American worker, he showed up for work every day. He started an epic consecutive games streak early in his career, which for a long time was even a consecutive INNING streak,( 8,243 from 1982-1987), and was approaching the legendary number of 2,130 consecutive games that Lou Gehrig had played in before he came down with ALS. Actually, Gehrig’s streak had already been topped by Japanese player Sachio Kinugasa, in 1987, (he wound up with 2,215 consecutive games played), but few people in this country knew or cared about that.
As Ripken approached the Gehrig record, (it had been determined that his participation in the strike didn’t end his streak, as no games were played during the strike and thus he didn’t miss any games), people started to suggest that maybe he shouldn’t break the record, since Gehrig’s streak was broken by illness. I remember Larry King suggesting with a sentimental smile that Ripken should stop at 2,129 to honor Gehrig. What he was missing is that these streaks begin not because the player decides to set a record: they begin because a player decides he has to be there for his team, even if he was tired, hurt or not feeling well. To skip a game simply to maintain a record would contradict that ethic and not do honor to either Ripken or Gehrig.
All objections were forgotten in a nationally televised game full of all-star tributes to Cal that gave America the warm and fuzzy feeling the game needed to get them thinking favorably about baseball again:
Everyone loves a happy ending and it appeared in the late 1990’s as if baseball had found one for the millennium. The strike was over and we haven’t had one since. It appears that both sides came to their senses and realized that the game was awash in money and that closing down the sport trying to horde it was pointless and unnecessary. Salaries have continued to soar. No check had bounced and no team has gone out of business. Despite heavy competition from other sports, baseball remains a significant part of the American sporting scene. Attendance is higher than it ever was before. New talent flows into the game every year. Despite fears that free agency would allow richer clubs to dominate the sport, the game has never been more balanced. Ironically the late 90’s featured the closest thing to a dynasty we’ve had in the free agency era: the Yankees won three straight World Series and four in five years from 1996-2000. But the only other back to back champions of the free agency era were the 1977-78 Yankees and the 1992-93 Blue Jays. Twenty of baseball’s 30 teams have won championships since free agency, 12 since the end of the strike.
But baseball fans were initially reluctant to come back, some swearing they would never attend or even watch another game. To bring them back, baseball used a combination of sentimentality and excitement.
THE STREAK
The most respected player in the game was Cal Ripken Jr. He was a baseball lifer, son of Orioles coach Cal Sr. and teammates with his brother Billy Ripken. He was a great player, winning a Rookie of the Year award and two MVPs as well as a World Series Ring. He appearing in an amazing 19 All-Star games in his career. He had over 3,000 hits and 400 home runs and won two Gold Gloves. (He might have won more but at 6-4 200 he didn’t fit people’s image of a shortstop). It helped that he went against the modern trend and played his entire career with one team. And, no it didn’t hurt that he was white.
But his great claim to fame was that, like a good American worker, he showed up for work every day. He started an epic consecutive games streak early in his career, which for a long time was even a consecutive INNING streak,( 8,243 from 1982-1987), and was approaching the legendary number of 2,130 consecutive games that Lou Gehrig had played in before he came down with ALS. Actually, Gehrig’s streak had already been topped by Japanese player Sachio Kinugasa, in 1987, (he wound up with 2,215 consecutive games played), but few people in this country knew or cared about that.
As Ripken approached the Gehrig record, (it had been determined that his participation in the strike didn’t end his streak, as no games were played during the strike and thus he didn’t miss any games), people started to suggest that maybe he shouldn’t break the record, since Gehrig’s streak was broken by illness. I remember Larry King suggesting with a sentimental smile that Ripken should stop at 2,129 to honor Gehrig. What he was missing is that these streaks begin not because the player decides to set a record: they begin because a player decides he has to be there for his team, even if he was tired, hurt or not feeling well. To skip a game simply to maintain a record would contradict that ethic and not do honor to either Ripken or Gehrig.
All objections were forgotten in a nationally televised game full of all-star tributes to Cal that gave America the warm and fuzzy feeling the game needed to get them thinking favorably about baseball again: