Cal Ripken Jr. doesn’t recall the exact circumstances surrounding the comment he made in jest all those years ago.
He first met David Rubenstein at a function in Washington about 20 years ago. Years later, after getting to know the private equity billionaire, Ripken remembers randomly joking with Rubenstein about his hometown team.
“If the Orioles ever get sold,” Ripken recalls joking with Rubenstein, “you should buy them.”
When Rubenstein did, he sought out Ripken to join his ownership group, rekindling the Iron Man’s relationship with the organization for which he spent 24 years playing.
“It’s interesting that all these years later it happened,” Ripken, 64, said with a laugh during a phone interview with The Baltimore Sun. “I was honored to be asked, so I jumped right in and said of course.”
Few Orioles fans can say they’ve attended more games this season than Ripken. Often sitting in the front row at Camden Yards, Ripken watches the Orioles — who have always been his team, but officially are once again.
He won’t come anywhere near 2,632 consecutive games attended, but he makes sure to follow every game — whether it’s watching on television or seeing the condensed game after it’s over. Like a fan, Ripken is living on every pitch.
“I’m into it,” he said. “You want to go, you want to be there, you want to watch.”
There’s more to just the love of the game and the enjoyment of watching one of baseball’s best teams. Ripken believes it’s imperative as part of the ownership group, no matter the role he will have, to watch the team he, Rubenstein and more than a dozen others own.
“If I can be helpful at all, I’ve got to be into it,” he said. “It’s felt good to be on the inside looking at it again as opposed to when you get out.”
All this is a bit of a surprise to Ripken — nothing more so than serving as “Iron Splash” during Friday night’s 2-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays. He cheerily doused fans with water in the Bird Bath Splash Zone, high-fiving them and signing autographs on the 29th anniversary of him passing Lou Gehrig for the most consecutive games played in MLB history. Rubenstein did it earlier this year, and Ripken joked with the Baltimore native that he was a bad influence.
“When I was first asked to do it, I went, ‘Eh, I don’t think so,’” he said with a chuckle. “I saw David Rubenstein do it earlier in the year, and I said to him, ‘You see what you created?’”
After he retired, Ripken eyed one day returning to the daily grind of baseball life. He was approached about interviewing for managerial jobs — even once expressing interest in the Washington Nationals’ opening a decade ago — but he says now he “was always an Oriole,” from the time he was collecting programs while his dad was a minor league manager.
“It would be weird to do anything outside of the Orioles uniform,” he said.
He first expressed interest in purchasing the Orioles in 2007, but as the Angelos family maintained control of the team through steady rumors of a potential sale, Ripken started to believe he’d never be in the position he is now alongside Rubenstein.
“Just like everything else in life, you get busy, you try to accomplish things, you put your head down and then time goes by,” he said. “I wouldn’t have guessed I would be into it as much. It’s interesting when you are in it, when you are playing, it seems like the world revolves around it. Then when you get out of it and you start going off in other directions, you realize the world doesn’t necessarily revolve around it.
“And now I think the world revolves around it again.”
These are still the early days of the Rubenstein era, although moves are being made. The team entered a partnership with T. Rowe Price for a jersey patch and an advertisement above the center field scoreboard. Rubenstein made his first major hire last month in Catie Griggs, the club’s new president of business operations. And the billionaire’s deeper pockets perhaps allowed executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias to swing a trade for Zach Eflin, a pitcher due $18 million next season.
It remains to be seen exactly what role Ripken will play in this new regime. He has business experience in baseball as owner of the Aberdeen IronBirds, Baltimore’s High-A affiliate, and co-founder of The Ripken Experience, a youth baseball organization that runs tournaments and camps.
Ripken said he’s willing to be a “sounding board” for Elias, which is why he’s intent on watching as much of the American League East-leading Orioles as possible so he can be in a position to “offer advice” if asked.
But Ripken made clear that Elias’ success thus far and vision for the future don’t need changing.
“Many different ownership groups, the biggest challenge is you have to sell the baseball piece. It’s hard to sell a product that’s struggling on the field,” Ripken said. “When you look at the Orioles, you want to say hands off. It doesn’t need fixing. Just let it roll.”
