Iron Man

Emotions? What emotions, says the Iron Man's old man."I'm an old stone-faced crabby old [guy]. I don't have any emotions," says Cal Ripken Sr.Not even when they unroll the new number, he says. Not even when the ovations roll over the park like a tsunami, he says.There he stands outside his skybox on the club level minutes before game time in a dignified gray-blue suit, white shirt and blue and red necktie. The white hair combed straight back, the face like a visage seen jutting from the sand at Easter Island.

The 1997 season brought a confession from Cal Ripken. It came in Oakland before an early August game, and it illustrated just how deeply the dents had begun to form in baseball's Iron Man. "He told me, `I can play like this for one more month. I don't think I can play with this for three more months,' " recalled outfielder Brady Anderson, Ripken's best friend on the team. "But he grinded it out." Ripken's back flared up while charging a slow roller by Oakland's Scott Brosius in the first inning.

I WENT TO the Ripken Minor League Experience expecting to see the Iron Man, and I ended up seeing two of them. Cal Ripken was there, of course. He needs no introduction. But if somebody had told me that diminutive Del. Sandy Rosenberg, a Democrat from Baltimore, would catch five games in four days, well, I might have thought twice about showing up with my sorry work ethic. Rosenberg, 54, is something of a fantasy camp junkie, enough so that he unabashedly appeared in a skit at the Legislative Follies in Annapolis last month in his Orioles jersey, so I wasn't surprised to see him on the bus to Staten Island on Wednesday night.

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.

When Ernie Tyler's current streak began, Cal Ripken Jr. wasn't even born.Mr. Tyler, a field attendant, hasn't missed an Orioles home game since he took the job in 1960. That's more than 2,800 consecutive home games, a streak that far surpasses Cal Ripken's major league record of 2,153 consecutive games played. If Mr. Ripken is the Iron Man, what does that make Mr. Tyler? The Titanium Man?Don't ask Mr. Tyler, a soft-spoken, low-key sort. The Orioles' public relations staff keeps track of the exact number of home games he's worked, and even they have only an estimate.

Even more than his love of gadgets, more than his appreciation of the comic-book ethos that inspired Iron Man, director Jon Favreau's success in bringing the Marvel Comics superhero to the big screen came down to his success as a mediator. Consider the creative forces he had to bring together. There was Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., an actor of unquestioned talent and commanding presence, but one weighed down by a personal life that hasn't always been his greatest asset. There were the folks at Marvel Comics, gatekeepers of the Iron Man mythology since his creation in 1963, who were bankrolling their first movie (after depending on others for such mega-franchises as Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four)

RICHMOND, Va. - The car tumbled along, turning over and over. Ten, 11 - 15 times. The man inside lost count. The fans held their collective breath. It was 1984 and Ricky Rudd was just a few years into a streak - an Iron Man streak - he didn't even realize he was working on. It might have all ended right there at Daytona International Speedway. But the next weekend at what was then called The Richmond Fairgrounds Raceway, Rudd showed up with two black eyes and an aching body. That weekend, he became one of the first drivers to use a flak jacket to protect his body during a race.

At 6:30, the upper decks at Camden Yards look as sparse as deserted honeycombs. Attendance is down. Still, the sun's warm, beer flows for $4.50 and Boog's barbecue smoke hangs sweetly over the right field bleachers. In a terrace box on the first-base side, an older married couple spreads out for a night made for rumination, cogitation, conversation, speculation and statistics. Cal Ripken's not playing against Tampa Bay tonight, but there's still baseball in Baltimore. Myra Gross says: "Give him the benefit of the doubt.

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."