|
|
Interview by Ty Webb
For too many athletes these days, showing up at the field or the ballpark is all the excuse they need to write a book. They put in a season or two of accomplishments and think that this entitles them to put down their life stories in print, to expound their opinions on all manner of topics. Tiger Woods, who just turned 21, has several biographies and autobiographies coming out. Tara Lipinski, 14 (!), the recent world figure skating champion, has a book coming about "my life and stuff." The perk of the celebrity autobiography is now firmly entrenched in the sports world.
Fortunately, Cal Ripken, Jr. has bucked this trend, as he has so many others in his storied 16-year major league career. He waited until he felt he actually had something to say, until he had finished his greatest on-field accomplishment, breaking the consecutive games played streak of Lou Gehrig. In 1995, Ripken went over the hump, playing in his 2,131st straight game. The future Hall of Famer, a two-time American League MVP and TK-time All-Star, waited until he thought he had earned the right to write.
"I've been approached by publishers and writers for the past five or six years," Ripken says. "But I've never thought I had anything worthy to say in a book. I think a book should be something of substance, should have a message, be educational. Too many times people take advantage of fame and capitalize on the market. I've always been against that."
For fans of baseball, the Baltimore Orioles, Ripken, and plain old American family values, The Only Way I Know by Ripken and sportswriter Mike Bryan, is worth the wait. The book details Ripken's baseball life, from his days as a Little Leaguer following in his dad's baseball footsteps to his surprising high school soccer and not-so-surprising baseball careers, through the minors and on to the major leagues. Readers travel with Ripken down the road toward "the Streak," as the chase for Gehrig's record became known. But along the way down memory lane, Ripken makes a few pit stops to comment on baseball, on commitment, on family, and on "the only way he knows."
"I've had a chance to see baseball change and I've formed what I think are experienced opinions on those changes," he says. "One of the nice things about the Streak was that it gave me a chance to become a point man for baseball and to promote the game. I think some of the things I wrote about the state of the game, about how the business side of things has impacted the craft of the game, some of those concerns are important."
And Ripken really did write. Co-author Bryan, the co-author of other baseball books (notably this reporter's favorite baseball book, Nine Innings with Keith Hernandez), put up with a lot, according to Ripken. "Mike will tell you I was really, really picky," Ripken says. "I must have gone through four or five drafts getting all the word choices right, getting in all the substance I wanted to get in."
Ripken the writer also experienced life on the other side of the paper, so to speak. Long one of the sports world's best interview subjects, known for his patience, openness, humor, and insightfulness, he lived the life of a reporter and discovered the personal Rashomon that everyone has in him.
"I've had enough of a career to have a lot of memories," he says. "Some were enjoyable, some a little painful. I thought it was really interesting that other people's perceptions and memories of certain events were different than mine. I knew what the story was, but if you asked three people who were also there about it, you'd have three different stories."
Welcome to Journalism 101, Cal.
But at the same time, Ripken felt freed from some of the self-imposed restraints of his relationship with sportswriters. "I felt a certain freedom doing this project that I normally don't have talking with reporters," he says. "You feel like you're guarded a bit, like you have to choose your words carefully, since they might not always be used in the context you're giving them. But in the book I could speak freely about anything I wanted to, and in the way I wanted to talk about them."
There are sure to be a few tears jerked and goosebumps raised as real baseball fans read Ripken's book.
There's the time that Cal's dad, Cal Sr., a longtime Orioles coach, was hired as manager, only to be unceremoniously fired just a few games into the 1988 season. Playing under his father in 1987, Cal Jr. ended a consecutive innings streak that had begun five seasons before. The enduring influence of his father is a theme throughout the book, so imagine his disappointment at hearing about the firing on the car radio on the way to the game. There are minor league stories of typical hijinks and escapades, but somehow hearing them from a persona like Cal Ripken Jr. makes them come more to life.
The many great players, coaches, and personalities who have crossed Ripken's path also appear in the book, Eddie Murray, Earl Weaver, Frank Robinson among them.
And, of course, there's the Streak, the defining years-long event of Ripken's life and career. Everything was affected by the pursuit of the record: his wife, his kids, his parents, his teammates, his team, and all of baseball. But Ripken handled it all with a preternatural calm, continuing to be the exemplary player he is. On the night he tied Gehrig, he hit a home run. And talk about timing, he hit another the night he broke the record.
His descriptions of the emotions of those moments, of the things as seen by the sole focus of the events, are wonderfully, subtly, calmly described. There's no ballplayer rhapsodizing, there's none of the "field of dreams" hyperbole that muddies up so much baseball literature. There's simply the retelling of one of baseball's, and the sports world's, greatest moments of the past few decades. Yet it is told by a player, a person, who perhaps as much as anyone in public life, understands his celebrity, controlling it so it doesn't control him.
The discipline of a writer and the discipline of a Cal Ripken are very different animals. But Ripken has combined both in his fine book. However, after going through the experience of baring his soul to paper and the public, Ripken says, "I'd still rather be a baseball player than a writer."
That's okay, Cal. Most of us writers would rather be baseball players.
Ty Webb is freelance writer and baseball fan living in Santa Barbara, California.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
Support your