Cal Ripken Jr.: You realized there was all these signs, there was one in the right field fence where somebody tried to reach down from where they are and they fell over, and I thought they fell all the way to the bottom, which would have been a good eight to ten feet, and it just so happened that it wasn’t, the ground behind the fence was much higher, and so they popped up again, and scared me, and I started laughing, and we went around the ballpark.
And then to have an opportunity to stop, embrace all the other team, you know, every one of the California Angels stood in line, and I talked to every one of them, had a chance to celebrate with my little family, they were young. Ryan was a little over two and Rachel wasn’t quite six. And so they were taking it all in and he had a chance to celebrate that. And then I thought one of the super special moments was my dad was up in the skybox, I had a skybox there, and we put him in the skybox, and I caught his eye, you know, during this 22 minutes.
And from an old school standpoint, my dad wasn’t someone who said, “I love you” and all that kind of stuff, but you could see that he did, in his actions you could tell. But he wasn’t that lovey-dovey sort of a dad, and that was sort of his time, but in that moment, looking back and forth, there was a thousand of those type words that were flying back and forth. So that was a really special moment. It feels like it took about ten minutes, but it was probably like ten seconds, but that was a really cool moment. So there were tons of those moments.
I always think when people talk about some of the great things that happen to you in your career on the field. What were the most meaningful ones? And the first and foremost was I caught the last out of the World Series as a 23 year old guy, we won the World Series, that’s part of your dream to be a big league player is to win the World Series, and we did. And so it was the greatest feeling of fulfillment, joy, you know that finality that you did it. And so that feeling is, is unparalleled, that stands all by itself.