Cal Ripken Jr....

[acsguitar]

Dedication to work gives you the right to play when you want to....Cal shouldn't have sat for the good of the team...personally i never really like cal ripken...but im a yankees fan...and Don Mattingly is just as classy if not more classy then ripken...And it looks like his hitting coaching is coming around...9 in a row tonight

[Lofunzo]

IMHO, that he should have sat down for the good of the team but he didn't. I understand the desire to be ready to play every day but I also see the need to realize that a day or 2 off here and there could do wonders for the team.

See, I hear that a lot, and it's a debatable point, but seriously, at what point were his potential replacements, even for a day, any better for the team's offense - and defensively, for that matter - than Cal?

The fact that it was Ryan Minor who finally squashed "The Streak" only somewhat furthers that point.

It's all relative. It's not about whether the replacement was better. It's about the season being a marathon and not a race. Could Posada catch all 162 games?? Probably but why do it?? Flaherty at 100% is still worse than Posada at 80%.

What I'm saying is that there were times where his body could have used a break. Like take a Sunday game off and then have an off day on Monday. Something like that. It's not about the replacement being better. It's about keeping Cal fresh.

[stomperrob]

Ripken and Mattingly are blowhards. Let's pretend they had marginal talent, would they be tempted them to roid up to keep his job? It's easy to say you won't take illegal supplements when you have tremendous natural talent--its like a chick with huge knockers denigrating boob jobs, of course she is going to say boob jobs are wrong if she is already stacked.

Ripken was never a blowhard. And as for "natural talent" - that came with a lot of hard work and no shortcuts - reminds me of the time an interviewer commented on how lucky A.J Foyt was - Foyt replied: "Yeh, it's funny, the harder I work, the luckier I get".

[gateman4]

If you have ever read "The Ripken Way" by Cal Ripken Sr. I think you will learn that Cal Jr's "natural" talent came from enormous amounts of hard work. Cal was a man who took hundreds and hundreds of grounders a day as a kid and continued to take a hundred grounders a day throughout his professinal career. Cal is no blowhard and a man who works that hard has earned the right to voice his opinon.

Even if Cal was mediocre, I think enough class was instilled in Cal by his father that he would not think of gaining the unfair advantage.

Read the book.

[GotowarMissAgnes]

IMHO, that he should have sat down for the good of the team but he didn't. I understand the desire to be ready to play every day but I also see the need to realize that a day or 2 off here and there could do wonders for the team.

See, I hear that a lot, and it's a debatable point, but seriously, at what point were his potential replacements, even for a day, any better for the team's offense - and defensively, for that matter - than Cal?

The fact that it was Ryan Minor who finally squashed "The Streak" only somewhat furthers that point.

It's all relative. It's not about whether the replacement was better. It's about the season being a marathon and not a race. Could Posada catch all 162 games?? Probably but why do it?? Flaherty at 100% is still worse than Posada at 80%.

What I'm saying is that there were times where his body could have used a break. Like take a Sunday game off and then have an off day on Monday. Something like that. It's not about the replacement being better. It's about keeping Cal fresh.

And the fact is that's the manager's call, not Ripken's. It's not like he held a gun to the manager's head and demanded that he be played.

[SaintsOfTheDiamond]

See, I hear that a lot, and it's a debatable point, but seriously, at what point were his potential replacements, even for a day, any better for the team's offense - and defensively, for that matter - than Cal?

Yep exactly.