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TODAY: Monday, May 15
What hasn't Ripken accomplished?



The highway to 3,000 hits is longer than Interstate 80, more grueling than any triathlon, more pocked with potholes than the entire state of Massachusetts.

So when Cal Ripken pulled off the exit ramp of that highway Saturday night in Minneapolis, he was finishing a journey that should actually do more to define his career than the events of Sept. 6, 1995. And if you can't identify that famous date, you're out of lifelines. You aren't allowed to poll the audience in this game.

Was there a man, woman, child or household pet in America who wasn't weeping that night in '95 when Ripken blew by Lou Gehrig's ultra-romantic iron-man record? We've never met one.

But if you stood in awe of Ripken's feat that night, then you're required to pay homage to this one, too.

Why? Because the same qualities that got Ripken to one magic number -- 2,632 -- also delivered him to his latest magic number:

  • Work ethic.

  • Consistency.

  • Professionalism.

  • Size and offensive skills that literally reinvented the shortstop position.

  • And the defensive reliability that allowed him to keep going out there until his pile of hits was 3,000 knocks high.

    OK, so it took Ripken a while to get there. It took him 10,803 at-bats, in fact -- more than any other man in the 3,000 Hit Club and almost 250 more than the previous owner of that distinction, David Winfield (10,559). But so what?

    We remember asking Wade Boggs about Ripken last year, as he was chasing his own 3,000th hit. Boggs laughed and quipped: "Hey, I might be chasing 4,000 if I hadn't had any days off."

    Yeah, maybe he would. Matter of fact, give Tony Gwynn those 10,803 at-bats and (assuming he was still at .339 lifetime) he'd have had 3,662 hits by then.

    But here's a big "So what?" to that, too. You think it's so easy just to go out there, plug away and get those hits, year after year after year? Then how come the only two position players who were in the big leagues when Ripken arrived in '81 and are still there are Rickey Henderson and Harold Baines?

    And back in Ripken's Rookie-of-the-Year season in 1982, neither the NL award-winner (Steve Sax) nor the runners-up in each league (Kent Hrbek and Johnny Ray) even got to within 1,000 of 3,000 hits.

    Let's remember that Ripken collected his 3,000 hits while mostly playing what is considered to be a defensive position. And it's not as if all he did was show up, put on a uniform for 19 years and then go tip his cap in the old Metrodome. Let's remember what he accomplished along the way:

  • He's the only middle infielder in that rarified 3,000-Hit, 400-Homer Club.

  • He led his league in hits, runs and doubles -- in his second season, when he also won his first MVP Award.

  • He got 200 hits in a season twice, drove in 100 runs four times, scored 100 three times and had 10 straight seasons of 20-plus home runs (at shortstop, remember).

  • He's one of just two shortstops in history (him and Ernie Banks) to win multiple MVP awards.

  • He won an All-Star Game MVP award and an All-Star Home Run Derby.

  • He went to 17 straight All-Star Games -- and his 16 starts in a row are more than any player ever.

  • He's one of only two shortstops (him and Maury Wills) to win an MVP award and a Gold Glove in the same year (1991).

  • And when he got around to leather-working, he won two Gold Gloves, once went 95 games and 428 consecutive chances without an error, had a season of only three errors and set or tied 11 different defensive records.

    That sure sounds like a Hall of Fame career from this angle. And what do you know -- we never even mentioned the two magic Cal Ripken numbers he'll be most known for: 2,632 and 3,000.

    Because, ultimately, you don't judge a Hall of Famer on magic numbers alone. If you can ignore those numbers and still say this guy belongs in the Hall of Fame, then the argument's over.

    And in the case of Calvin E. Ripken Jr., it was over a long time before that number 3,000 came into his life.

    Useless Information Dept.

  • The amazing Jim Leyritz has done it again. He hit a game-winning home run for the Yankees in the seventh inning Sunday. And if you feel like you've seen that before someplace, you aren't dreaming. The Sultan of Swat Stats, SABR home-run historian David Vincent, reports that of Leyritz's 89 career homers (counting the postseason), 37 either have tied games or put his team ahead. That's 41.6 percent. And 17 of those have come in the seventh inning or later. That's just about one in every five. That should be impossible. Shouldn't it?

  • The big Mets story Sunday should not have been Bobby Valentine, for a change. It should have been this: Mets infielders committed three errors in one game.

    According to Stats Inc.'s Jim Henzler, the Mets hadn't committed three infield errors in the same game since Aug. 10, 1997. That's 394 games ago, counting the '99 playoffs. Last year, that infield's only TWO-error game was the fourth game of the season. So just in April alone, this unit has had twice as many multi-error games as all last year (Game 2 in Tokyo was the other). Hard to believe.

  • Heart-failure schedules of the week: After becoming just the third team in the last 30 years to open a new park with five straight losses, the Giants are embarking on one of those convenient Cincinnati-to-Arizona-to-Florida trips that Bud Selig is lobbying so hard to obliterate.

    And Texas is in the midst of 12 straight games against the Yankees, Red Sox and Indians -- including an eight-game stretch in which it has faced or will face David Cone, Orlando Hernandez, Dave Burba, Bartolo Colon, Chuck Finley, El Duque again, Cone again and Roger Clemens. Some fun.

  • Until Olmedo Saenz got him Saturday, Pedro Martinez hadn't given up a home run in so long that the last guy to hit one off him (Chili Davis) is now retired. Between that Chili shot last Sept. 10 and Saenz, Pedro faced 175 hitters without anyone going trotting, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Oh. And the last home run he allowed with anyone on base was Sept. 24, 1998 (by another retired guy, Chris Hoiles). Incredible.

  • Rey Ordonez's three-hit game Saturday not only ended an 0-for-24 funk that stretched back to his first at-bat of the season, including NO balls out of the infield in his last 18 ABs. It also expelled him from the More Errors Than Hits Club. But Montreal's Michael Barrett (6 errors, 2 hits) was still in the club room at last look.

  • And if Juan Gonzalez hates Comerica Park so much, as some folks in Detroit have been speculating, how come he went 7-for-14, with five extra-base hits, in his first homestand there?

    Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com.

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