Cal Ripken Jr. says he is happy for John Maroon, now that his longtime publicist is going into business for himself. "It's something that he really wanted to do," Ripken said by telephone, while on a multicity tour promoting his latest book, Parenting Young Athletes the Ripken Way.
Maroon, who recently set up his public relations office in Marriottsville, will continue to handle publicity for Ripken, but he is working for himself now and taking on other clients, as well.
Ripken, who retired from the Orioles in 2001 holding the record for most consecutive games played (2,632), said he will miss being able to walk into Maroon's office whenever he needed to speak with him. But overall, he said, "it's almost like he hasn't left."
In fact, the Ellicott City resident was flying to New York that night to help Ripken with promotional appearances on two television shows, Good Day New York and The View. Ripken ended the phone conversation by joking: "Don't tell him I said anything good about him."
Maroon and Ripken met in 1995, right after the baseball strike. Maroon had become head of publicity for the Orioles, and the team was in Sarasota for spring training. Reporters were swarming around Ripken because the big question of the day was whether Ripken's streak would still count if the managers began using replacement players.
Maroon remembers meeting Ripken's eye as the ballplayer stood in the middle of the media circus. The rest, as they say, is history. "We ended up forming a really good relationship," Maroon says. Together, they developed a plan for dealing with the media. Ripken says he and Maroon have always "thought along the same lines."
Maroon, 40, grew up in New Jersey and graduated from St. John's University in Queens, N.Y., with a degree in sports management. He was not an athlete, but he always loved baseball, he said. Back then, he was a Yankees fan, but Maroon insists that his heart belongs to the Orioles now.
After college, he got an internship with baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, which led to a job as publicity assistant in the office of the American League. That, in turn, led to a job with the Cleveland Indians from 1990 to 1994. Maroon joined the Orioles the next year.
He had not planned on a career in baseball, he said, but the pieces seemed to fall into place for him. "I was lucky. It was all being in the right place at the right time," he said.
