Palmeiro on Ripken: "It was just in his DNA that he was going to play every night no matter what”

On the night that a game stalled at Camden Yards on Sept. 6, 1995, the curtain calls for Cal Ripken Jr. failing to quiet fans, the only way to get it moving again was to push him.

Teammates Rafael Palmeiro and Bobby Bonilla took Ripken by the arms and led him from the bench to the front of the dugout. Palmeiro smiled and gave Ripken a gentle shove in the back, and the Iron Man headed up the first base line to begin his iconic lap around the warning track as Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time” provided the soundtrack over the public address system.

Nothing was scripted at that point. The Orioles were winging it.

“The thing was, he’d come out and he would tip his hat to the fans and then he would get back in the dugout,” Palmeiro recalled yesterday in a phone call after flying into Baltimore as one of the many guests for the 30^th anniversary celebration.

 “I remember him saying, ‘Let’s get the game going again, let’s get the game going again,’ but the fans kept asking him to come back out. I don’t know, it seemed like it took forever. And then, we were just kind of sitting there and if I remember correctly, I think I said, ‘You’ve got to do something because we’re gonna be here all night.’ And so, I don’t know what led to that, I don’t know if he got up or we pulled him up, but I don’t think it was a planned thing. We just kind of pushed him and it just happened. And he just went down the first base line.”

This one moment in time is remembered perhaps more than anything else. Ripken homered, just as he did on 2,130, but his trot around the bases gets lost within the sentimentality of his trip around the track, slapping hands with fans in the first row and pausing in front of the bullpen and Angels dugout.

“That’s the thing that people look back on,” Palmeiro said. “That’s what they show when they show what happened that night, but they don’t show his great game and all the stuff that he did. He hit a home run. I remember that. But the thing people remember is the celebration around the ballpark. It took him forever. And I remember him saying when he got back to the dugout, ‘That’s the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done.’

“He was beat, he was done. But it was nice. It was him saying thank you to the fans for the 17 or 18 years that he had been doing it, and just the fans acknowledging him. Just saying thank you back for all his efforts and his career at that point.”

Palmeiro received a loud ovation when he walked onto the field last night for the ceremony, only his second time at Camden Yards since his final season in 2005. He returned last month to watch a Sunday afternoon game after working a clinic for The Baseball Warehouse with Mike Bordick and Rick Dempsey in Owings Mills.  

Also forgotten is how Palmeiro hit two home runs on 2,131. Bobby Bonilla also homered, Mike Mussina held the Angels to two runs in 7 2/3 innings, and the Orioles won 4-2.

The thirty years that passed tend to astonish people who lived or watched it.

“I was thinking about that earlier today,” Palmeiro said. “We were talking to the driver coming from the airport and he remembers it, he remembers when he was a kid, and I was like, ‘It seemed like yesterday, man.’ But that was like a lifetime ago. A lot has happened since.

“It does seem like it was yesterday, but I mean, it was a long time ago.”

So long that Palmeiro turns 61 later this month and is a grandfather, the hair graying but the swing probably still perfect.

Ripken is baseball’s Iron Man, but Palmeiro rarely took a day off. He averaged 157 games in every full season from 1988-2004, skipping strike-shortened 1994-95, and finished his career with 2,831 over 20 years. 

Palmeiro is amused that Ripken thinks someone else can come along and string more games together than his 2,632.

“I’ve been told that this record is unbreakable now,” Ripken said during last night’s speech. “I would always say, ‘If I could do it, then somebody else can.’ I hope someone passes me someday and that I and all of you have the pleasure of seeing it.”

Palmeiro would like several minutes for rebuttal.

“In what year? In the year 2555 when the robots are playing, or what?” he quipped.

“He was the closest thing to a robot. That is never gonna get done. Ever, ever. Not even close. I mean, no one’s gonna get close. They might play a couple hundred games in a row or 300 or 400 or whatever, but no one’s every gonna come close to that.

“The way that Cal approached the game, no one approaches it that way anymore. He always felt that him being in the lineup was gonna help the team win. So whoever was gonna play in his spot was not gonna be up to the standard we needed for us to win the game, even at 70 percent. Because there were times when he was at 70 percent. People don’t realize that. Cal wasn’t 100 percent ever. He was always nicked up, he would always foul pitches off his ankles or something. He was getting hit, he was playing hard, and there were times when I just thought there’s no way that he’s gonna make it. And he always found a way. But he did it because he just felt that him being in the lineup would help our team win, OK?

“And that mindset early on, I guess he got that from his dad in the early days of being with the Orioles. He just needed to be in the lineup. That was his job is to play every day no matter what. So after so many years, you just think, ‘Wow, haven’t missed a game in five, six, seven years,’ and you just keep going and you don’t even think about it. You just show up and play the game You’re supposed to be in the lineup, you’re expected to be in the lineup, because it would help the team win. So that mindset got him through those years, and then beyond that, because he kept on playing after that.”

This is the part that really gets Palmeiro.

“You think about that. He played in another 500 games after the streak, and I don’t think there’s gonna be ever be anyone playing 500 straight games again,” he said.

“I mean, it’s just ridiculous.”

Palmeiro witnessed those times when Ripken was hurting but refused to sit out a game. There was no such thing as being day-to-day.

“He played through everything,” Palmeiro said. “I remember at the very end before he got to the streak, he walked into the ballpark one day and it was early, like 2 o’clock, and he was barely walking in. At the time, he was having trouble with his back. I don’t know exactly what happened, but he was barely walking and I just followed him.

“He went and got some coffee first. He always went and got his coffee. And then he got into the training room and I followed him in there, and I just kind of shook my head and said, ‘I don’t see how you’re gonna be able to do it tonight.’ And he just says, ‘Hey, I’ve got it, I’ll be ready.’ And at 6:30 that evening he was in full uniform and he was headed down to the batting cage to hit some balls off the tee. At 6:45, he ran down to the first base line and he did his sprints and you would have thought this guy is 100 percent healthy. But no one knew he was battling to get ready for that game.

“In today’s game? And even back then, most players wouldn’t have done that. Most players probably would have been the disabled list for two or three weeks, but it was just in his DNA that he was going to play every night no matter what.”

The Orioles had Palmeiro, Bonilla and Ripken, dressed in Orioles jerseys, reenact the shove last night after the top of the fifth inning. 

"It was awesome," said Jackson Holliday. "To be able to have all those guys here and the support that Cal has from so many great players and people, it’s really exciting for us to be around them and get to see them and talk to them. Yeah it was a really cool moment." 

"You got to take the time and kind of take a step back from the mentality of the game and just take it in," said Trevor Rogers. "How big of a day this was for the city, for this organization and what this day means to everybody, and just taking it in. Seeing some legends in the game of baseball and this organization, you just got to take it in and just play a kid's game. And I get to see Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, freaking Palmeiro, Bonilla. Not everyone gets to get to see that and gets to be a part of that and it was a very, very special night, and I was just really glad we were able to get a win, just for the ramifications that tonight had.”

One of the most unlikely, insane, inexplicable victories in team history. 

Holliday homered with the Orioles one out away from being no-hit, and they rallied for an improbable 4-3 win. 

"Fortunately," said interim manager Tony Mansolino, "I think some of Cal’s magic resonated and affected us there in the ninth inning."