On September 6, 1995 Cal Ripken, Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles played his 2,131st consecutive game, breaking a record that had stood for 56 years.
Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr. (born August 24, 1960), nicknamed The Iron Man, is an American former baseball shortstop and third baseman who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Baltimore Orioles (1981–2001).
One of his position’s most offensively productive players, Ripken compiled 3,184 hits, 431 home runs, and 1,695 runs batted in during his career. Ripken holds the record for consecutive games played, 2,632, surpassing Lou Gehrig’s streak of 2,130 that had stood for 56 years.
This photograph of Cal Ripken is the work of Celebrity Photographer John Matthew Smith and has a CC BY-SA 2.0 license. It is used with permission of the author.
