I Have a Confession to Make...

...I don't like Cal Ripken, Jr.

I'm not sure when this happened; I think the feeling has been growing for some time. But it finally reached the tipping point yesterday, or maybe even today. First of all, I'm sick of the credit Ripken receives for "saving baseball." Baseball is a great enough sport that it has never needed saving by any one particular player. Ripken may have aided baseball's recovery from the '94 strike to some extent, just as Babe Ruth was partly responsible for recapturing the fans' interest after the indignity of the Black Sox scandal. But does anyone really think that baseball wouldn't be healthy and with us today without the contributions of these two? It's just too good not to be.

But it's not just that; the consecutive games streak was an achievement worthy of great praise. The more I read about Ripken, the less I like him. Articles by Tim Marchman, Buster Olney, and the illustrious Rob Neyer have really pushed me over the edge in the past few days. Let me quote from Olney's blog, for those who don't have Insider:

"In the midst of the Padres' fire sale of Gary Sheffield and Fred McGriff in 1993, I remember scrambling into the home dugout at Jack Murphy Stadium and looking for reaction to the latest trade from Tony, the team's best player. A lot of star players would've been hiding from a beat writer in a situation like this; Cal probably would have. Not Tony. "You need something from me?" he asked; he had been waiting to talk.

If you wanted to talk to Cal, you usually had to go through a journalistic ping-pong match before you started. "What's your angle?" he would ask, and then he would take a few moments to consider all angles of your story, to protect himself, to make sure he conveyed the best possible Cal, if he wanted to involve himself at all. Sometimes, he passed on topics. Other times, he'd challenge the premise of the questions. And sometimes, he would simply answer the questions."

Does this sound like someone who should be universally revered? He's phonier than A-Rod! I like A-Rod despite his polished public persona, but he rubs most people the wrong way. I don't know why Ripken doesn't provoke the same reaction. Sorry Davey, if you had any readers in Baltimore, you probably don't anymore.

Maybe I'm just bitter because he's a Hall-of-Famer, and I'm not. Sigh. They totally have to add a blogger wing.