Cal Ripken/.....

[Crapshoot]

Someone over at baseballprimer posted this,
and its an interesting read for anyone in love with the myth of Cal...

Ripken's stubborn insistence on maintiaining the streak clearly hurt his team (if you assume that the team's goal was to win rather than to make money) ... he wore down, his production suffered, and he was just plain bad for long stretches of time. At the same time, he had written into his contract that he didn't have to ride the team bus (nothing but limos for Saint Cal!) or stay in the team hotel.

For this, the man has been portrayed as the perfect embodiment of selfless team play. Never mind the 91 OPS+ (1992, contemporaneous to the limo anecdotes below)

Meanwhile, Barry Bonds puts up a 262 OPS+ and is made out to be the poster child for hurting your team through selfishness because ... well, because he keeps a recliner by his locker, I guess. Assume the worst of what people say about Bonds is true. In that case, he's a selfish prick who helps his team. Ripken was a selfish prick who hurt his team because of it -- and has apparently skipped straight over the nomination process and gone straight to sainthood.
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"There are 24 teammates who get on the players' bus at the hotel to go to the park, and there's Bonds, who gets on the bus with the broadcasters, the trainers and the manager who coddles him." -- Rick Reilly, 8/27/01

"Cal Ripken Jr. doesn't miss a day of work for 16 years, makes an error every other Fourth of July and gets ripped for it." -- Reilly, under the heading "What's Wrong about Sports," 8/10/98

"Ripken reportedly has drawn the ire of teammates for occasionally eschewing the team bus to ride limousines from the airport, and for staying at hotels different from the one in which the ballclub is staying. Ripken may be just trying to avoid the crush of autograph-seekers that dog him on the road, but there may also be something else involved in his purported fall from grace. He has hit just six home runs in his last 522 at-bats dating back to last season." -- Sun-Sentinel, 5/23/1993

"It is time to again ask the question: Is chasing Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games record hurting Cal Ripken? Since July 1 of last season, Ripken has only six homers in 487 at-bats and
is hitting .222. ... To keep his privacy, Ripken doesn't stay at the same hotel as his teammates (he has a limo pick him up at the airport) or if he does, he stays under an assumed name." -- Chicago Sun-Times, 5/21/1993

"Johnny Oates, the Baltimore manager, declined to comment on Ripken's road practices. 'It's out of my hands,' he said. 'It's negotiated. It's in the contract.'" -- New York Times, 5/30/1993

[JAttractive]

That his breaking the record was chosen as the #1 moment is a complete joke in my mind. I don't even know if it is deserving to be on the ballot.

[Dargone]

I agree 100% with Jattractive on this one...