Baltimore Orioles – Cal Ripken, Jr. (1991)
The history of Major League Baseball in Baltimore is an interesting one. Among the charter members of the AL was a team named the Baltimore Orioles, but that club went bankrupt and was replaced by the New York Highlanders, who would become the Yankees. The current Orioles franchise traces its roots back to the original Milwaukee Brewers and the St. Louis Browns.
Since the move to Baltimore in 1954, the O’s have won six AL pennants and three World Championships, and been home to Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer and Eddie Murray. But the man that lays claim to the greatest individual season in Orioles history was the same one who broke Lou Gehrig’s supposedly unbreakable streak of consecutive games played, Cal Ripken.
At the age of 30, Ripken slashed .323/.374/.566 in 1991, making the ninth of his 19th consecutive all-star appearances and claiming his second AL MVP award. His .323 batting average was the highest of his career, as were his 34 home runs, 114 RBIs, .940 OPS, and 162 OPS+, and he added 210 hits and 46 doubles for good measure.
Ripken’s bWAR of 11.5 in 1991 is not only the greatest total in Baltimore’s franchise history, but ranks in a tie for 11th all-time among position players with Babe Ruth (1926) and Honus Wagner (1908), and was one of two times he reached double digits in his career.
Inducted into Cooperstown in 2007, Ripken is 25th all-time in position player bWAR after tallying 3,184 hits, 431 homers, 603 doubles, and 1,695 RBIs, and his consecutive games played streak of 2,632 may never be approached again.
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