Cal Ripken Jr. still feels that hard sphere settling into his glove, even 35 years later as he sits at a conference table in a nondescript Baltimore County office park.
“I just squeezed my hand over the ball,” he said of the last out of the 1983 World Series. “And the feeling of fulfillment, joy, accomplishment — there was just this finality to holding the ball in your glove.”
The Iron Man is 57 now, thicker in build and creakier in his movements than in the summer of 1983, when he was a lanky kid streaking to his first American League MVP.