Cal Ripken Jr., 2001 Fleer Cal Ripken Jr. Career Highlights #21

Cal Ripken, Jr. is in the news again this week, because that guy just can't stop hogging the limelight. Okay, call off your dogs, I swear I'm joking. In actuality, Junior joined Twitter on Tuesday. I wouldn't recommend doing such a thing myself, but his intentions were good: he's promoting the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation's "Strike Out Hunger" fundraiser, which is a partnership with Feeding America that will provide food for families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you want to follow Cal on social media, his username is @CalRipkenJr, oddly enough. He is not stingy with the doggie photos, and his golden doodle Nash is by all appearances a very good boy.

The same day that the Iron Man logged on to the Twitter hellscape, ESPN rebroadcast his record-breaking 2,131st consecutive game, seeing as how they had an opening in their schedule. Ripken claims that it was the first time he'd watched it start-to-finish since that landmark night of September 6, 1995. He told the Sports Junkies that he didn't want to mess up his own memories of it, which I can understand.“Once you start seeing things, you’re like, ‘Oh, that guy was on my team?’ Then you start looking up rosters.”

I mean, if I were Cal, I'd also probably try to forget that Manny Alexander was the other half of the double-play combo the day that I broke Lou Gehrig's record. Until you see the video footage, you can just keep fudging the timeline and pretend that it was Roberto Alomar.