Cal Ripken Jr.’s record streak of 2,632 consecutive games played began on Sunday, May 30, 1982. The Orioles lost, 6-0, to the Toronto Blue Jays, with Jim Gott picking up his first major league win at the age of 22.
Gott threw six innings of shutout baseball, striking out six and walking four. The right-hander kept a ball from the game to serve as a memento from his first victory. Thirteen years later, he gave the ball to Ripken as part of the 2131 celebration on Sept. 6, 1995.
“He beat us that day and it was his first major league win,” Ripken said on Glenn Clark Radio Aug. 27. “I don’t know who found out about it or if he came up with the idea, but he was there to present it in the celebration of 2131. I said, ‘Dude, that’s your first win. Keep it. Don’t give it to me. I have plenty of stuff.’ He insisted on it. He said he’s representing all of baseball and this is how we feel. I reluctantly took it.”
Ripken said he held on to the ball for 30 years trying to figure out how to give the ball back to Gott, who pitched in the big leagues for 14 years and turned 66 in August. The Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation held its annual gala in late March, with this year’s event celebrating the 30th anniversary of 2131.
Ripken invited Gott to the gala so he could give the ball back to him.
“When I got up there, I put him in a position where I presented him the ball back in front of all those people. I said, ‘And you can’t give it back,'” Ripken explained. “So he came up and he was moved by it. We were all kind of moved. I was half-crying myself trying to hold it back. I said, ‘Do you want to say a couple things to everyone?’ He goes, ‘I do, but I can’t.’ It turned out to be the perfect way to give it back to him. I said, ‘I’m returning it for all of us who love baseball. I’m returning it to the rightful owner. It goes back to you and your family.'”
The Orioles are celebrating the 30th anniversary of 2131 ahead of their Sept. 6 game against the Dodgers, exactly 30 years after Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak. A number of Ripken’s former teammates will be in attendance, including Brady Anderson, Harold Baines, Ben McDonald, Eddie Murray, Mike Mussina and Rafael Palmeiro, as well as former Orioles play-by-play man Jon Miller and commissioner Rob Manfred.
Ripken has fond memories looking back on that night, especially as he gets older. He turned 65 in late August.
“I guess I’m getting more tickled about it 30 years later because maybe I’m in a position where you look back and you kind of review your life a little bit more than I did before,” Ripken said. “I think I was just thinking, ‘You’ve got a lot of life to live, so look forward.’ I’m not saying I’m at the end, but when you reach 65, you start look at things like who do you want to spend time with? How do you want to spend your time? You might have more of a limited time.”
Ripken moved into a different phase of his life last year after joining David Rubenstein’s Orioles ownership group. The Orioles have had a disappointing season in 2025, with the club being hit by a nasty combination of injuries and poor performance. That forced the Orioles to take a step back and sell at the trade deadline.
Ripken has confidence in Mike Elias, who was hired by the Angelos ownership group and is finishing his seventh season as the general manager of the club.
“You can look out on the field right now and you can see huge potential,” Ripken said. “Mike Elias has loaded our system with talent for a while now, which has put us in a position to be successful in the big leagues. I think it’s going to be fun to watch who we got back from the proven talent that we sent away at the deadline.”
Ripken was heartened by the return of right-hander Kyle Bradish, who finished fourth in American League Cy Young voting in 2023 and was sorely missed while he recovered from Tommy John surgery.
“You really see the life in his fastball and the sharp breaking ball,” Ripken said. “Hopefully keep your fingers crossed that Grayson Rodriguez will be in that role again and all of the sudden you can immediately see with the nucleus of our guys that we’re going to be a competitive playoff team. That’s going to be the expectation next year. It might be a little more of a developmental second half, or this last six weeks, where we’re finding out what players can do, but they’re talented big league potential guys. I, for one, am excited about that.”
See Also: Cal’s Big Night: Ripken, Berman Remember 2,131
For more from Ripken, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles