Iron Man

BOSTON -- It was the first rite of spring. Position players had just reported to Fort Lauderdale Stadium last February. Intending to answer the crush of questions as quickly and as conclusively as possible, Cal Ripken sat encircled by a national media tour and addressed the predictable.Would this be the Iron Man's final season?"I can't make a prediction. I don't know," Ripken said. "I love the game so much that I want to be competitive. I want to play as long as I can. But if I can't be competitive, I won't play."

For Cal Ripken, Opening Day figured to be difficult emotionally. The last thing anyone expected was that it would be difficult physically, too.Ripken bowed his head, shifting his weight from one leg to the other during the moment of silence and video tribute to his late father, Cal Ripken Sr. The Orioles unveiled an orange "7" in the third base coach's box in memory of Senior. And then the game began, the 18th opener of Junior's Hall of Fame career.Who could have imagined that he would be removed due to injury for the first time that anyone could remember?

The Orioles added another day -- and a significant degree of intrigue -- to Cal Ripken's recovery from lower-back pain yesterday as manager Ray Miller reversed course over whether to sit the game's Iron Man due to injury for the first time since 1982.Less than 24 hours after insisting a conversation with the third baseman pointed toward his return, Miller scratched the 38-year-old All-Star in favor of rookie Willis Otanez. Miller made the decision after speaking with Ripken more than four hours before last night's first pitch against Tampa Bay."

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Somewhere along the otherwise deserted perimeter of a back field the Iron Man is already counting laps. For 30, sometimes 40 minutes this goes on, beginning around 8 a.m. Practice doesn't begin for another two hours, the day's game more than three hours after that. Taking any morning off isn't an option. Cal Ripken knows rust never sleeps.As punishment for a herniated disk that nearly extinguished his consecutive-games streak last summer, Ripken, 37, has embraced a daily routine that would make many younger men buckle.

TORONTO -- Until Cal Ripken scratched himself from last Sunday's lineup, the assumption among many fans and teammates was that the Iron Man would simply play on forever. If a bulging disk, sprained ankles or Davey Johnson couldn't bench him, then what was left?No player within the clubhouse had ever stepped onto the Memorial Stadium or Camden Yards fields as an Oriole without Ripken there. Sure, his position might have changed, but never his presence.Yet as the Orioles look ahead to 1999, the issue no longer is whether he will sit, but how often.

The Moment again found Cal Ripken yesterday afternoon. Once more it did not find him wanting.What was advertised as Ripken's 2,500th consecutive game became something more: a win. Never comfortable with the attention that greets public notice of his record, Ripken answered with two well-placed singles that provided the momentum for an 8-2 win over the Oakland Athletics.Ripken homered on Sept. 5, 1995, the night he played No. 2,130 to match Lou Gehrig's Iron Man record. And he did so again the following night in No. 2,131, a game dwarfed by the event.

Around 7: 30 last night, Cal Ripken ended the most imposing record in sports by entering Orioles manager Ray Miller's office to say it was time.Quietly and without warning, Ripken decided to end a major-league record of 2,632 consecutive games played, all starts and all in an Orioles uniform. For the first time since May 30, 1982, the left side of the Orioles' infield did not include the former American League Rookie of the Year and two-time Most Valuable Player who also had come to represent the virtues of perseverance and work ethic.

Here's the deal, or at least what should be the deal, if Cal Ripken is going to sign a contract extension by Opening Day:Three years, $20 million.Fair?Of course it's fair.Both sides would hate the terms.The Orioles probably believe they're overpaying Ripken -- his $6.2 million salary is the 10th-highest among position players -- so they don't want to give him a raise of almost $500,000 per season.Ripken, meanwhile, knows he might command $7.5 million to $8 million as a free agent after this season, so he almost certainly would want the Orioles to pay him closer to market value.

A few people left yesterday's Opening Day game a little early to attend the unveiling of a bronze monument to the "Iron Man."A ceremony was held last evening at the Ripken Museum in Aberdeen to unveil a 915-pound statue of Orioles third baseman vTC Cal Ripken Jr. Three generations of the Ripken family, including his mother and father, were on hand along with Gov. Parris N. Glendening and local politicians as residents got their first look at the monument.Sculpted...

The saddest part about Cal Ripken's receiving death threats is that it's not surprising.Not at all.It would be surprising if Ripken didn't receive threats from the inevitable geeks and nuts as he closes in on Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games record.You can almost hear 'em crowing: "So, he thinks he's an iron man, huh?"Being a public figure of any sort these days, with all the weirdness out there, means being a target -- for abuse on talk shows, for strange people with strange ideas, for sickos craving attention.

A half-century after it was made, movies still don't come any worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space, Edward D. Wood Jr.'s grade-Z sci-fi opus about aliens looking to take over the Earth by raising the dead and having them ... well, having them do something that will put us all in our place. (The movie's a little sketchy on the details.) Tomorrow at 2 p.m., the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Southeast Anchor branch, 3601 Eastern Ave., will celebrate Plan 9's golden anniversary with a free screening of the film, as well as an appearance by Maryland's own Conrad Brooks, who played a policeman in the movie.

Smart move to sit The Dallas Cowboys' Tony Romo wants to try to play with that pinkie on his throwing hand that he broke on Sunday. So how much do you think that phone call from Romo's boyhood idol, Brett Favre, had to do with all this? It's admirable that Romo wants to show he can play with pain the way that the NFL's own iron man has over the course of 258 regular-season games, but the Cowboys need to be concerned that Romo doesn't aggravate the injury so badly that he requires surgery and is out for the season.

DVD "Iron Man": In the comic books, poor clunky Iron Man is a B-list superhero at best. But in the hands of director Jon Favreau and actor Robert Downey Jr., the story of the jaded industrialist turned mechanical do-gooder soars to new heights, finally putting the rust bucket in league with marquee heroes like Spider-Man and Batman. The quick-witted Iron Man is a refreshing change of pace for the normally dreary superhero genre. In stores Tuesday. TV "Little Britain USA": Finally, a British import that hasn't been watered down.

Capsules by Michael Sragow or Chris Kaltenbach, unless noted. Full reviews are at baltimoresun.com/movies. Baby Mama: Tina Fey inhabits what should be her comfort zone as a career woman who decides to use a surrogate to have a baby and ends up with raucous, declasse Amy Poehler. As the movie makes its way toward its denouement that leaves everyone happy-ever-after, the film feels emptier than your typical successful high-concept comedy. Part of the problem is the center will not hold: The TV stars are outmatched by a strong supporting cast (Greg Kinnear, Maura Tierney, Holland Taylor, Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver and more)

Superman. Batman. Spider-Man. X-Men. And now Iron Man. Big-time movie franchises all, major-league moneymakers that have their fans lining up around the block for more. But what about Wonder Woman? The Flash? Thor? Captain America? What's keeping them off the big screen? "Mainly, it's because we can only do so many at one time," offers 20th-century mythmaker supreme Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man and a bunch of other superhero franchises-in-waiting. Maybe. But the truth is more complicated than that, having to do with a host of factors ranging from popularity to casting, from special effects to scriptwriting, from fulfilling fans' expectations to striking while the superhero iron is hot. At the moment, superhero movies are being churned out like widgets on an assembly line.

Look closely at the top summer movies and notice the special effects they're having on the perception of age. At 65, Harrison Ford is saving the world again in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and, yes, that's gray hair underneath his beat-up fedora. In Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. flies across the ocean in a metal suit and, just as incredibly, demonstrates a superhero can be a 43-year-old guy with crow's feet. All the fun stuff in Sex and the City - the high heels, designer handbags, fancy cocktails and steamy passions - is reserved for actresses of a certain age and income level.

Capsules by Michael Sragow or Chris Kaltenbach, unless noted. Full reviews are at baltimoresun.com/movies. Baby Mama -- Tina Fey inhabits what should be her comfort zone as a career woman who decides to use a surrogate to have a baby and ends up with raucous, declasse Amy Poehler. As the movie makes its way toward a denouement that leaves everyone happy-ever-after, the film feels emptier than your typical successful high-concept comedy. Part of the problem is the center will not hold: The TV stars are outmatched by a strong supporting cast (Greg Kinnear, Maura Tierney, Holland Taylor, Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver and more)

Capsules by Michael Sragow or Chris Kaltenbach, unless noted. Full reviews are at baltimoresun.com/movies. Baby Mama -- Tina Fey inhabits what should be her comfort zone as a career woman who decides to use a surrogate to have a baby and ends up with raucous, declasse Amy Poehler. As the movie makes its way toward a denouement that leaves everyone happy-ever-after, the film feels emptier than your typical successful high-concept comedy. Part of the problem is the center will not hold: The TV stars are outmatched by a strong supporting cast (Greg Kinnear, Maura Tierney, Holland Taylor, Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver and more)

Robert Downey Jr. stars as Tony Stark, a self-absorbed munitions tycoon who is kidnapped by enemy weapons dealers and creates new-millennial armor that turns him into a superhero. Director Jon Favreau and two teams of screenwriters root Iron Man's high-flying derring-do in a change of heart that clicks first emotionally, then comedically and ultimately in both ways. Stark gains a novel slant on life that makes him see everyone from a fresh angle, including three close associates: his right-hand gal, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow)

Over the next three days, a few hundred thousand Americans are expected to show up at theaters for the premiere weekend of Iron Man, based on the Marvel Comics character. If only the country's 3,000 comics stores could entice even a small percentage of them into their shops. "There might be a few people who come in for their kids, but it won't be as many people as you'd think, as far as the person who's not into comics," says John "Bumper" Moyer, owner of Glen Burnie's Twilite Zone Comics.