Angelos, in fact, saw it as a sham the same as the MLBPA. He believed that the fans of the Baltimore Orioles weren’t going to pay top dollar to come to Camden Yards and watch amateurs play what portended to be Major League Baseball. The Ripken streak factored nicely into the tapestry of his argument but every adult sports fan had witnessed the 1982 NFL strike when fake players were put into shiny professional football uniforms and hustled onto the field in what served as the low point in the history of the league.
Angelos rode his stance hard in the national mainstream news media and continued to enjoy another few months of his honeymoon as the “King of Baltimore,” with yet another populist ideal that the fans of the Orioles devoured. Finally, on March 31, 1995, judge Sonia Sotomayor issued an injunction ending baseball’s longest and most damaging work stoppage – a strike and lockout that lasted seven months. The case ended up in U.S. District Court after the National Labor Relations Board charged the owners with committing unfair labor practices. Sotomayor insisted the owners were violating labor law, and ordered them to reinstate their previous Collective Bargaining Agreement and to bargain in good faith with the MLBPA.
While the other teams in Major League Baseball were ready to field replacement players in March 1995, Angelos never allowed the Orioles to participate. While he was a hero to the fans and many thought this to be a brilliant recruiting tool for some members of the MLBPA in the coming years of free agency, the stand that Angelos took against his business partners in the labor struggle wouldn’t soon be forgotten by the men in his wealthy MLB club. The Lords were quite angry with Peter Angelos. He was routinely avoided or ignored at MLB ownership meetings and American League President Gene Budig was charged with attempting to bring him in line during the work stoppage. At one point, Budig threatened seizing control of the Orioles from Angelos when the rhetoric got contentious and spring training with scab players was clearly not going to happen in Baltimore. “The league constitution is clearly enforceable in our judgment,” Budig said.
Angelos berated management negotiator Richard “Dick” Ravitch and crassly questioned the qualifications of Bud Selig to be acting commissioner not only in the meetings with them but also in the media afterward. Selig thought the Angelos quote regarding his abilities as an automobile dealer were particularly personal and out-of-line with an industry whose leaders needed to have a “union” of their own.
Angelos refused to play along, and never signed the owners’ declaration canceling the end of the 1994 season, playoffs and the World Series. Angelos voted against the owners’ resolution in December 1994 to declare an impasse in negotiations and implement a salary cap.
And as for “seizing” the Orioles?
“Let them try it,” Angelos said in regard to the other MLB fielding replacement players and taking control of the Orioles from his grasp. “The concept of recruiting willy-nilly people across the country who are not major league baseball players and attempting to make teams out of them and offer them to the fans of America as legitimate major league players is a foolish enterprise. We will have no part of that.”
8But it never got to that point after the Sotomayor ruling and relative calm was restored amongst the owners, who still had a huge canyon amongst their brethren in regard to revenue, sponsorships, TV money, fan bases, territories and payroll limitations. Competitive balance was never achieved during the 1994 strike and two decades later very little overall good came from all of the angst, lost revenue and most importantly, the lost faith of the fans of Major League Baseball who saw the greed as revolting from the stands.
But with the games moving back onto the field in 1995 and Cal Ripken’s streak becoming the focal point of the sports world, the Baltimore Orioles led by manager Phil Regan were a colossal flop on the field. Like every team in MLB, the Orioles needed to come together quickly during a shortened spring training but the Birds had it even worse working from a dilapidated minor league facility in Sarasota and still searching for a permanent spring training site, a massive baseball workplace problem that stemmed from the Eli Jacobs era and one that it took Angelos nearly two decades to grasp and correct.
Pitchers Kevin Brown and Jesse Orosco and outfielder Andy Van Slyke joined the team during the hasty 1995 grapefruit season and pitcher Scott Erickson came in a July trade but the team struggled to a 71-73 finish in a shortened season when it spent long stretches under .500 and never factored in the AL East race.
But the spotlight on the team via Ripken’s streak was more than any playoff team had endured as the days grew closer to September 6, 1995. The entire sports world shined a spotlight on Baltimore and Camden Yards as “The Streak” came to embody all that was good about baseball despite the gross taste of greed in the mouths of the millions of fans who watched billionaires go to war with millionaires that caused the cancellation of the World Series just 10 months earlier. Some in the media began to parrot the same refrain: “Cal Ripken is saving baseball” and providing inspiration via his renowned work ethic and refusal to take a day off. It was an American work opus, this streak and all of the attention it was receiving.
For his part, Ripken obliged, saying every word perfectly, talking about his father and his dreams and his integrity and his determination to play every inning, every night. And he emphasized his love of the game of baseball and all that it represents for America and children and righteousness and history.
The 1995 season was all about Cal Ripken. And with that came some sense of media redemption for baseball as a whole. It was a “news” story as much as a baseball story and somehow it was woven into an “American” story.
For the ever-studious Ripken, watching Angelos come into the organization and create massive change had been a bit of a standard operating procedure as a MLB player. This was his third owner in 11 years with the Orioles and Ripken knew that he was the franchise’s most valuable asset. The 1995 season solidified what was to be a Hall of Fame career for No. 8, who did it all within earshot of his hometown of Aberdeen, Maryland. There have already been books written about Ripken, whose squeaky clean image translated into tens of millions of dollars of revenue through endorsements, promoting and owning minor league baseball teams, running a baseball education business with children and a personal brand that is among the best in North American sports at any moment in time. Cal Ripken was well on his way to legendary status long before Peter Angelos was involved with the team and if 1994 was the “Year of Peter Angelos” with the Baltimore Orioles, then 1995 was the “Year of Cal Ripken” in the world of Major League Baseball.
8Ripken was doing supernatural, unprecedented things for fans every night in Baltimore. He was staying until 1 a.m. in the stands signing every autograph for every fan who wanted one, many of them on popcorn boxes and ticket stubs. By August, the lines began snaking through Camden Yards in the fifth inning and fans came to expect that they’d be able to get an autograph from the legendary No. 8 if they were willing to stay late enough and brave the lines.
After a summer of ballyhooed hype and the P.R. machine that made this achievement amongst the greatest in sports history, Cal Ripken took the stage for consecutive games 2,130, which tied the record of the great Lou Gerhig of the New York Yankees, and 2,131, which was the clincher.
Ripken did his part, going 3-for-5 with a home run in the first game against the California Angels on Tuesday night, and coming back for the magical streak-breaking 2,131 night with another home run in the 4th inning before the giant numbers on The Warehouse wall were unfurled and a huge presentation with celebrities and baseball dignitaries all on the field to honor the new Ironman of baseball.
Every Orioles legend – from Earl Weaver, Jim Palmer and Brooks Robinson to his teammates Eddie Murray, Rick Dempsey and Mark Belanger were all on hand to make the occasion something every Baltimore fan would remember forever. It was a magical night, televised around the world live and was the biggest sports story of the year in the world of ESPN, which was essentially a sports network monopoly at that point.
After 20 minutes of accolades and brief speeches and presentations, led by teammate Mike Mussina, legendary broadcaster Chuck Thompson gave the microphone to King Peter: “Here’s Mr. Angelos with a few words on behalf of the Orioles…”
