November 14, 2024 • 20 mins
Baltimore Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr., now a part-owner of the Major League Baseball team he spent more than two decades playing for, sits down with co-owner and fellow Baltimore area native David Rubenstein for "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations." Ripken reflects on his record-making career and how he navigated the transition from professional athlete to successful businessman. This interview was recorded September 5 in New York at the Bloomberg Power Players event. Note: David Rubenstein is the controlling owner of the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles ownership group also includes Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
One of the greatest baseball players ever is cal Ripken.
He set a record for playing in two thousand, six
hundred and thirty two consecutive games over seventeen years. He
was an All Star nineteen times, a member of the
Hall of Fame, twice most Valuable Player in the American League,
and also once.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
A World Series champion.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I had a chance to sit down with cal Ripkin
recently to talk about his current life working for and
with Baltimore Orioles, a team that he made very famous.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
So it was said in baseball.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That the unbreakable record was Lou Garrick's record of spend
playing in two thousand and thirty games consecutively. Nobody thought
that could ever be broken.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
You broke it.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
You played in two thousand, six hundred and thirty two
games consecutively over seventeen years.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Why did you do that?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I mean, did you ever think if maybe taking a
day off.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Would be a good thing?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Or so?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
You're not going to ask me what my secret was, right, Wow,
I'll get that. I don't know if I have one.
I mean, I love the game a lot. Your 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
(01:15):
I first came in, probably for the first eleven or
twelve 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.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Of the team like I've been, you know, working for
many years, and I have not done seventeen years consecutively,
going in every day. You know, you have a headache,
someday you don't feel good. You never had a headache,
no cold, nothing happened.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, all of those things that 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 one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
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 twenty thirty, forty
years ago, or do you think it's really changed a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I think there's a deep love for baseball still in
the country. And I see that the ripping baseball was
a kids 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
the kids eight to twelve 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
(02:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And speaking of that, lots of pictures these days have
elbow problems. They now get surgery called Tommy John surgery,
and players have to take a year and a half before.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
They're really going to play again.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Why are there there's so many pitchers and I seem
to have this problems now and they didn't have as
many of those problems when you were playing.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Is it because they're playing.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So young and they're throwing so many different kind of
pitches that really hurt the elbow on the arm?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, I think some of that is true because Tommy
John surgery has come down even to like 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 legs, with all the analytics
(03:41):
that go around, I think pitchers are chasing velocity more
so there's more training for to get your arm stronger
to throw the ball harder, but they let 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 your elbow or your wrist right at the end
(04:05):
to try to make it move, to try to and
then all these pressure goes right here. And I think
a lot of chasing speed and chasing movement. The combination
of those two is causing it.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
When a golfer is lining up a pott on a tournament,
everybody has to be quiet.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Nobody's throwing anything in his head. Why does he need
to have so much quiet?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
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 one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
They can scream and yell.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Why doesn't it seem much ass backwards?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yes? Yes, the uh It is interesting though, when you
play in front of a packed house, it's just noise,
you know, it's not you don't hear the individual things.
I mean. In 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 out at you try to play a
little mind game with and and if you beat them
(04:56):
and you did really well, you know, it'd almost go
ah caw see you tomorrow. It was all part of it.
The Boston fans were a little different, is that they
were they were more personal that if you beat them
or whatever else, they'd hold against you for your whole life.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
You can challenge a call now and they go up
to New York and they watch it on video and
they make a decision there.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You think that's good or bad?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
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 of 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 they
(05:36):
have something in the year of the umpire and the
robot or whatever calls the whole game based on when
the balls 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 bases loaded,
you know, and it's called a ball or a strike,
you know, the ball turns it in favor of the
team that's got the bases loaded. A strike kind of
(05:58):
gets them out of it.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Professional athlete are idealized.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
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 the whole different life. So you
were tired at what age? Forty one?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Pretty one?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
You played twenty years, twenty two years, twenty one years
in the major leagues, and you were tired at an
age that you know is old for a professional athlete,
but young for somebody in private equity or something like that.
So when you were tired 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
ten next twenty years of your life?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
What did you do?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
So if you save your money pretty well, then you
have choices, you know, and you could decide to learn
how to play golf and like a lot of people
do and kind of retire early.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Are you a golfer?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I play a little bit, but no, I could be
pretty good.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I think I have try a minutes for golf. That's
what I do.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
So I looked at it as you know, you kind
of get bored. How can you do that? I look
at it as a second chance for a career opportunity,
And so you look I wanted to learn business, and
we bought minor league teams and so you could. It
was a comfortable business model that you can kind of
learn business that way, and that was kind of fun.
(07:16):
At first, it felt like I gave I spotted everybody
else twenty years ahead of me. I'm forty one, but
it seemed like I'm twenty one. You know, 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 I mean, your worth, work, ethic,
how you go about doing picture preparation, and all that
kind of stuff that all applies to what you're doing now.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
So now that you're an owner of the Baltimore Orioles, well,
how do you feel about these high price contracts that
players are getting. Used to be a player, probably wanted
higher price contracts. Now you're an owner, how do you
look at that differently?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Slightly? I try to think of what are the other
other intangible values that you can offer a player besides
the bottom line dollars because the bottom line dollars are
so big now or whatever else that you can make
a case you're saying, well how much? But I mean
it's about ego, and it's about breaking the bank, and
it's about agents wanting to continue to make it go
up for other people that come through. But if you
(08:13):
take 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
(08:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To have to pay some excite And Baltimore is a
smaller city compared to some of the New York.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Is that a big problem and you're in a smaller
city in Major League Baseball?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
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. You know you're drafting,
you get the draft you get to sign players, you
get to develop players. You know, that's not all free
agency that's happening. But if you're a big market team
and you make a mistake in judgment or a player,
(09:17):
you can throw more money at your mistakes. When you're
a smaller market team, you have to be better at
your baseball decisions.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
So I played the Little League All Star shortstop and
when I was eight to nine, and I didn't know
whether I was going to get to the major leagues
or not. When did you realize you were going to
be better than someone like me? Did you realize that
you were a little leaguer when you were a little leaguer,
Did you really realize you were going to be really
good enough to play in the major leagues?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I knew pretty quickly. I grew up in around baseball.
Dad was a manager of the minor leagues for the
Oils in the first fourteen years of my life. So
I went to work with my dad, you know, or
as early as eight or nine. He put me in
a uniform, was the bat boy. I shagged in the outfield.
I had a chance to ask all the players, you know,
how they did, how they caught the fly ball, how
(10:03):
they swung the bat. So I had all these teachers
in front of me, but I had the skill. You know,
that was pretty obvious early on.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Okay, so you played in high school. I assume you
did very well in high school. Yes, okay, So you
get drafted by the Orioles. And at what point, when
you're in the minor leagues all the players played in
the minor leagues for a while, did you realize you
weren't just going to be an average player, you were
really going to be a super player or did you
not realize that in the beginning.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Now I was seventeen. I was a second round draft
pick by the Orioles. It turned to eighteen at the
end of the summer, and so it was my birthday's
August twenty fourth, So I was playing a couple of
months before my eighteenth birthday. And when I first went
away to play pro ball, you were pretty big fish
in a small pond in high school. You thought you
were pretty good, and then you go and all of
(10:49):
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 short stop by the name of Bob
Bonner that came out of Texas A and 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 field the ball better,
he was quicker on the transfer, and I kept looking
(11:09):
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 Double A, so that which opened
up the spot for me, and then I got my
feet on the ground. I started playing pretty well and
started hit a couple of home runs in my next year,
and then I got to Double A and then I
had a breakout season, and in two years I caught
(11:32):
Bob Bonner and passed him to the big leagues. So
he stayed the same and I got better.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
What year did he get into the Hall of Fame?
Speaker 3 (11:40):
I think he's a minister in Africa right now.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So, speaking of the Hall of Fame, you were elected
with ninety eight point five percent of the vote. Have
you ever figured out who that person was that didn't
vote for you? I mean, who is this person waiting.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
For I've hunted all five of them down. I think
that my particular year, I think Marianna Rivera just went
in one hundred percent right, the only one of the vote.
And in my particular year there was a protest to
vote where where five people didn't turn into ballot in
that particular year as a protest to the steroid era.
(12:16):
They said, well, and so they counted against you.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Did anybody ever come to you and say, look, you're
really good, but you could be even better if you
take some of these drugs.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
They didn't try that, And 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.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
So some players they were like one hundred and eighty
pounds and then later there are two hundred and fifty pounds.
You didn't suspect maybe they were doing something unusual. Yes,
you're six foot four and traditionally shortstops were more my height,
and when you came along, people didn't want people like
(12:59):
me to be short stops anymore. So did you change
the game of baseball by saying short stop should be
big and better hitters?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Or or is it going back to the.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Old mode of speaking fast and good baseball steelers but
not great hitters.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
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 at your own path.
But I did move from third to short I signed.
I was six two when I came out of high school,
(13:35):
and then I had a lake grospur. It almost grew
three inches and I put on, you know, five to
eight pounds a year. By the time I got to
the Big Legs, I was almost sixty five to twenty
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,
(13:57):
and and my success at the position as a bigger guy.
Maybe it's like when I'm a basketball fan, I wish
I could have been a basketball player, But I remember
Magic Johnson changing the thought of a point guard at
six y nine. He's sixty nine, all of a sudden,
the advantages he had at the size. I think people
started to understand that a bigger guy could play shortstop
(14:20):
and second base. And today there's some of the more
celebrated positions are contract.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I think your highest compensation level six million dollars a year.
Six million dollars a year. That's a good compensation level
in those days, for sure, and today for the average
person that's a great income. But today there are some
players that are making two three four hundred million dollars
over here yours one seven hundred million dollars. Do you
ever think maybe you should have waited a little bit
(14:45):
longer to play in the major leagues? And do you
evergre at the fact that some people are making seven
hundred million dollars and they're not likely, you know, be
as good as you, So every.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Day I think that, yes, No, it is really interesting
is that I had a really good job. You know,
I was a baseball player, and you got paid for it,
and in the compensation, I was one of the early
ones that broke a million a year, and then I
got to two million a year, and then and then
after the towards the end, you know, I was at six,
but then it started going crazy, and you know, I
(15:16):
look at it and I remember all the old players
that said, you know, I wish that I would have
played in that era. But I think the game evolves
the business of the it used to be in baseball.
I think we looked, at least I looked at myself
as a sportsman. You know, maybe the value of the
entertainment was in the collective where you're playing well as
a team and you win and that's cool. Then all
(15:39):
of a sudden it seemed to step over to I
think a lot of players might think that they are
entertainers now. So it's a little bit more than what
you do in the field, and it's what maybe your commercials,
things you do off the field. I think they see
themselves differently.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Do you think that's good to have the games now
maybe two hours, twenty minutes or something like that.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Is that making better for the fans?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Or are they saying I want more baseball and I
want the game the last longer.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
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 they'd be when
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
(16:23):
that they have now allows the umpire to to gives
them an enforceable tool to shape the behavior. There was
always a rule that the pitcher had to throw it
within twenty seconds of each pitch, but that got away
from everybody, and now it's shaped the behavior, and I
think the game moves.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
When you were playing, it was sometimes said that pittress
might put the substances on the baseball, or it was
called a spider.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Did you ever see that?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Gaylord Perry was the most famous of all spitballs. He
actually wrote a book called Me and the Spinner. So
the first time I face him, ball comes in, it
sinks a little bit, and then I hit a groundball
to shortstop by make another out, and I'm thinking, if
that's that's a spider's 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
(17:07):
far and instruck me out, you know whatever else, and
then kind of walked off and shook his head at me,
like that's the spider.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I have a grandson who four years old. If he
wanted to be a major League baseball player. What's the
best advice you would give to a young person? He
meets a little young for advice, maybe, but what is
a six or eight year old or ten or year
old who aspires to be a baseball player?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
What should they do?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Well? I think the worst thing you could do is
put too much pressure on your kid, you know, like
if you want it for him as opposed to him
wanting it. You know.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I think father didn't put pressure on you. He was
a professional coach.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
He didn't know.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I mean, as a 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
eight and eighteen before I go, you know, got drafted
in parts of two because he had.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
He didn't give you tips or anything or tell you
to do this or that.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
No, I mean he was a great instructor. I witnessed
him instructing other people in the minor league. So I
learned through kind of through his instruction everybody else. But
he never stood over me and said you got to
do You've got to play.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
When you're a professional baseball player or a former professional
baseball players, famous as you are, people come up and
all the time they want autograph selfies and they say,
I hate to bother you, but can I bother you
with a selfie or an autograph request? What do you say?
You say, I'm too busy, or you just do it?
Or how do you deal with all that? And when
you go to a hotel and you're a major league
baseball player, people have all these little kids are trying
to get autographs.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
How do you deal with all that?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
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, you
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,
(18:55):
but they lose it. But then you have to keep
in mind that it's meaningful to them. So at that moment,
you know, by signing your name for a little kid
and their eyeballs get all again. They run back to
their mom or whatever else and say, look what I got.
So you helped that happen. So if you remember the
what happens afterwards, you'll focus on you know, and you
(19:16):
just manage it and just get through it.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
And what was it like the day that you broke
the record of Louke Garrick?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
There was an enormous fan out pouring, everybody's calling you
your nation y TV and you're running around the stadium
and so forth.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Was that like the highlight of your life professionally?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
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 forty two years ago, forty two years ago,
forty one years ago, nineteen eighty three, little humpback line
drive when you catch it. This part of the dream
of being a baseball player is to win the World Series.
And then now because I caught the last out, that
(19:57):
I won the World Series. So that's the best feeling.
Second best feeling, probably the best personal moment was to
lap around campdy 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 Buni and Ralphiel Palmero pushed me out
of the line and said, you're gonna have to take
a lap around here before we'll never get the game started,
(20:18):
and I thought it was a silly idea, so I
went around and started shaking hands. The celebration went from
almost fifty thousand down to like one on one, and
it was kind of cool that way, and by the
time I got come down to third base, I could
care less if the game ever started again.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
wherever you listen.
One of the greatest baseball players ever is cal Ripken.
He set a record for playing in two thousand, six
hundred and thirty two consecutive games over seventeen years. He
was an All Star nineteen times, a member of the
Hall of Fame, twice most Valuable Player in the American League,
and also once.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
A World Series champion.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I had a chance to sit down with cal Ripkin
recently to talk about his current life working for and
with Baltimore Orioles, a team that he made very famous.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
So it was said in baseball.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That the unbreakable record was Lou Garrick's record of spend
playing in two thousand and thirty games consecutively. Nobody thought
that could ever be broken.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
You broke it.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
You played in two thousand, six hundred and thirty two
games consecutively over seventeen years.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Why did you do that?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I mean, did you ever think if maybe taking a
day off.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Would be a good thing?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Or so?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
You're not going to ask me what my secret was, right, Wow,
I'll get that. I don't know if I have one.
I mean, I love the game a lot. Your 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
(01:15):
I first came in, probably for the first eleven or
twelve 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.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Of the team like I've been, you know, working for
many years, and I have not done seventeen years consecutively,
going in every day. You know, you have a headache,
someday you don't feel good. You never had a headache,
no cold, nothing happened.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, all of those things that 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 one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
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 twenty thirty, forty
years ago, or do you think it's really changed a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I think there's a deep love for baseball still in
the country. And I see that the ripping baseball was
a kids 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
the kids eight to twelve 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
(02:42):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And speaking of that, lots of pictures these days have
elbow problems. They now get surgery called Tommy John surgery,
and players have to take a year and a half before.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
They're really going to play again.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Why are there there's so many pitchers and I seem
to have this problems now and they didn't have as
many of those problems when you were playing.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Is it because they're playing.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So young and they're throwing so many different kind of
pitches that really hurt the elbow on the arm?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, I think some of that is true because Tommy
John surgery has come down even to like 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 legs, with all the analytics
(03:41):
that go around, I think pitchers are chasing velocity more
so there's more training for to get your arm stronger
to throw the ball harder, but they let 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 your elbow or your wrist right at the end
(04:05):
to try to make it move, to try to and
then all these pressure goes right here. And I think
a lot of chasing speed and chasing movement. The combination
of those two is causing it.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
When a golfer is lining up a pott on a tournament,
everybody has to be quiet.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Nobody's throwing anything in his head. Why does he need
to have so much quiet?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
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 one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
They can scream and yell.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Why doesn't it seem much ass backwards?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yes? Yes, the uh It is interesting though, when you
play in front of a packed house, it's just noise,
you know, it's not you don't hear the individual things.
I mean. In 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 out at you try to play a
little mind game with and and if you beat them
(04:56):
and you did really well, you know, it'd almost go
ah caw see you tomorrow. It was all part of it.
The Boston fans were a little different, is that they
were they were more personal that if you beat them
or whatever else, they'd hold against you for your whole life.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
You can challenge a call now and they go up
to New York and they watch it on video and
they make a decision there.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
You think that's good or bad?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
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 of 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 they
(05:36):
have something in the year of the umpire and the
robot or whatever calls the whole game based on when
the balls 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 bases loaded,
you know, and it's called a ball or a strike,
you know, the ball turns it in favor of the
team that's got the bases loaded. A strike kind of
(05:58):
gets them out of it.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Professional athlete are idealized.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
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 the whole different life. So you
were tired at what age? Forty one?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Pretty one?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
You played twenty years, twenty two years, twenty one years
in the major leagues, and you were tired at an
age that you know is old for a professional athlete,
but young for somebody in private equity or something like that.
So when you were tired 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
ten next twenty years of your life?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
What did you do?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
So if you save your money pretty well, then you
have choices, you know, and you could decide to learn
how to play golf and like a lot of people
do and kind of retire early.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Are you a golfer?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I play a little bit, but no, I could be
pretty good.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I think I have try a minutes for golf. That's
what I do.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
So I looked at it as you know, you kind
of get bored. How can you do that? I look
at it as a second chance for a career opportunity,
And so you look I wanted to learn business, and
we bought minor league teams and so you could. It
was a comfortable business model that you can kind of
learn business that way, and that was kind of fun.
(07:16):
At first, it felt like I gave I spotted everybody
else twenty years ahead of me. I'm forty one, but
it seemed like I'm twenty one. You know, 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 I mean, your worth, work, ethic,
how you go about doing picture preparation, and all that
kind of stuff that all applies to what you're doing now.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
So now that you're an owner of the Baltimore Orioles, well,
how do you feel about these high price contracts that
players are getting. Used to be a player, probably wanted
higher price contracts. Now you're an owner, how do you
look at that differently?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Slightly? I try to think of what are the other
other intangible values that you can offer a player besides
the bottom line dollars because the bottom line dollars are
so big now or whatever else that you can make
a case you're saying, well how much? But I mean
it's about ego, and it's about breaking the bank, and
it's about agents wanting to continue to make it go
up for other people that come through. But if you
(08:13):
take 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
(08:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
To have to pay some excite And Baltimore is a
smaller city compared to some of the New York.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Is that a big problem and you're in a smaller
city in Major League Baseball?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
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. You know you're drafting,
you get the draft you get to sign players, you
get to develop players. You know, that's not all free
agency that's happening. But if you're a big market team
and you make a mistake in judgment or a player,
(09:17):
you can throw more money at your mistakes. When you're
a smaller market team, you have to be better at
your baseball decisions.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
So I played the Little League All Star shortstop and
when I was eight to nine, and I didn't know
whether I was going to get to the major leagues
or not. When did you realize you were going to
be better than someone like me? Did you realize that
you were a little leaguer when you were a little leaguer,
Did you really realize you were going to be really
good enough to play in the major leagues?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I knew pretty quickly. I grew up in around baseball.
Dad was a manager of the minor leagues for the
Oils in the first fourteen years of my life. So
I went to work with my dad, you know, or
as early as eight or nine. He put me in
a uniform, was the bat boy. I shagged in the outfield.
I had a chance to ask all the players, you know,
how they did, how they caught the fly ball, how
(10:03):
they swung the bat. So I had all these teachers
in front of me, but I had the skill. You know,
that was pretty obvious early on.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Okay, so you played in high school. I assume you
did very well in high school. Yes, okay, So you
get drafted by the Orioles. And at what point, when
you're in the minor leagues all the players played in
the minor leagues for a while, did you realize you
weren't just going to be an average player, you were
really going to be a super player or did you
not realize that in the beginning.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Now I was seventeen. I was a second round draft
pick by the Orioles. It turned to eighteen at the
end of the summer, and so it was my birthday's
August twenty fourth, So I was playing a couple of
months before my eighteenth birthday. And when I first went
away to play pro ball, you were pretty big fish
in a small pond in high school. You thought you
were pretty good, and then you go and all of
(10:49):
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 short stop by the name of Bob
Bonner that came out of Texas A and 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 field the ball better,
he was quicker on the transfer, and I kept looking
(11:09):
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 Double A, so that which opened
up the spot for me, and then I got my
feet on the ground. I started playing pretty well and
started hit a couple of home runs in my next year,
and then I got to Double A and then I
had a breakout season, and in two years I caught
(11:32):
Bob Bonner and passed him to the big leagues. So
he stayed the same and I got better.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
What year did he get into the Hall of Fame?
Speaker 3 (11:40):
I think he's a minister in Africa right now.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So, speaking of the Hall of Fame, you were elected
with ninety eight point five percent of the vote. Have
you ever figured out who that person was that didn't
vote for you? I mean, who is this person waiting.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
For I've hunted all five of them down. I think
that my particular year, I think Marianna Rivera just went
in one hundred percent right, the only one of the vote.
And in my particular year there was a protest to
vote where where five people didn't turn into ballot in
that particular year as a protest to the steroid era.
(12:16):
They said, well, and so they counted against you.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Did anybody ever come to you and say, look, you're
really good, but you could be even better if you
take some of these drugs.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
They didn't try that, And 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.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
So some players they were like one hundred and eighty
pounds and then later there are two hundred and fifty pounds.
You didn't suspect maybe they were doing something unusual. Yes,
you're six foot four and traditionally shortstops were more my height,
and when you came along, people didn't want people like
(12:59):
me to be short stops anymore. So did you change
the game of baseball by saying short stop should be
big and better hitters?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Or or is it going back to the.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Old mode of speaking fast and good baseball steelers but
not great hitters.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
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 at your own path.
But I did move from third to short I signed.
I was six two when I came out of high school,
(13:35):
and then I had a lake grospur. It almost grew
three inches and I put on, you know, five to
eight pounds a year. By the time I got to
the Big Legs, I was almost sixty five to twenty
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,
(13:57):
and and my success at the position as a bigger guy.
Maybe it's like when I'm a basketball fan, I wish
I could have been a basketball player, But I remember
Magic Johnson changing the thought of a point guard at
six y nine. He's sixty nine, all of a sudden,
the advantages he had at the size. I think people
started to understand that a bigger guy could play shortstop
(14:20):
and second base. And today there's some of the more
celebrated positions are contract.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I think your highest compensation level six million dollars a year.
Six million dollars a year. That's a good compensation level
in those days, for sure, and today for the average
person that's a great income. But today there are some
players that are making two three four hundred million dollars
over here yours one seven hundred million dollars. Do you
ever think maybe you should have waited a little bit
(14:45):
longer to play in the major leagues? And do you
evergre at the fact that some people are making seven
hundred million dollars and they're not likely, you know, be
as good as you, So every.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Day I think that, yes, No, it is really interesting
is that I had a really good job. You know,
I was a baseball player, and you got paid for it,
and in the compensation, I was one of the early
ones that broke a million a year, and then I
got to two million a year, and then and then
after the towards the end, you know, I was at six,
but then it started going crazy, and you know, I
(15:16):
look at it and I remember all the old players
that said, you know, I wish that I would have
played in that era. But I think the game evolves
the business of the it used to be in baseball.
I think we looked, at least I looked at myself
as a sportsman. You know, maybe the value of the
entertainment was in the collective where you're playing well as
a team and you win and that's cool. Then all
(15:39):
of a sudden it seemed to step over to I
think a lot of players might think that they are
entertainers now. So it's a little bit more than what
you do in the field, and it's what maybe your commercials,
things you do off the field. I think they see
themselves differently.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Do you think that's good to have the games now
maybe two hours, twenty minutes or something like that.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Is that making better for the fans?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Or are they saying I want more baseball and I
want the game the last longer.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
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 they'd be when
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
(16:23):
that they have now allows the umpire to to gives
them an enforceable tool to shape the behavior. There was
always a rule that the pitcher had to throw it
within twenty seconds of each pitch, but that got away
from everybody, and now it's shaped the behavior, and I
think the game moves.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
When you were playing, it was sometimes said that pittress
might put the substances on the baseball, or it was
called a spider.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Did you ever see that?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Gaylord Perry was the most famous of all spitballs. He
actually wrote a book called Me and the Spinner. So
the first time I face him, ball comes in, it
sinks a little bit, and then I hit a groundball
to shortstop by make another out, and I'm thinking, if
that's that's a spider's 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
(17:07):
far and instruck me out, you know whatever else, and
then kind of walked off and shook his head at me,
like that's the spider.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I have a grandson who four years old. If he
wanted to be a major League baseball player. What's the
best advice you would give to a young person? He
meets a little young for advice, maybe, but what is
a six or eight year old or ten or year
old who aspires to be a baseball player?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
What should they do?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Well? I think the worst thing you could do is
put too much pressure on your kid, you know, like
if you want it for him as opposed to him
wanting it. You know.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I think father didn't put pressure on you. He was
a professional coach.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
He didn't know.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I mean, as a 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
eight and eighteen before I go, you know, got drafted
in parts of two because he had.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
He didn't give you tips or anything or tell you
to do this or that.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
No, I mean he was a great instructor. I witnessed
him instructing other people in the minor league. So I
learned through kind of through his instruction everybody else. But
he never stood over me and said you got to
do You've got to play.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
When you're a professional baseball player or a former professional
baseball players, famous as you are, people come up and
all the time they want autograph selfies and they say,
I hate to bother you, but can I bother you
with a selfie or an autograph request? What do you say?
You say, I'm too busy, or you just do it?
Or how do you deal with all that? And when
you go to a hotel and you're a major league
baseball player, people have all these little kids are trying
to get autographs.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
How do you deal with all that?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
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, you
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,
(18:55):
but they lose it. But then you have to keep
in mind that it's meaningful to them. So at that moment,
you know, by signing your name for a little kid
and their eyeballs get all again. They run back to
their mom or whatever else and say, look what I got.
So you helped that happen. So if you remember the
what happens afterwards, you'll focus on you know, and you
(19:16):
just manage it and just get through it.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
And what was it like the day that you broke
the record of Louke Garrick?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
There was an enormous fan out pouring, everybody's calling you
your nation y TV and you're running around the stadium
and so forth.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Was that like the highlight of your life professionally?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
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 forty two years ago, forty two years ago,
forty one years ago, nineteen eighty three, little humpback line
drive when you catch it. This part of the dream
of being a baseball player is to win the World Series.
And then now because I caught the last out, that
(19:57):
I won the World Series. So that's the best feeling.
Second best feeling, probably the best personal moment was to
lap around campdy 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 Buni and Ralphiel Palmero pushed me out
of the line and said, you're gonna have to take
a lap around here before we'll never get the game started,
(20:18):
and I thought it was a silly idea, so I
went around and started shaking hands. The celebration went from
almost fifty thousand down to like one on one, and
it was kind of cool that way, and by the
time I got come down to third base, I could
care less if the game ever started again.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
wherever you listen.
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