A HERO: Cal Ripken Jr.

JB Cash

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A Hero

Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. was showered with praise over the last week in the prelude to his Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Sunday. Ripken is that rare white athlete that receives almost unrestrained positive coverage from the media. Even in his finest hour they are unable to muster up some long ago minor slight or imagined transgression involving a minority with which to tarnish his sterling legacy. All that was left for the media mavens in their unending quest to worship the Gods of diversity was to ensure that Ripken did not receive any more praise than his fellow inductee, Tony Gwynn.

Ripken's greatness, and the quality that separates him from so many other athletes, is that he embodies the qualities that white America cherishes. It's not just that he represents what we value, but how he represents it, and how his career was a homage to old fashioned values and morality. Those values are "old fashioned" because the morality that once guided white society has been altered so as to be nearly non-existent today.

Everything about the man's career seemed to epitomize the very idea of a life well lived. He was first and foremost a baseball star. Americans, who created the game of baseball, and nurtured and developed it through 150 years, once saw the game as the defining activity of our sporting life. That is no longer true. But like our obsolete Constitution and our faux patriotism, baseball still evokes memories of a time when we were actually great and good. Perhaps because we are no longer either of those, the bittersweet memories still stir strong feelings.

And Cal Ripken Jr. was not merely a baseball star, he was a star at shortstop, the single most difficult position to play. He not only was great at shortstop but he redefined the position. What was once a place to put the best glove on the team so as to generate ground ball outs, which means it was filled with no-hit/good field guys that had a job merely because they could catch, became the position it is today. A position manned not just by the team's best gloveman but sometimes its best hitter too.

Cal Ripken was not only a good hitter he was a power hitter. Not only did he play the toughest position, he batted clean-up. He hit home runs and singles and doubles. He amassed over 3,000 hits AND over 400 homeruns. However, if it were just about the hits and homers then Ripken would have been just another good player. But there was more. He was a leader. He won two AL MVP awards. He led his team to a World Series championship. He won Gold Gloves, he went to the All-Star game (frequently), but still those are just the numbers of a great player.

Cal Ripken Jr. was so much more than that. A lot of it was due to the "Jr." in his name. We as a people can define ourselves as distinct from the other peoples of the world in the close relationships that fathers build with sons. While half of the world's non-white fathers desert their sons at the first opportunity and the other half treats them as a rival to be beaten down and controlled, amongst our people the father-son relationship is one of our great strengths.

The fathers of our culture value their relationship with their sons, working with them from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, overseeing their development with an interest to seeing them succeed. Their success is rightly understood as a clear sign to all that the father has done his job properly.

Is there another culture that developed anything like the Boy Scouts, or Little League baseball, the Boy's Club, the YMCA, Pop Warner football, American Legion baseball, soap box derbys, or any of the hundred other father-son organizations? No, of course not. Those are white institutions, and while other cultures may be beginning to copy them, they could not, and would not, have created them.

A game of catch between father and son is practically a ritual with American white families. Cal Ripken Jr. embodied that ritual through his close lifelong relationship with his father, the late Cal Ripken Senior. Cal the father, taught his boy how to play ball; in the end he taught the son to be better than the father, the single most impressive thing a man can do. He nurtured his skills while he was a manager and coach in the Orioles organization and guided his son to become a superstar and now a Hall of Fame member.

And it was not only Cal Jr. in the family that made the big leagues but younger brother Billy, too. How many brothers have played ball together in the backyards and playgrounds across our land? How many brothers have turned the double play together on the sandlot diamond and then dreamed of doing it some day in the big leagues? Thousands? Millions more likely. So the continuing theme of family, of father, of son, of brothers, the continuity of male kinship which has made our people great is illustrated so well through the career of Cal Ripken Jr. and his family.

What sets Cal Ripken Jr. apart from all other players that have ever played the game of baseball in America is his work ethic. His record of playing in 2,632 straight games is a record that will never be broken. He played when sore, when injured, when sick, when tired. It his most shining moment, the very reason he is revered. Even in a society that gets lazier and lazier with each generation, the sacrifice Cal Ripken made over those many years still resonates with us all. His is the ultimate image of the working class, blue collar, white American worker. It is a tremendous feat to show up for work every day for 16 years. How many can say they have done that?

Thus Cal Ripken Jr. and the work ethic he represents is the very embodiment of a people that have worked hard to carve civilization out of wilderness on every continent on the planet. From the frigid Antarctic to the squalid tropics, from the ocean depths to the moon. While other peoples refuse to "go out in the midday sun" or require siestas in the middle of the work day, or simply refuse to work at all and insist on living off of the hard work of others by collecting welfare or unemployment, the admirable people of our culture show up for work every day.

There was a lot of praise heaped upon Cal Ripken Jr. by the media during his Hall of Fame week. None of it pointed out that the qualities he embodies, the qualities that were instilled in him, are the product not of diversity, not of a multicultural world, but are rather the honest representation of the hardest working people ever to exist on Earth.

For the media to publicly admit that Cal Ripken Jr. is a fitting representative of his people due to his character, his success, his family's closeness, and his work ethic, would be to admit that those qualities are lacking in other peoples. But they are, we all know it and ignoring it won't change it. It just reminds us of who we are and who they are.

The people that Cal Ripken Jr. represented so admirably during his career owe him a debt of thanks for pointing out for all to see, though none have the courage to acknowledge, those qualities that signify Europeans and all their descendants in far away lands, as a great people. The greatest of peoples
 

Bart

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Great article. I really hadn't thought about all the factors contributing to Cal's success. Now, where did I leave that ol' glove of mine?
 

foreverfree

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I attended the Orioles/NYY game on HOF induction day but I taped the ceremony off ESPN Classic and watched it later. My mom watched it live and reported that Gwynn went on and on and on. When I played it back I ffwd'ed through Gwynn and watched Ripken, whose speech lasted 15 minutes. I also watched Denny Matthews's and the writer's speeches.

John
 

Realgeorge

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Thank You J.B. Cash! An Excellent article about the great Cal Ripken, JR.

I'm one of the long-time Orioles fans who posts frequently about the woes of the Peter Angelos-owned team. It's wonderful that the Ripken family is still in town, still active in Baseball. Cal & family have controlling interest in Aberdeen minor league baseball team (Single-A) and Ripkens are frequently to be seen in and about Charm City [what an egregious misnomer for the disgusting African slum that Baltimore really is].

Cal is most successful in his post-player career, both with the Minor League team and with Summer Camps for boys to learn baseball. Many a letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun pleads with the Ripken family to please buy the Baltimore Orioles ballclub from the amazingly evil Peter Angelos. Of course they can't do it because Peter isn't selling. Angelos gets major jollies from lording it over his baseball kindgom and its minions. He particularly enjoyes sneering at the laments of Orioles fans as the poorly-run franchise loses year after year after year. Also, the Orioles are Caste -- Big Time. Mestizos First, you bet. Then the black players, then the white. Ten straight losing seasons will soon become twenty.

Cal was wonderful to watch. The Orioles were perennial winners when he was on the club. Ripken had marvelous stats with runners in scoring position. He was a human vacuum-cleaner at SS and Third Base, much like Brooks Robinson. He gave an excellent, calm interview to every reporter. And so on -- the consummate pro.

His final few years, when Angelos was driving the team into the mud, were visibly painful for Cal Ripken, who became very quiet to the press in his final years. The reason was that Angelos was driving out the best players, best coaches, best general managers, even announcers and secretaries, and replacing them with cronies, yes men, and family hacks.

So here in 2007 we unhappy Orioles fans resign ourselves to the poor present and future of the club as long as Peter Angelos, the Illuminist law-twister, is alive. It would be most Providential for Cal Ripken, somehow, to be able to purchase the Orioles and restore its good name.

Thanks again Mr. Cash, excellent articleEdited by: Realgeorge
 
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Well if the player system is caste filled the fan base grows whiter. My hunch is that when whites want to go out they want to avoid the black predator bunchs and baseball games like classical or country music drives blacks out.
 

Realgeorge

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wile said:
Well if the player system is caste filled the fan base grows whiter. My hunch is that when whites want to go out they want to avoid the black predator bunchs and baseball games like classical or country music drives blacks out.

Indeed the fan base grows Whiter. So does the supply of excellent White college baseball players. Negroes are disappearing from the game. That's the good news. Bad news: The Zionazi baseball owners hate White players and don't want to pay them well. So they ship in oodle of "Afro-caribbeans" as Mr. Cash elegantly calls them. Thus the Mestizo population of MLB is grossly large, out of proportion to the White fan base and White player talent base. Major League Baseball is Caste all the way, and violent-tempered, surly, Spanish-speaking Mestizos will dominate baseball for many more years.

Boy I sure miss Cal Ripken. A surly, goof-ball, undisciplined Caribe plays his position now. A HUGE reduction in productivity and class, the guy is frequently injured and poorly disciplined. It rots.Edited by: Realgeorge
 

Colonel_Reb

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Great article JB!
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foreverfree

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Realgeorge said:
His final few years, when Angelos was driving the team into the mud,

They're still in the mud. They lost to the Rays tonight and are back to 7 games in the red.

BTW watching Cal's speech made my eyes water. This is a guy who has basically defined my (by now) 22 years that I have lived in Maryland. A man who helped get me through young adulthood and into middle age.

In April 2002, months after Ripken retired, there was a Cal Ripken Night at the Wilmington Blue Rocks. A Friday night. I was there, settling for standing room (but they let me sit in one of the plastic chairs in the picnic area anyway). When the Rocks feted Cal, during his speech, he said, "You want me to come back?"
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The closet I've come to meeting Cal.

They gave out Ripken bobbleheads that night and I gave mine to the receptionist at the office where I worked at the time (for her grandson).

John
 

Don Wassall

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One of my very fondestsports memories is the night Cal broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games record in 1995, the record that few thoughtwould ever bebroken. 2,130 was one of themost legendarynumbers in sports.Ripken received a 22 minute standing ovation when the game became official after five innings. Has anyone before or since ever received a longer standing ovation? Cal slowly circled the field, waving and slapping hands with the great Orioles fans. What a moment to cherish.
 

DixieDestroyer

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Great article indeed. Cal was a true HOF'er and baseball legend. Many of today's so-called All-Stars couldn't hold Cal's jock on their best day/his worst.
 

jaxvid

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I just read Matt Holliday kept a Ripken poster on his wall when he was kid. What a surprise! White kids need role models too, I bet the PC crowd was disappointed he didn't put up a Bonds poster or some other player of color. I wonder how many current white major leaguers idolized the man as kids?
 

Solomon Kane

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Great article, JB.

Can't say enough about Cal. He adopted the right tone when he broke the Gehrig streak, when he retired, and now during his induction speech.

Angelos, just get off the stage, you bum!
 

gsm1988

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Good article, but was it necessary to criticize Tony Gwynn like that? From all accounts, Gwynn is a class act.
 

JB Cash

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gsm1988 said:
Good article, but was it necessary to criticize Tony Gwynn like that? From all accounts, Gwynn is a class act.

Tony Gwynn wasn't criticized at all, only the media penchant for balancing any praise of a white athlete with similar compliments for a black one.

As far as I know you are right, Gwynn is a class act. I believe he is coaching baseball at San Diego St. which is a heckava great thing for a millionaire HOF-er to do.

Gwynn was also an atypical black ballplayer as he hit for average with little power and was selective at the plate. He also rarely received the usual caste comments about his natural athleticism probably because he was fat, another reason to like him BTW.
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Don Wassall

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I re-read the article twice trying to find the "criticism" of Tony Gwynn. This all-too-commonstyle of complaining about non-existent or quite mild criticism of Negroesis typical of blacks blinded byhatred of whitesalong withtheir politically correct white enablers whose agenda is to prevent discussionof racial issues from anything but a pro-black andanti-white perspective.
 

gsm1988

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Thanks for clearing that up JB. I can now understand where you were coming from, and that you were not trying to criticize Gwynn.
 

SneakyQuick

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There will be probably be another baseball player like cal Ripken jr. In the 15 years since the last comment on this article it doesn’t seem like his Ironman performance and class act personality are in no danger of being eclipsed

another great article
 
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