Word: ripken
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...Kazuo is the Alex Rodriguez of the Japanese game," says Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa, the definitive English-language book on Japanese baseball. Until announcing his plans to jump to the U.S. last week, Matsui was on his way to becoming his country's Cal Ripken Jr. His consecutive-games streak of 1,143 is the fifth longest in Japanese baseball history. "Matsui plays hurt and doesn't know where the trainer's table is," says Ted Heid, director of Pacific Rim operations for the Seattle Mariners. "I think he's going to be very, very successful...
...that Ripken is a lot of what baseball has become: a high-salaried star for whom a personal goal eventually becomes more important than helping the team...
...Ripken was also lucky. Lucky enough not to have gone down with a broken leg, like the A's Jermaine Dye in last year's playoffs - or, for that matter, like Gehrig in 1939, with the death sentence of amyotrophic sclerosis. Late in his career, even in the first stages of the disease that would be named after him, Gehrig was still a potent offensive player, leading the league in on-base percentage and home runs...
...Ripken too had been a star, a clutch player, as asset at shortstop. Then the years turned his hair and his skills gray. His batting average drooped, his power numbers were anemic, he was no longer a shining asset to his team. And still the Orioles managers (one of them was his father) were afraid to sit him for a day or two, if only to give a chance to a younger, hungrier, maybe better player. They let Ripken stay out there for the same reason he insisted on staying out there: because of the streak. That's not teamwork...
...this for Rose: he did it on the field, whatever he did off the field. He got hits, broke up double plays, won games. He did more than what Ripken was so immoderately praised for: showing...