YouSaid · the spoken record

Cal Ripken Jr.

lines on the record: 24
first: 2024-11-14
most recent: 2024-11-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I would say there's two moments I answer that question in two parts. The best feeling I ever had on the baseball field was catching the last out of the World Series 42 years ago. 42 years ago? 41 years ago. 1983. A little humpback line drive. When you catch it, part of the dream of being a baseball player is to win the World Series. And then now because I caught the last out, then I won the World Series. So that's the best feeling. Second best feeling and probably the best personal moment was to lap around Camden Yards. I was embarrassed that the game was stopped because the game became official halfway through. And then everybody kept clapping. I kept saying thank you, thank you. And then Bobby Bunya and Rafael Palmero pushed me out of the line and says, you're going to have to take a lap around here before we'll never get the game started. And I thought it was a silly idea. So I went around, started shaking hands. The celebration went from almost 50,000 down to like one-on-one. And it was kind of cool that way. And by the time I got down to third base, I could care less if the game ever started.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you get old, they don't do it so much anymore. No, I'm thankful that I still can't believe that I get recognized as readily as I do. And to me, always keep in mind, and sometimes someone approaching you, they're all nervous and they lose their mind and they say, you know, you're my biggest fan, and I go, I am. But they lose it. But then you have to keep in mind that it's meaningful to them. And so at that moment by signing your name for a little kid and their eyeballs get all and they run back to their mom or whatever else and say, look what I got. You help that happen. So if you remember what happens afterwards, you focus on, you know, and you just manage it and just get through it.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean, he was a great instructor. I witnessed him instructing other people on the minor leagues, so I learned kind of through his instruction to everybody else, but he never stood over me and said, you got to play the baseball.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, matter of fact, I could tell you that because my dad was in professional baseball, he only saw two of my games between the age of 8 and 18 before I got drafted, parts of two because he had.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the worst thing you could do is put too much pressure on your kid. If you want it for him as opposed to him wanting it.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gaylord Perry was the most famous of all spitballers. He actually wrote a book called Me and the Spitter. So the first time I faced him, ball comes in, it sinks a little bit, and then I hit a ground ball to shortstop. I make another out, and I'm thinking, if that's the spitter, that's nothing special. But then I came up with the bases loaded my third time up. And he threw me three pitches that dropped about this far and struck me out, you know, whatever else, and then kind of walked off and shook his head at me like, that's the spitter.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's better, and I think what they did is they cut out the dead time. At the end of my career, the walk-up music started to become popular. The young players kind of liked it. And they would tell them what to do. And sometimes in the on-deck circle and they hadn't played the song yet. And so they'd wait and look upstairs like this until they played the song and then they'd make their entrance to the ballpark. The shot clock or the pitch clock that they have now allows the umpire to gives them an enforceable tool to shape the behavior. There was always a rule that the pitcher had to throw it within 20 seconds of each pitch, but that got away from everybody. And now it's shaped the behavior. And I think the game moves.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Johnson changing the thought of a point guard at 6'9. He's 6'9", all of a sudden the advantages he had of his size, I think people started to understand that a bigger guy could play shortstop in second base. And today they're some of the more celebrated positions.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, a lot of the shortstops, Derek Jeter being one of them, gives me credit for my success at the position as a bigger shortstop that gave them opportunities that maybe otherwise they wouldn't have had. But I kind of think Derek, you would have carved out your own path. But I did move from third to short. I signed, I was 6'2180 when I came out of high school. And then I had a late growth spurt that almost grew three inches, and I put on five to eight pounds a year. By the time I got to the big legs, I was almost 6'5", 220. And they had put me at third base, but then Earl Weaver had this vision that I could play shortstop and we'd be a better team if I went over to shortstop. So he one day just put me there. And my success at the position as a bigger guy maybe is like when I'm a basketball fan. I wish I could have been a basketball player. But I remember Matt.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They didn't try that? No. Looking back on it, you could probably see signs in hindsight that players that might have used. But when you're playing, if you're not in this secret society, you don't know. And I didn't know.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The vote. And in my particular year, there was a protest vote where five people didn't turn in a ballot in that particular year as a protest to the steroid era. They said, well, and so they counted against you.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And started to hit a couple home runs in my next year. And then I got to AA, and then I had a breakout season. And in two years, I caught Bob Bonner and passed him to the Big Leaks. So he stayed the same, and I got better.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I was 17, I was a second-round draft pick by the Orioles. It turned to 18 at the end of the summer, and so it was my birthday is August 24th, so I was playing a couple of months before my 18th birthday. And when I first went away to play Pro Ball, you're a pretty big fish in a small pond in high school. You thought you were pretty good. And then you go and all of a sudden you're part of a team and you look around and no longer you're not the big fish anymore. There was one shortstop by the name of Bob Bonner that came out of Texas A&M. He was like a sixth round pick for us that year and I was taking ground balls and doing stuff with him and he clearly was light years ahead of me. He had a better arm. He could feel the ball better. He was quicker on the transfer. And I kept looking at him going, I'm never going to play. You know, this guy's too good. I'm not that good. And they moved him immediately to AA, which opened up the spot for me. And then I got my feet on the ground. I started playing pretty well.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew pretty quickly I grew up in around baseball. My dad was a manager of the Minor Leagues for the Orioles in the first 14 years of my life. So I went to work with my dad as early as eight or nine. He put me in a uniform. I was the bat boy. I shagged in the outfield. I had a chance to ask all the players how they did, how they caught the flyball, how they swung the bat. So I had all these teachers in front of me, but I had the skill that was pretty obvious early on”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think overall, I never liked the idea because you were a small market team you couldn't compete because I think competition is in your knowledge, your drafting, you get to draft, you get to sign players, you get to develop players. That's not all free agency that's happening. But if you're a big market team and you make a mistake in judgment on a player, you can throw more money at your mistakes. When you're a smaller market team, you have to be better at your baseball decisions.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Slightly. I try to think what are the other intangible values that you can offer a player besides My situation was I wanted to play in one place, I wanted to have control of playing in one place. So I think if we get to a point where we're trying to convince one of our players to stay, you know, you want to try to tell them all the values that are associated with, you know, Derek Jeter playing his whole career in a pinstripe uniform, me playing my whole career in the Orioles. And what's that mean for you in the bigger picture? And hopefully they'll value some of that, but it's going to be a competitive landscape where we're going to have to pay some salary.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I looked at it as you know, you kind of get bored. How can you do that? I looked at it as a second chance for a career opportunity. And so I wanted to learn business and we bought minor league teams. And so it was a comfortable business model that you can kind of learn business that way. And that was kind of fun. At first it felt like I spotted everybody else 20 years ahead of me. I'm 41, but I seem like I'm 21 in the business world. You come out. And then you learn that a lot of the things you learned along the way in baseball can apply to your work ethic, how you go about doing things, your preparation and all that kind of stuff. That all applies to what you're doing now. So now that you're an owner of the Baltimores, how do you feel about these high price contracts that payers are getting? It used to be a player, probably wanted higher price contracts. Now you're an owner. How do you look at that?”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Professional athletes are idealized. I mean, it's hard to believe this, but they're like more than politicians, right? So athletes are really well liked and admired and so forth. But then when you finish your career, you have a whole different life. So you retired at what age, 41? 41, yeah. 41. You played 20 years, 22 years? 21? 21 years in the major leagues, and you were tired at an age that is old for professional athlete, but young for somebody in private equity or something like that. So when you retired at that age, did you say, what am I going to do the rest of my life? And what did you decide to do for the remaining 10, next 20 years of your life? What did you do? So if you save your money pretty well, then you have choices, and you could decide to learn how to play golf and like a lot of people do and kind of retire early. Are you a golfer? I play a little bit, but no. I could be pretty good. I should try miniature golf. That's what I do.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More personal than if you beat them or whatever else they'd hold against you for your whole life. You can challenge a call now and they go up to New York and they watch them on video and they make a decision there. You think that's good or bad? I like it, yeah. I mean, because one play could turn the whole outcome of the game. And they have the technology to do it now. And I think what you're going to see in the next couple years is some form of the robotic strike zone, you know, whether they're testing it in the minor leagues on a challenge system or like every third game they just have something in the year of the umpire and the robot or whatever calls the whole game based on where the ball's on the plate. He just tells the guy what to do. And so they're testing those things out. And I think the challenge system might be good because a key pitch in the eighth inning with the base is loaded and it's called a ball or a strike. The ball turns it in favor of the team that's got the bases loaded. A strike kind of gets them out of it.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think a lot of chasing speed and chasing movement, the combination of those two, is causing it. When a golfer is lining up a putt on a tournament, everybody has to be quiet. Nobody's throwing anything at his head. Why does he need to have so much quiet, but you're not allowed to talk or say anything when you're putting for five inches? But if somebody's throwing a ball at your head 100 miles an hour, they can scream and yell, doesn't it seem that's ass backwards? Yes, yes. It is interesting, though. When you play in front of a packed house that's just noise, you know, it's not, you don't hear the individual things. I mean, here in New York, I think the fans felt that they were part of the game. And so they were trying to get inside your head. They were screaming things at you, try to play a little mind game with. And if you beat them and you did really well, they'd almost go, ah, cow, see you tomorrow. You know, it was all part of it. The Boston fans were a little different is that they were...”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of those problems when you were playing is that because they're playing so young and they're throwing so many different kind of pitches that really hurt the elbow and the arm? Well, I think some of that is true because Tommy John surgery has come down even to high school and sometimes kids younger than that. And I think some parents feel like we'll just keep throwing and if it breaks or whatever else, we can always fix it and you'll come back throwing harder than you did before. I think that's the wrong way to look at it. But I think in the big leagues with all the analytics that go around, I think pitchers are chasing velocity more, so there's more of training to get your arms stronger, to throw the ball harder, but they're chasing movement. So there's two things that happen. If you throw a fastball, you get behind the baseball, but then when you try to make it move with the same power, you're torquing your elbow or your wrist right at the end to try to make it move. And then all this pressure goes right here.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a deep love for baseball still in the country, and I see it at the Ripkin Baseball was a kid's business that we developed experiential when you play tournaments and we teach and those sorts of things. And you can witness it right in front of you, that kids, eight to 12 year olds, feel the same way about baseball that we did. I think what's happened in sports overall is that there's specialization that happens earlier in the sports. And so you're not playing baseball, basketball, and football. All that time you're specializing really early on. So there's a lot less kids, I think, that are playing baseball. But the ones that are playing are actually playing more of it because they play spring, summer, and speaking of that. Lots of pitchers these days have elbow problems. They now get surgery called Tommy John surgery and players have to take a year and a half before they're really going to play again. Why are there so many pictures that seem to have this problem now? They didn't have as many.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good. You never had a headache, no cold, nothing happened. Yes, all of those things happen. But you fight through it. You learn to play through different things and you find out really quickly that I can still compete. I still can play even though I might be less than 100%. Baseball was called the National Pastime for a long time, but obviously other sports have taken a lot of attention away from baseball, basketball, and football, for example. Do you still feel that Americans have a certain passion for baseball that is similar to what they had 20, 30, 40 years ago, or do you think it's really changed a lot?”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you're not going to ask me what my secret was, right? Well, I'll get to that. I don't know if I have one. I mean, I love the game a lot. You're an everyday player was to find in those years as playing every game. And it was an honor to be thought of and counted on each and every day by your teammates. So I had my dad who was also a coach when I first came in, probably for the first 11 or 12 years of my career. And I think the real reason that I played is that I couldn't come into a ballpark and say you have turf toe where you stubbed your toe and say, okay, I might need to miss a game or two. I couldn't face my dad, you know, let alone the manager of the team.”
2024-11-14 · The David Rubenstein Show · Cal Ripken Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source