Cal Ripken gets some rare bad press:
Cal Ripken played in 2,632 consecutive games during his two-decade long career. He had more than 11,500 at bats, no doubt many in pressure-packed situations. So where was baseball's Iron Man during dinner at Thursday's Men's Night Out banquet?
Meditating.
Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County officials were told to provide Ripken with a separate room for "meditation time," before his speech, which turned out to be a 40-minute infomercial for one of his books.
Ripken's refusal to eat with the people who paid $100 a ticket plus a $250 minimum individual gift for the federation, and also paid for his first-class round trip airfare and one night at the Four Seasons Resort, angered some. Ripken was paid tens of thousands of dollars (Ripken commands at least $50,000 a speech but did lower is fee for Thursday), and only met with those who were invited to a VIP room before he disappeared for at least an hour.
I never had a problem with Ripken the player, but Ripken the self-help, motivational guru is a bit tough to take. The book he was shilling in Palm Beach is called "Get in the Game: 8 Elements of Perseverance That Make the Difference." How fortunate for Cal that the skills and qualities needed for a fulfilling life just happened to break down into the same number of categories as his uniform number! How lucky that his scientific and psychological investigation into the human condition just so happened to result in a Ripken-specific marketing angle!
How sad that politeness and personability weren't among the eight qualities that "make the difference."
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I always respected Cal the player.
Cal the writer? Not as talented.
Cal the motivational speaker? Ehh.
Craig, I understand that you are an MSNBC employee, but this isn't a "News Event" piece. It's an "Opinion" piece. An opinion I largely share, incidentally, but listing this as news instead of opinion seems to be ethically murky, particularly by a professional.
Since when is a blog prohibited from running opinion?
Also, I'm not an MSNBC employee. I'm technically a freelancer with a more regular schedule.
AdipicAcid -- Upon reflection, I need to apologize. I wasn't clear that you were referring to the tag underneath the title denoting this as "news: event." I thought you were merely taking issue with the fact that I was writing opinion on an NBC site. Sorry for the snark and my failure to understand what you were saying.
In my defense, I don't think I've ever noticed those tags before, and I'm not 100% certain I can change what they say (I'll look now). I'll try to be more careful in the future.
Not a problem. You can easily change the tag, as long as you see the same options us ordinary Newsviners see.
As I said, I agree with your opinion in the main. I've lost a lot of respect for Cal over how he's handled his motivational speaking gigs.
You've written fleetingly that you have a problem with the motivational-speaker thing. I'd really, really like to read your take on that (probably at ShysterBall). I used to hire motivational speakers at my undergrad institution.
It's not some really sharp animus against them. I just can't shake the impression that most motivational speaker/self-help types are in it to shake down the emotionally vulnerable into buying books and DVD sets and all manner of other junk with the promise that by doing so all of their problems will be solved. Bull. Life is way too complicated and many problems are way too big to be "solved" via an 8-step, catchphrase-heavy program that, in reality is nothing more than repackaged New-Age claptrap.
And repackaged and repackaged again. All of these guys come up with new programs every couple of years, all of which are tied to new books and DVDs. No one ever thinks to ask whether the guru discovered some flaw in the old program. No one ever seems to notice or care that these guys are really in the product-pushing business, not the psychology business.
Not cool Cal.
If it was not for your fans, you would of never would of been up in the position to write self help books.
I bet Billy Ripken would of been more fan friendly.
What I'd like to know is how Cal's relationship or lack thereof with this father made him into the kind of person who would do something like this. Maybe an intrepid S.I. reporter could shed some light on the subject.
Zing!
What ever! This is my Cal Ripken recollection. In the waning days of Tiger Stadium in Detriot, a bunch of guys from work drove from the west side of Michigan to Detriot. This was early in the season in April. Probably 2,000 people in the stadium. It started raining and it was cold! Who was the only player to step out in the cold and rain to sign autographs? It wasn't any of the Tigers, Bobby Higginson was probably their best player at the time. Nope, it was the most famous player in the stadium, Cal Ripken. I didn't stand in line for an autograph but I sure did take notice.
Cal just lost a fan. It'd be nice to see an apology here...
Sports personalities are overpaid, and often their character is questionable. I just didn't think Cal was one of "those" guys...
I know that 100% of the profits from his coaching DVD went to charity, but here is my experience with Cal, Jr. which left a bad taste not only in my mouth, but also in my then 8 year old son's:
At Fan Fest 2002 in Milwaukee, there were an untold number of former All-Stars available to sign autographs as well as chat and commiserate. Without being asked, when he noticed I was pointing him out to my son, Lee Smith invited us over to get the ball my son was holding autographed while he was eating a hot dog in the lunch area. Dave Winfield did a clinic that my son participated in. When it was over, my son sheepishly approached him with another ball, which he happily signed. I watched from a distance, and knew that my son had followed instructions when they looked over at me laughing and pointing. My son asked if he would sign a pigeon for his father. He said he would. (Un)fortunately I was fresh out of dead pigeons. I later related the story to the little guy.
Then the announcement came that Cal Jr. would be signing autographs, but that he would ONLY sign copies of his new coaching DVD, conveniently available here for only $39.99. Well, my son loved Cal, so we bought a DVD and got in line. I held the DVD, and my son was carrying around yet another ball (we bought a case earlier in the day). Cal signed my DVD, and when my son sheepishly went to hand the ball to Cal, he was told "I'm sorry, son, but I'm not signing anything but the DVD today. Maybe another time." Why not sign a kid's baseball? His father forked over the $40 for your other deal. I asked if I bought another DVD if he'd sign a ball for my son, and was politely told no. That's the post-baseball Cal......
Good points, per usual. And isn't this "bad press" in a different sense of the word?
"Ripken's refusal not to eat with the people...." What's "refusal not to eat?"
I still think he is/was overrated. It's like, because he broke Lou Gehrig's streak of consecutive games played people somehow equate that to being as good or almost as good as Gehrig the ballplayer. In reality, he was an ok hitter and a good defender. Meanwhile, Gehrig was an absolute monster behind the plate.
His antics in this story don't really surprise me.
I agree, and have always wondered how many other managers would have kept #8 in the lineup every game when he was batting .225. Gehrig played all those games because he was a ballplayer, and thats what they did, Ripken was always after the record.
You can't compare player performances from different eras with any relevance. You need to compare them to how much better they played than their peers in general, and others who were best at their same position. Ripken was a stronger fielder than most people realize, making far more plays than many flashier shortstops, a top hitter for the SS position, but would have been only a marginal third baseman as far as his hitting goes.
It amazes me that that the Yankees leave overrated Jeter at SS when they could have the greatest of all time in A-Rod, then find a power hitting 3B to play next to him. Instead they have below average SS in the field who is okay at the plate, and a 3B who is closer to league average as a hitter because it's a power position. Just plain dumb.
Meh. Did Ripken fulfill his contract? Was he expected to attend the dinner? It's easy to take pot shots, Craig. Ain't nobody perfect, and there's a long track record of Ripken going way above and beyond the already incredibly high and unrealistic expectations of fans and media for perfection from their hero/role models. Did you even make any attempt to contact Ripken and ask for his side of the story? Did you investigate at all? Or did you just feel happy to have taken a shot and run?
As a Ripken fan I was pretty disappointed when I stumbled over this post. Luckily, I went to the source article and discovered several of the "facts" cited to make Ripken look bad were entirely invented (with a correction posted) and eyewitnesses to the event had an entirely different take on the situation in the comments. Commenting on a man's "politeness and personability" based on 2nd hand questionable information is pretty shoddy journalism.
You might want to at least add the source's correction to your own report.