Memory lane

I was at the first game of Cal Ripken’s streak. Yes I was. It was a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon game between the Orioles and the Toronto Blue Jays and we had seats on the third-base side at Memorial Stadium. We were there, watching history that we didn’t we know was happening.

Actually, I didn’t even know I was at The First Game until nearly 2,131 Orioles games later. In fact, it was an offhand comment by the broadcaster calling one of Ripken’s record-breaking games in September of 1995 when it hit me that I was there on that sunny Sunday.

Now I have been to thousands of games and seen just about everything there is to see at a Major League game. I saw a no-hitter (Kevin Millwood), a couple of cycles (David Bell and Brad Wilkerson), a three-home run game (Andruw Jones), a team sew up the division on the final day of the season (Milwaukee Brewers in 1982), and a team win the NLCS (Phillies in 1993). I’ve also seen a few one-hitters, including one by Randy Wolf in the final weeks of the 2001 season where it didn’t seem as if he even worked up a sweat.

Needless to say there are hundreds of games that I attended that I don’t even remember. It’s not that I’m not losing my mind, it’s just that the Phillies have played a lot of games since I started this job in 2000.

But when one is a kid the games seemed to matter much more. They were a big deal. Better yet, I can recall sitting behind home plate at a 1978 game between the Orioles and Red Sox at Memorial Stadium in better detail than I can remember the last game I attended. From that game in ’78 I can remember peering through the backstop and a titanic home run hit by Jim Rice that soared over the bleachers in left field and disappeared into the night. I also remember Larry Harlow leading off the game with a homer off Red Sox starter Dennis Eckersley and Carlton Fisk starting a bench-clearing incident.

From the last game I covered all I remember is the game starting after 11 p.m., Ken Mandel taking a header dressed as Thomas Jefferson, and the Phillies sitting in a bus waiting to go to the airport as I walked out of the stadium at 3 a.m.




Nevertheless, it was remembering an odd one-hitter that jogged my memory and made me realize I was at Ripken’s streak starter. Odd? Well, yeah. It was odd because Jim Gott pitched six innings before turning it over to Roy Lee Jackson for the final nine outs. Only Rick Dempsey’s single between short and third in the fifth ruined the combined no-no.

Who wouldn’t remember a combined one-hitter? Better yet, who wouldn’t remember the most boring game they ever attended to that point?

Yet through all the countless times I’ve seen Cal Ripken play, that goofy one-hitter is the one game I’ll remember the most. Not the two-home run game against the Brewers on the final day of the ’82 season, or the day-in and day-out efforts at Memorial Stadium, Camden Yards, the Vet, Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium. Instead, it’s an oh-fer at long forgotten ballpark in a non-descript day in May.

How that for a Hall of Famer?

Ripken, of course, was elected to the Hall of Fame today along with Tony Gwynn in what will be most remember for who did not get voted into so-called baseball immortality. But that last part is for a more in-depth discussion later, because I’m not really sure what the Hall of Fame means anymore – and that’s not to say Ripken and Gywnn aren’t worthy, because they are. It’s just that based on who has been deemed worthy of induction and who has not, maybe it mysterious criteria that makes one a Hall of Famer is arbitrary and based on whimsy.

But that’s for another day.

Ripken and Gwynn could be the first inductees to the Hall of Fame whose careers I was old enough to appreciate and remember. Ripken’s ethic and Gwynn’s swing and focus were artful, and never more evident than in a doubleheader at the Vet on July 22, 1994, when sitting along the third-base side (again) I saw him go 6-for-8 with four RBIs and a pair of doubles. The most baffling part about those games was how the Phillies figured out how to get Gwynn out twice. It seemed as if every pitch thrown was going to be knocked into the outfield for a hit.

Then again, Gwynn always seemed to be a hit waiting to happen.