Ripken goes back to work after first break in 16 years; no homers

A day after ending his astonishing streak of 2,632 consecutive games, Ripken was back in the lineup for Baltimore yesterday against Toronto, the same team he faced when the streak started on May 30, 1982.

With time to contemplate his decision, Ripken was sure he made the right move.

"No regrets, no second thoughts," he said during a pregame news conference at SkyDome. "I felt great about how it went. It was a great celebration instead of a sad event."

He admitted feeling strange about watching a game from the dugout, and sounded relieved to be returning to the field.

"I still consider myself an everyday player," he said. "I have a lot of baseball left in me."

Ripken closed his record run Sunday night, removing himself from the starting lineup in the Orioles' final home game of the season against the Yankees.

The move came more than three years after he broke 2,130-game streak of Yankee iron man Lou Gehrig - a record that had stood for 56 years.

"The streak was born out of a desire to play and a lot of managers wanting to put me in the lineup," Ripken said in Baltimore.

"It's your job to come to the ballpark and be available if the manager wants to put you in there you play. I feel very proud, not necessarily with the numbers the streak is, but very proud that my teammates and my manager could count on me."

Now that he's finally taken a day off, the next question is: Can anyone ever come close to duplicating his record run?

"You wouldn't think so," said the Yankees' Joe Girardi.

"That's a lot of years to go so long without being injured. I don't see that record ever being broken."

Ripken isn't so sure.

"If I did it, someone else can do it. I don't see myself as superhuman," he said after watching an Orioles' game from the dugout for the first time since May 29, 1982.

There's no telling how long Ripken could have gone.

Gehrig's streak ended when he could no longer cope with a rare muscular disorder that later became known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Ripken was completely healthy. He just got tired of the controversy surrounding the streak - more than one columnist called him selfish - and decided that spring training in 1999 might be more fun if he didn't have to talk about playing another full season.

So, without tipping any of his teammates except Brady Anderson, his best friend on the Orioles, Ripken walked into manager Ray Miller's office a half-hour before the game and asked to have his name removed from the starting lineup.

"I was shocked," teammate Roberto Alomar said. "I didn't expect the record to end that way. But there was a lot of criticism of him and I think that's why he ended it. That's sad, because people don't know his work ethic."

Anderson knew well in advance that Ripken would be watching Sunday's game instead of playing in it. He tried to talk Ripken out of it, but quickly realized his effort would be futile.

"It's so much easier for me to want to keep the streak alive because I'm not the one who has to do it," Anderson said. "Playing every game in one season is tough enough."

For Ripken, sitting out that one game proved to be the most difficult thing he had done since breaking into the league in 1981. For one thing, he had no idea what to do to keep himself occupied.

Ripken fidgeted on the bench before getting a message from reliever Alan Mills.

"He goes, 'What are you doing?' And I said, 'I'm going to sit here and watch a ballgame,"' Ripken said. "I said, 'You want me to come out there and visit with you?'"

Ripken did just that. He talked with the fans and posed for pictures between innings, but afterward he made it clear that most of his days next season will be spent playing third base - from the first inning through the ninth.

09-22-98