Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played streak on this date in 1995, and I remember that it was an event. There is a tape of it somewhere in the house, and there was a good Sportscenter that night. Ripken help onto the record for some time before he decided to snap his own streak so that people would stop talking to him about it. No one will ever play that many games in the row, and there is a fundamental reason why.
The investment is too great
Players are bigger, faster, and stronger in the modern age, and they are going up against guys who are just too big and too strong to think that they will never get hurt.
Guys are throwing harder than ever, and we wonder why pitchers get hurt all the time. Guys are sliding harder into every base, jumping in the outfield, and more likely to get hit by a ball. Players are investing a lot more of their bodies because the game is more dangerous than it used to be, and they could not expect to get past 2000 games played in a row.
The game is not the same
We do not make them like we used to, and players are simply not the same as they were in the past. Please recall that guys in the golden age of baseball played less games, the games tended to be shorter, and they were not using as much torque to swing and throw. Players are playing more than ever, and their bodies come to the Major Leagues with more usage on them than guys who were playing back in the day.
Lou Gehrig, bless his soul, was not throwing in a specialty baseball events house with his dad five days a week. Kids are doing that now.
You brand matters
Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken Jr. were not thinking about their brands when they played through injuries and made it on the lineup card every day. They could not maximize their personal value back then because it was a different world, and they were not living in a media world that would have paid them back for the talent that they had.
Gehrig could have been an extremely rich man in today's world because he was playing in New York. Ripken was not interested in personal fame, and he eventually broke his own streak because he thought it took up too much attention from his team.
They did something amazing
These two men were great men who played the game extremely well, but that does not mean that what they did was any better or worse because of when it was done. Guys today are not playing that many games in a row because their teams would not allow them to do the same thing. It is a new day, and we should applaud Gehrig and Ripken.
