Alex Rodriguez’s classy gesture toward baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. didn’t quite go over as well as he planned during the 2001 All-Star Game, he revealed on Tuesday.
“Derek [Jeter] and I looked up, admiring, [Ripken’s] the reason I was able to play short, being so tall…I just wanted, as a fan, to have you one more time in your position,” Rodriguez said to Ripken on the FOX pregame show, referencing the 2001 moment.
At the time, Ripken looked reluctant to move off of third base, a feeling he confirmed on Tuesday.
“Now that you brought it back up, I was kind of pissed at you,” Ripken Jr. said. “I was like looking at it, I hadn’t [played shortstop] in a while. I got this big ‘ol glove on my hand that they called humongous, I go, ‘how am I going to go back over there, turn a double play?’”
Twenty-two years ago, Ripken Jr. — then 40 years old — was enjoying a stop on a triumphant farewell tour at the 2001 All-Star Game, his staggering 19th time being honored at the Midseason Classic at the end of his 21-year Hall-of-Fame career.
Rodriguez, then a 25-year-old star in the prime of his career with the Rangers, was starting for the American League at shortstop, the position Ripken Jr. had played until 1997, when age forced him to move to third base.
Along with the urging of AL All-Star manager Joe Torre, Rodriguez asked Ripken Jr. to switch positions with him at the game in hopes of honoring the veteran’s heyday manning shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles.
Rodriguez could be seen tossing the ball around the infield before the first pitch was thrown, looking at manager Torre for the signal to go to Ripken.
After Rodriguez finished warming up, he walked toward baseball’s Ironman who looked to refuse the offer from the then Ranger superstar.
But when a ball player has to obey his manager’s orders.
“A classy gesture from a classy man,” commentator Joe Buck said of Rodriguez. “His idea. Cal Ripken fought but Junior finally gave in when Torre said get over there.”
Ripken Jr, who hit 14 homers during that farewell season, gave fans another classic moment during that All-Star Game, when he smacked a home run over the left-field wall to the adoration of thousands of fans.
This year’s Midseason Classic was held in Seattle for the first time since that game in 2001.
