Dave Claborn

I had the pleasure a few nights ago of hearing Cal Ripken Jr. speak.  Baseball’s “Iron Man” who spent his entire career with the home team of my youth, the Baltimore Orioles, was just a few days removed from being voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.  Ripken, of course, is perhaps best noted for “The Streak”—playing in a record 2,632 straight games during 16 seasons.  In all, Ripken played 3001 games for the Orioles, racking up 3,184 hits and becoming one of the best shortstops ever to play the game.

How did he do it?  Cal shared the secret of his success with those of us at Mershon Auditorium on the OSU campus.  And the secret is?  There really is no secret.  You put one foot in front of the other day in and day out.  You try to make yourself valuable to your organization in lots of ways, he said, so that, even on days when he wasn’t hitting well, he gave his managers many other reasons to keep him in the lineup.  Maybe it was his leadership, or his fielding, or a certain pitcher who relied on Cal to call pitches from the field.  The point is, he found ways to make it next to impossible for the manager to replace him in the lineup.  At six feet, four inches he was not the typical small, wiry shortstop, but he made plays that brought the crowd to its feet on a regular basis.  Cal simply worked at making himself indispensable to his team.  He figured he owed that to his team and his hometown for the privilege of playing professional baseball.

Cal is the first to admit he’s highly competitive.  In large part, it’s that sense of competition that drives him to excel.  But his motivation is more than that.  It’s not the selfish, inner-directed winning for winning’s sake.  Woven through his talk is a sense of duty—a sense of responsibility to his team, his family and his community.  He got that from his dad, Cal, Senior, he said.  For a few years, Senior managed the Orioles while Cal and his brother, Billy, both played on the team.  He remembered his dad plowing out neighbors’ driveways when it snowed—because he’s the one who had a tractor—and it was his way of adding value to his community.

Cal took that lesson to the ballpark.  Add value; community is important; your life has meaning, said the new hall of famer, only in so far as it impacts those around you.  Hitting the hits, living the Streak, making the money—they would be hollow achievements, he said, outside the context of his family and all those fans who look up to him. 

The real lesson Cal Ripken brought to the OSU students (and their parents) sitting in Mershon the other night was that we can all be “Iron Men” in our own venues.  The heroic is in all of us, whether we’re making great plays at shortstop or great dryers at Whirlpool.  Opportunities to give back to our community abound.  Whether we take advantage of them—whether we act out of selfishness or selflessness makes all the difference. 

Cal Ripken understands that balance, between self-interest and responsibility to the game and the greater community.  That’s why he was voted into the Hall of Fame almost automatically.  And that’s why others, who selfishly took the low road to financial reward by enhancing their performances with steroids, weren’t. 

I sent a letter to Cal, thanking him for being such a fine example for my kids.  Every generation needs its heroes.  I’m sure he’s heard that before.  And I suspect his answer is, heroism needn’t occur only on grand stages, as his did.  It is a product of the choices we make and the actions we take every day—whether anyone’s watching or not.  Successful communities need heroes too--residents and leaders who understand their success is tied directly to the success of their community.