An apparent electrical failure on August 14, 1997, caused the Baltimore Orioles' home game against the Seattle Mariners at Camden Yards to be postponed, but urban legend suggests there's more to the story. As documented in the TikTok video below, Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr. prided himself on being a literal everyday player. He holds the MLB record for most consecutive games played at 2,632. I'd be stunned if that record is broken in my lifetime, never mind for the rest of history. However, that streak was in peril on this day, allegedly because of a spat between Ripken and Hollywood star Kevin Costner.
Now before we get into this, some disclaimers: First off, Costner and Ripken denied anything like this ever happened. The two had met at the premiere of Costner's Oscar-winning movie
Dances with Wolves , and obviously the actor/filmmaker/
more recent Yellowstone star had anchored multiple iconic baseball flicks to that point in
Field of Dreams and
Bull Durham. Plenty of common ground to get along. However, legend has it that Ripken came home to find Costner with his wife, presumably in a compromising position. That led to an alleged fistfight and a hand injury for Ripken, which put his playing status for that day's game in jeopardy. Hence the so-called "electrical failure" and the eventual outright cancellation of the game. I'm too much of a peacekeeper in conspiracy theory-centric matters like these to weigh in on this juicy narrative's credulity. Therefore, I'm gonna go ahead and hand it off to Will Ferrell, who broached the purported Ripken-Costner rift on an episode of the
My Momma Told Me podcast . Ferrell thinks the urban legend, "kinda checks out."
"The story is that Cal Ripken came home to find his wife cheating with Kevin Costner. They had a fight, he hurt his hand, he’s like 'I can’t play tonight.' They’re like, 'OK, what about the streak? I know, the power’s out. Cut the lights.' And then they had a couple off days and it allowed the hand to heal up and the streak continued." You can see in the video that Ripken was at 2,431 consecutive games played by the time this hoopla went down. And I say hoopla because the electrical failure happened on the Camden Yards lights and nowhere else in the Baltimore area. Kind of makes you think! This whole yarn makes for a juicy tall tale if nothing else. I can't claim to know how electrical failures work. If we deploy Occam's razor here, it probably
was some boring electrical technicality that postponed the game. But wait, there's more! A podcast called
The Rumor explored the Costner-Ripken story deeper than anyone had before. One of the hosts, Mac Montandon, told
Vulture in a lengthy interview about the moment he believed this apparent myth might actually be truthful:
"I had a call with this sober-minded Baltimore attorney who knows Cal socially, and claimed to have good access to information and friendships and acquaintances with very powerful people, both in Baltimore and within the organization. And when a source like that told us he absolutely believed it was true — up until that point, I was extremely skeptical. And then from that point on, I was like, 'Well, if this guy, who’s in a great position to know such a thing — if he’s this certain, then maybe I need to ratchet up my level of certainty.' It felt more reasonable to get very serious about the investigation." Very interesting indeed. People in high places in Baltimore dropping hints that it happened. Not sure we'll ever know for certain short of an outright confession by any of the parties involved. Another detail from that
Vulture feature describes local newscast footage of Ripken at the park that day, in the dugout, which checks out with his alibi. The twist? Ripken was said to be startled by a camera put on him, and ripped his right hand out of the frame very abruptly. We'll end with a flashback to the night Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's record consecutive games streak, when Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio — owner of the still-standing hit streak record of 56 games — had some glowing words for the eventual 19-time All-Star. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWfCLPr-Png&pp=ygUOcmlwa2VuIGNvc3RuZXI%3D
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