Did a fist fight with Kevin Costner nearly cost Cal Ripken Jr. his record games played streak? Crazy as it sounds, the rumor’s been out there for quite some time and while Ripken and Costner have repeatedly denied it, dismissing their reported tiff as little more than tabloid fodder, a number of baseball conspiracy theorists, particularly those with ties to the Orioles, would say otherwise.
The story goes that on Friday, August 14, 1997, Ripken came home to find the three-time Oscar nominee (who he had befriended years earlier) in bed with his then-wife, Kelly, prompting a physical altercation that left the All-Star shortstop too beat-up to play that night’s game against the Seattle Mariners. Fearful of missing his first game since 1982, Ripken, as legend would have it, called in a favor, asking the Orioles to stage a power outage at Camden Yards that would postpone the game until Saturday.
If true, not only would it tarnish the Hall-of-Famer’s squeaky-clean image, but it would also raise questions over the validity of his record streak of 2,632 consecutive games played, which Ripken ended by his own volition a year after his rumored spat with the Field of Dreams actor. Sam Dingman and Mac Montandon, both lifelong Orioles fans, set out to find the truth in their new podcast series “The Rumor,” which debuted on Blue Wire Podcast Network October 25th. Dingman and Montandon, who began investigating the Ripken/Costner rumor over a year ago, will release their findings over 5-6 installments with new episodes dropping each Monday.
“I’m not going to give anything away, but I do feel like we have reached a pretty provocative answer about what happened that night,” teased Dingman during his appearance Thursday on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. Dingman says Ripken and Costner have so far declined interview requests, though Costner apparently spoke at length about the alleged incident on Fox Sports Radio in 2001. Curiously, Dingman’s request for that audio, which, according to those who heard it, may have incriminated Costner, was denied at the last second.
“I’m not saying that’s anything other than just what I’ve said, but it added to the soup of mystique that exists around this,” said Dingman, who noted Costner was often photographed with Ripken, even taking ground balls with him before Orioles games on occasion. Dingman also reminded Le Batard of an important detail that often gets overlooked in the mythology of Ripken and Costner’s alleged love triangle.
“By the time this happened in 1997, Cal had already broken [Lou] Gehrig’s record. He was well past it,” explained Dingman. “It raises this really interesting question, I think. Because, if you’re an Orioles fan, the idea that ego or a sense of personal ambition would have had anything to do with Cal’s pursuit of this consecutive games streak didn’t even enter your head. But there were people from outside Baltimore that thought to themselves, ‘He’s lost a step at shortstop, they’ve moved him to third base. He’s not really hitting the way he once did. He’s already broken the record. Why’s he still going out there every day? What’s the point of this?”
Whatever actually happened that fateful night in 1997, it sounds like we’re about to find out.
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