The good times continue to roll early in spring training, and on March 4, 1996, the Orioles beat the Yankees, 4-1, to go to a perfect 3-0 in Grapefruit League play. Big, strong Rafael Palmeiro hit another homer. Manager Davey Johnson imparted some sage analysis, “It’s always good to play well. That’s always the object, to play better than the other guys. We played well.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 6D, March 5, 1996)

At shortstop for a few innings was Cal Ripken, Jr. That’s no surprise. I was born in October of 1982, and to this point, Cal has played at shortstop for every Orioles game of my lifetime. He is the unquestioned star of the team, and one of baseball’s biggest stars. He transcended the game last season simply by showing up for work every day. He is baseball’s Iron Man, and the night he broke Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played — September 6, 1995 — remains one of the sport’s most iconic moments.

Cal enters 1996 having played 2,153 consecutive games. He is my favorite player, inspiring a generation of kids like me to strive for perfect attendance at school. Born about an hour north of Baltimore in Havre de Grace, Md., he is the son of Cal Ripken, who spent 36 years in the Orioles organization as a player, scout, coach, and manager. His family’s roots in Harford County reach back more than two centuries. (Baltimore Sun, p. 1A, Sept. 3, 1995) Junior, therefore, is the platonic ideal of Birdland. 

But it’s not just showing up to work every day that makes Cal special. He’s also a good player. Really good. He was Rookie of the Year in 1982, and then won league MVP and the World Series the following year. Life was good at that time and it seemed like he would be a permanent fixture in the playoffs for the next decade. Instead, he has been great, but has never been back to the playoffs. He has made 13 straight All Star Games and was league MVP again in 1991. That 1991 season is one of the best ever played. He hit 34 home runs, drove in 114 runs, and played Gold Glove defense at shortstop. He was the complete player.

As a quick aside, it’s important to note how unprecedented it was for a guy like Cal to be at shortstop. The cornerstone of the defense, the shortstop has to cover a ton of ground and the position had been traditionally reserved for smaller, quick-twitch athletes. But Cal is a massive human. He’s listed at 6’4”, 200 pounds, but is probably bigger than that. He is redefining the position, and opening the door for large dudes at shortstop, a trend that would produce some great players over the next three decades.

Since he wasn’t the quickest out there, Cal relied on seemingly preternatural baseball instincts honed almost since birth. Growing up in a baseball family, he and his siblings would spend summers in whatever minor league town their dad happened to be in. Mike Klingaman of The Baltimore Sun described it best, in an incredible feature on Ripken’s childhood published the week he broke the record. “Whatever the town, the ballpark was baby sitter. … By first grade, he’d seen hundreds of contests, asked a zillion baseball questions and soaked up many subtleties of the game.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 18A, September 3, 1995)

My favorite story about Cal being a baseball genius came a few years back when Ben McDonald, who pitched for the Orioles and played with Cal from 1989 through 1995, discussed how Cal actually called pitches for him … during the game … from shortstop. He would then sit down with the young pitcher and the similarly young catcher (Chris Hoiles) after the game and explain why he pitched each player a certain way. McDonald told the story on Cal’s son Ryan’s podcast, and the whole thing is worth watching.

But as great as Cal is, and as iconic as his stature is within the game, is the Iron Man starting to wear down? His production in the four years since has never come close to his 1991 “career year.” The next season his slugging percentage dropped 200 points, from .566 to .366. While that rebounded to .422 in 1995, he may no longer be the same intimidating slugger in the middle of the lineup. And he is also showing his age at shortstop, to the extent that some are starting to question whether his days at the position are numbered and if he’d be better off at the less movement-dependent position of third base. In fact, in March 4’s Baltimore Sun (p. 1C, March 4, 1996), Ken Rosenthal started his column, “Cal Ripken to third base? The question, once so preposterous, is becoming more legitimate.” The column itself admits it may be premature, but speculates that the Orioles could field a much better defensive lineup with Cal at third and former touted prospect Manny Alexander at short.

For now, Cal is still locked in at short and is, as always, expected to play every game there. And now with six-time All Star Roberto Alomar sliding in next to him at second base, maybe this is the year Cal finally gets back to the playoffs. Regardless, this is Cal’s team and this is Cal’s city as long as he’s in orange and black. No one else will ever wear the #8 jersey for the Orioles.

Oh yeah, 1996 is an election year, I guess we can check in on that every once in a while. Today, buried below the fold of the Business section, is a fun piece by Jay Hancock, “Milton Friedman labels Buchanan view ‘fallacious.’” (Baltimore Sun, p. 9C, March 4, 1996) You see, perennial candidate and generally terrible human Pat Buchanan recently won a very tightly contested Republican New Hampshire primary on February 20, and tomorrow (March 5) is Super Tuesday, with nine states, including Maryland, heading to the polls. There hadn’t been much attention paid to Buchanan’s silly economic ideas before his surprise primary win, but now people are having to do just that. In this case, his silly idea is tariffs, specifically a 10 percent tariff on Japanese imports and a 40 percent tariff on Chinese goods. You see, really silly stuff. Neoliberal destroyer of worlds Milton Friedman is mad at Pat, because, as the author describes Friedman, he is “the dean of free markets. The lord of laissez-faire.” Seems like this is a great “Let them fight” situation. My favorite part of the column is this: “Before the primary, pundits sometimes placed Mr. Buchanan in the political company of mid-century European dictators. Now, ‘Buchanan has a lot in common with Teddy Roosevelt,’ said Alfred E. Eckes, former chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission, in the New York Times.” Never change, NYT, and they never have.

Anyway, here’s a pretty comprehensive piece from March 4, 1996, in TIME Magazine, “Campaign ’96: The Case Against Buchanan.” It details his racism, sexism, antisemitism, close ties to Nazi war criminals, and homophobia. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called Buchanan’s primary victory “frightening” at the time. Here’s a snippet: “Among TV talk-show conservatives, Buchanan emerged as the foremost belligerent power because when he talks, no niceties are observed. Race and immigration? ’If we had to take a million immigrants in, say, Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate?’ (1991) Women? ‘Simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed.’ (1983) Gays? ‘Have declared war on nature.’(1983)” Clearly, Buchanan was simply a politician ahead of his time by, say, two decades. (He was, however, a regular contributor on MSNBC until 2012.)

Despite the coverage of Buchanan, his momentum has been fading, with the presumed favorite, Kansas Senator Bob Dole, winning five of the last six primaries and poised for a rout on Super Tuesday. Stay tuned.

Welcome to a recurring segment where I find fun things in today’s (in 1996) Baltimore Sun!

On the front of the business section, we got to learn about how Leon Seidman built a catnip empire in Hagerstown, Md. Not much more to say other than that.