Cal Ripken Jr.

In light of Jorge Posada playing himself out of New York, and let's be honest... the New York Post said it the best; he's pretty much done like a charbroiled steak, let's talk about aging stars and what to do with people when they're past their prime, but they're still loved.
Take the biggest love fest in history - Cal Ripken Jr... this man is truly slobbered over in Baltimore except when it comes to people wanting to pony up $100 to buy my 1982 Topps Traded Set complete with PSA8.5 Cal Ripken rookie. It's like Harvey Keitel said in Pulp Fiction... only people have already started and there's no stopping...
Ripken's biggest claim to fame is that he played 2,632 consecutive games. This went from May 30, 1982, to September 20, 1998. During this time, he played 8,243 consecutive innings from June 5, 1982 to September 14, 1987. During this time, he also hit roughly .300 and pounded out more than 25 homers a year during a period in time where the average short stop was Ozzie Smith.
However, in 1991, Cal Ripken had his last great line in baseball: .323, 34, 114. After that, everything was above pedestrian, BUT it wasn't super wonderful mega fantastic. SURE... he was playing every game. Yet he was still playing every game for 7 full years. The Orioles may have moved him from short to third, but there was no future contingency, and they came to suffer for it years later.
Nobody thought about that when they were winning (shades of New York, anyone?). In 1983, the Orioles won the World Series. Until 1996, they weren't in the playoffs again. However, thanks to Jeffrey Maier, they lost in 96 and in 97, they lost to a Cleveland team that was one at bat to Edgar Renteria from winning the World Series. For Baltimore, that was it. The Yankees got dominant, and the future was cast in stone. Thank God for the Devil Rays to keep them out of the cellar most years.
When it was all said and done, Ripken went from the man who broke the streak of Lou Gehrig (a streak Gehrig only stopped because of life-ending injury and pride in being complimented for pedestrian accomplishments) in 1995, resurrecting baseball with a happy moment after the strike, and eventually gave it up to just as much tremendous fanfare. Thus, he was forever enshrined as an institution in the Chesapeake Bay (in no small part because he was born there and stayed there to be dominant - that generation's Joe Mauer).
So who knew that the man who had no business being at the 2001 All Star Game (at least until he hit a home run and got to play short stop as Alex Rodriguez stepped aside to make the old man feel at home again with an MVP award) was involved in a vicious rumor that he pummeled the tar out of Kevin Costner for hooking up with his wife? Interestingly enough, now I do, and now many people on the web do. It's a BS rumor dispelled by Costner, Ripken, and Snopes, but yeah... you've gotta love the Internet where EVERYTHING is true.
So for what I've learned, be it Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, Willie Mays, or a constantly banged up Chipper Jones, there comes a point where a player has to call it a day and know when to say when.
They can go the easy way like Andy Pettite and don't go in a decline. They can be forced out like Griffey. They can change from Big Papi, the hero of the Red Sox dynasty years to Big Sluggi, the steroids mirage who doesn't show up to play until May, or they can just keep hoping that this year will be the year that they turn it around - maybe one last time like a hobbling Kirk Gibson in a World Series moment for the ages.
Sadly, we know which way it's more likely to be.

Kevin Costner

Kevin Costner is either Bull Durham or Field of Dreams. For me, it's Bull Durham. As I've said, I get the concept of Field of Dreams, but it's just not the same. For my birthday (August 26th), I'll review the movie that is me, but yeah... nobody feels that it's For Love of the Game, which isn't necessarily a bad movie. Instead, it's just formulaic saccharine that tastes good at the time, but we'll never pay for it on DVD (even at $6) to have it in our collection.
Is the issue John Travolta's wife as recurring love interest that is and isn't there, sometimes more, sometimes less important than baseball?
Is the issue a youthful Jena Malone, who just makes this whole thing too Gilmore Girls-esque?
Is it John C. Reilly in a role that isn't Walk Hard: Dewey Cox (now, that was a great movie)?
Is it the fact that we're going back to the same cow to milk it so many times in hopes that this one works too?
Is it the fact that we're in the midst of a perfect game and we know that it's going to happen (should have had Jim Joyce to come in for the final out... now that would have been a plot twist that nobody saw coming)?
Is it the fact that it's against the Yankees (and we get it... we hate them, too, but couldn't it be against the cellar dwellers of the division so we wonder if it's as legitimate as a perfect game by rain delay after 5 innings or against a team of schlubs where the pitcher decides to throw heat instead of calling the outfield in)?
Is the issue Costner himself (a once great actor deciding what to do with his career as he gets hired for name recognition instead of lead man status)?
Between westerns and sports movies, that's Costner's bag of tricks. At least he's not restorting to doing a movie on a Montana ranch where he teaches the workers to play baseball until the aliens come and he unites with some mysterious stranger with a laser shooting bracelet on his wrist in order to save the day (no, wait. other than the baseball, that's Harrison Ford).
But there is 2 hours of passable entertainment in the DVD, and if you haven't seen it before, and even if you have, it's not like you're going to ask for 2 hours of your life back. That said, it's not like you're going to feel like you've struck cinematic gold either.
You're just getting what you're getting. Baseball on the big screen.

Terence Mann

It's a recognized fact that Kevin Costner became a baseball star at some point in his movie career. There was the great Bull Durham. There was the ok For Love of the Game. And there was Field of Dreams. People tend to gravitate more to Bull Durham or Field of Dreams depending on who they are. For me, I'm more about the love story of Bull Durham than I am about the science fiction of Field of Dreams, but I still like it. It's just not the greatest movie of all time in the way that Bull Durham is, but that said, it does have its moments.
For instance, there is no annoying wife in Bull Durham. Sure, there's Millie, and she needs to be fed to the sharks, but she can catch Nuke and let the religious guy do whatever he wants to her, but other than her daddy donating the scoreboard, she's probably replaceable. But getting back to the annoying wife and her incredibly annoying take on no censorship, perhaps Amy Madigan is the one character that really keeps me from truly enjoying Field of Dreams. She wasn't good for John Candy's Uncle Buck, and frankly, she's no poetic muse adjunct English teacher at a junior college for Kevin Costner's Ray Kinsella either. For in comparison to all of Madigan's annoyingness, Annie was still lovable (despite her sleeping with a different ball player every season)... even if she did end up hooking up with Tim Robbins' Nuke Laloosh for half of the season (and over 15 years of real seasons).
But it's more than just the leading woman, for there is also no James Earl Jones and his Darth Vadar voice in Bull Durham. There's no trip across country to follow the directions of the voice that is coming from afar to rescue him from a life of being angry at the world. There is no inner and outer journey for Costner's Ray Kinsella to go and ease their (the Black Sox) pain. There is no need to eventually create a field for Archibald Moonlight Graham to play out his only at bat (before he messes with Marcellus Wallace's suitcase and gets himself killed). There is no hokey injury to the daughter that can only be saved by Graham.
And moving back to James Earl Jones, in Bull Durham, there is no angry 60s radical that needs to find meaning in baseball again (in that, there is no speech: Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.
And I get that the speech is the key to the movie. My one friend is very nostalgic to the memories of his father and wanting to have the game of catch again. I understand what that means... but to me, the real speech is at the end of Bull Durham: I got a lotta time to hear your theories and I wanta hear every damn one of 'em...but right now I'm tired and I don't wanta think about baseball and I don't wanta think about Quantum Physics... I don't wanta think about nothing... Right now, I just wanta be.
And Annie can do that, too, and that's the answer because there are all the things that we believe in and the greatness of the game and there are the beautiful moments in life. Perhaps catch is a beautiful moment... if that's your memory, but sitting on the porch after the rain and just smelling the summer air and looking forward to the good life that will come when you're with the one that you love...
That's a good thing.
And for the way it makes me feel... to think about being with my wife in the Siesta Zone and enjoying life as it comes... it's all good.