Happy birthday to one of the all-time great baseball players, Baltimore's Cal Ripken, Jr., who turns 50 today. Ripken holds what will probably be the unbreakable record of 2,632 straight games from May, 1982 to September, 1998. He eclipsed Lou Gehrig's record of 2,130 consecutive games in 1995, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY on the first ballot in 2007.
Ripken played his entire career with the Baltimore Orioles, notable in this age of free agency and the grab-it-while-you-can sports business.
