When the bus carrying Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken Jr. and baseball’s other Hall of Famers turned off Susquehanna Avenue and headed toward the site of Sunday’s induction, it was quickly evident that this wasn’t just another of the annual ceremonies.
“A lot of the Hall of Famers were saying, ‘Nobody’s ever sat on those hills before,’ those type of things,” Ripken said after the ceremony. “I didn’t know if they were messing with us or not. It was a sea of orange out there, at least to my eyes.”
Orange, of course, is the Baltimore Orioles’ dominant color. But in honor of Gwynn, there was also plenty of brown, mustard and other selections from the San Diego Padres’ palette in the sprawling field outside the Clark Sports Center.
For the first time, the crowd for the induction stretched from the stage all the way to a stand of trees to the south, perhaps half a mile away.
Using reports from the New York State Police and overhead photos, Hall of Fame officials estimated the record crowd at 75,000, almost three times as many as were here for Ryne Sandberg’s induction two years ago. The previous record had been 50,000 in 1999, when the Hall welcomed first-ballot choices Nolan Ryan, George Brett and Robin Yount.
This could have been one of those three-super-player classes, as Mark McGwire also made his first appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot last winter. But instead he became the first 500-homer hitter excluded, with a majority of the Baseball Writers Association of America voters withholding their support because some consider his performance steroid-aided.
There were no such doubts about Ripken and Gwynn. Few players in the modern era have received as much adulation, and spawned as little off-the-field news, as these two, both of whom collected all of their 3,000-plus hits with the teams that drafted them.
At a time when Barry Bonds is immersed in a tainted pursuit of Hank Aaron and many of the sports headlines are being generated for the wrong reasons, baseball fans made the effort to pay homage to players they have come to know as good guys.
“We played on one team our whole careers,” Gwynn said. “We represented our team and our city. The fans felt comfortable with us because they could trust us. They could trust how we played the game, how we conducted ourselves.”
Ripken was the object of most of the worship at this steamy lovefest. Tom Seaver said it would be easier to count the people still in Baltimore than those here. Ripken credited the fans’ reponse to “the love of baseball,” but clearly this was also personal to fans who traveled a long way and invested a lot of summer vacation resources into this weekend. You could see it by the thousands wearing No. 8 Ripken jerseys and No. 19 Gwynn jerseys.
Fans came to upstate New York on chartered planes and buses, including one cruiser making a 5,658-mile round trip from San Diego. Mostly the fans came by cars, though, filling up the village of Cooperstown and every roadway in and out of town. The sign in front of one house near the site read, “Parking $370,000 — free house included.”
You don’t stand in long lines, hike along roadsides, buy heavy bags full of commemorative merchandise and leave with a smile on your face if you aren’t touched by the people involved.
“This is something you’ll never see again,” said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Rick Hummel, who was receiving the Spink Award from the BBWAA. “These are two guys with 3,000 hits who played 20-plus years for the same teams.”
Few hitters were ever as consistent as Gwynn, who slapped enough singles between third base and shortstop to bat over .300 for 19 straight seasons; only Ty Cobb had a longer run. He never struck out more than 40 times in a season, finishing his 20-year career with 434 strikeouts, fewer than Cincinnati’s Adam Dunn had after his first three seasons, and had only one three-strikeout day in the 2,440 games he played.
While coming up in San Diego’s minor-league system, he hid on the fringes of the crowd to listen to a bunting lecture Rod Carew delivered to California Angels players in the Instructional League. He spent his career asking questions of other hitters when he wasn’t studying his swing and the tendencies of pitchers on video.
Since retiring, he has been the head coach for San Diego State, his alma mater.
“I love what I’m doing,” Gwynn said. “I’m a big believer, whatever you want, you want to get something out of this game, you have to work hard. My father was a big believer that you work hard enough, good things will happen.”
Ripken, the holder of the all-time record for consecutive games played at 2,632, also got his work ethic from his father, Cal Ripken Sr., who helped Earl Weaver develop the “Oriole way.”
Ripken joined Yount in helping turn shortstop into an offensive position. He hit for power but never took fielding for granted, finishing 1990 with only three errors in 162 games — one of the most incredible stats ever. He was always accessible to fans while carrying himself in a dignified manner.
Like Gwynn, Ripken was raised in a close family and has been committed to his marriage and his children.
“My dad said, ‘You take care of all the little things, you’ll never have a big thing to worry about,'” Ripken said. “We’re all role models. The only question is: Will it be positive, or will it be negative?”
There was only one veiled reference to the ongoing Bonds-Aaron story during the ceremony, when Hummel referred to Commissioner Bud Selig having “some other things on his plate.”
Gwynn and Ripken both ducked questions about Bonds afterward.
“What a great day today was,” Gwynn said, smiling, when asked to comment on Bonds. “Seventy-five thousand people. Unbelievable.”
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