Earl Weaver Rules

There’s little doubt that the best baseball player to put on an Orioles uniform in the last 25 years is the Iron Man, Cal Ripken, Jr.  Now, you can relive some of his greatest moments with the Cal Ripken, Jr. Collector’s Edition DVD.  The set comes with five complete games as well a bonus disk with a bunch of extras.  Here are the games you get to relive with this set:

September 6, 1995 - Cal Ripken, Jr. passes Lou Gehrig for the most consecutive games played by a baseball player.
May 28, 1996 - Cal Ripken, Jr. hits three homeruns for the first time in his career and drives in a career best eight runs.
October 1, 1996 - Cal Ripken, Jr.’s first postseason appearance in 13 years, he goes three for three in game one of the ALDS against the Indians.
June 13, 1999 - Cal Ripken, Jr. goes a perfect six for six and sets Orioles single game records for hits (6) and runs (5).
July 10, 2001 - Cal Ripken, Jr.’s final All Star Game.  Ripken goes on to homer in the game and he wins the second All Star Game MVP award of his career.
Bonus Disk - A look at Cal Ripken, Jr.’s career.    This is a fun and fact filled documentary of one of baseball’s all time greats.

This is a must have for any Orioles fan and even more so if your a Cal Ripken, Jr. fan.

John Sickels recently wrote up a very interesting prospect retrospective on Cal Ripken, Jr.  Good stuff and it’s very interesting to see how his power blossomed through out his minor league career and that fact that even a Hall of Fame player like Ripken would spend four years in the minors offers hope for a lot of young players.

There were rumors floating around about a month ago that Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr. was interested in buying the Orioles and had met with current owner Peter Angelos about a staggered sale.  Angelos squashed those rumors by simply saying he wasn’t selling.  Now Ripken has come out publicly and said if Angelos were to ever sell the team, he’d definitely be interested.

Ripken’s company, Ripken Professional Baseball, already owns two minor league teams.  Then again, this means little until Angelos is willing to let the team go.  As far as the job Ripken would do, I guess you can say he can’t do much worse.

No big surprise here.  Cal Ripken, Jr. was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame along with Tony Gywnn.  He had 3,000 hits, the iron man streak and he played most of his career at shortstop and all that adds up to Hall of Fame credentials.

I was going to do a look back at the Earl Weaver years but I might changes gears and do a year by year Cal Ripken,, Jr. retrospective instead.  It’d be fitting with his upcoming induction.

There’s a great column over at the Hardball Times about Orioles’ great Cal Ripken, Jr.’s early years as a professional baseball player.  Good stuff and worth checking out.  We all take for granted Ripken’s fantastic career but you forget that not all of the super starts had it easy coming up through the minors.