On a Sunday evening at Camden Yards, the scoreboard lied. It listed Cal Ripken Jr. batting sixth and playing third base, the same as it had for most of the previous three seasons. The 48,013 fans in a standing-room crowd believed they were watching the Iron Man take the field yet again, extending a streak that had become part of the fabric of American sports.
They weren’t. Thirty minutes before the teams were due to take the field, Ripken had walked into manager Ray Miller’s office and delivered a message only he could deliver. According to Silvio Canto Jr., writing in American Thinker, Ripken told Miller simply: “It’s time.”
The date was September 20, 1998. The streak — which began May 30, 1982 — ended at 2,632 consecutive games. It was a decision that, as Canto notes, only Ripken himself could make, and it ended one of the most remarkable records in the sport’s history.
Why Baltimore, Why Then
Ripken had not made the call in a vacuum. He explained after the game that he and his wife had talked it through and decided the streak should end in front of a home crowd rather than on the road. “It was important for us to do it here,” Ripken told reporters, per Canto’s account. “Right here in Baltimore, right here in Camden Yards. And make it a celebration.”
Even the fans who packed the ballpark for Baltimore’s final home game of the 1998 season were unaware of what was coming when the gates opened. The lineup posted on the scoreboard was the familiar one. The decision had been made quietly, in a manager’s office, less than half an hour before game time.
It’s worth pausing on the scale of what ended that night. Ripken had broken Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-game record of 2,130 on September 6, 1995 — an evening when the Orioles beat the California Angels 4-2 at home, and when, as soon as the final out of the top of the fifth made the game official, orange and white balloons were released into the night air. Ripken didn’t leave the field on his own that night. His teammates physically pushed him back out, he recalled, telling him they weren’t getting the celebration going again until he took a lap. “During the first part of that lap, I said ‘OK, I’ll just do it really quick,'” Ripken remembered.
The Skeptics, and the Case for the Streak
Not everyone treated the streak as sacred. As Canto recalls, plenty of fans wondered what the point of it was. Some argued that playing every game — and not just every game, but every inning — was hurting Ripken’s performance or dragging down his batting average. He took the field in meaningless games and never took an inning off, and there was a school of thought that said he’d be better off sitting.
Canto acknowledges that critique and then sets it aside. For him, the streak meant more than baseball. It was, he writes, Ripken’s way of showing up to do the job and contribute to his team — a tribute to a work ethic, even if it meant playing more innings than anyone else thought necessary. He was sad when he heard it was over.
The news reached Canto the next morning on the radio, as the lead story on a 6 a.m. newscast — not even a sports station. That’s how large the moment loomed in American culture: a streak, not a game result, dominating the top of a morning newscast. The announcer ran through what Ripken had played through to keep it alive, including injury, the birth of his son, and the 1994 players’ strike.
A Career by the Numbers
Ripken retired after the 2001 season and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007. His career numbers, as recounted by Canto: a .278 batting average, 431 home runs, 3,184 hits across 3,001 games, and 1,691 runs batted in — that last figure, Canto argues, an unappreciated part of his game. Ripken was the American League MVP in 1983 and 1991. He also played for his father, who served as the team’s third-base coach and later its manager.
And the record itself? Canto doesn’t expect to see its like again. He counts himself fortunate simply to have watched Ripken play — a sentiment that, 28 years on from that quiet Sunday in Baltimore, plenty of baseball fans would share.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/the-ripken-streak-ended-after-2-632-games/