The Wayback Machine: The Birth of Ripken Baseball

Last week, we explored Aberdeen and its beloved semi-pro baseball team, the Canners. This week, we’ll take a closer look at the team and its players.

Ripken baseball did not begin with Cal, Sr. Rather, it began with his older brothers, Ollie and Bill, in the Susquehanna League.

Ollie, also known as “Big Rip,” was 18 years older than Cal and was a catcher for the Canners starting in 1935. He also worked at a lumber company. His baseball career was interrupted when Uncle Sam came calling in 1943, during World War II. 

Ollie fought in the Battle of the Bulge and lived to tell about it, according to an article, “History of the Susquehanna Baseball League-Part II,” by Fred Liedlich in the Harford Historical Bulletin #95.

According to the late Cal Ripken, Sr. in his book, The Ripken Way, Ollie “could’ve had the opportunity to play professional ball had WW II not entered the picture.”

In 1945, Ollie resumed playing for the Canners. In 1948, he hit .393.  Four years later, he hit .483 and won a batting title and a league trophy.

Ollie continued with the Canners until the demise of the “Susky” league in 1953. He ended up playing right field because, when he was 35 years old, a certain someone took over his role as catcher in 1952. He also acted as a player/manager.

Brother Bill, who was eight years younger than Ollie, also played with the Canners. He was a 1943 graduate of Aberdeen High School, where he played baseball. In 1944, he went into the military and by 1946 was playing centerfield for the Canners.

Bill’s shot at the big leagues came in 1947 and he took it. He joined a farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers and began playing outfield for the Cambridge (MD) Dodgers, where he batted .346 and had five home runs, two doubles and eight triples that year.

His 1948 season was split between the Lancaster (PA) Red Roses and the Danville (IL) Dodgers. That year, he racked up an average of .305 with two home runs, 12 doubles and 11 triples. Information about Bill’s career may be found here.

The following year, Bill played again with the Red Roses and also the Montreal Royals in Canada for the International League. This would be his last year playing in the minors before tiring of the traveling and taking a job at a bank, according to The Ripken Way.

Now, we come to little brother Cal. He began his career in baseball as a nine-year-old bat boy, alongside his older brothers. But he was no ordinary bat boy. When the coach of the Canners realized the other teams were stealing the signals, it was Cal who gave the signals.

It was also the same year, 1944, that the Ripkens’ father, Arend, died in a car accident. Perhaps this brotherly bond over baseball helped to compensate in some small way for their loss.

Cal began catching for the Canners in 1952 and played for a season where he achieved a batting average of .314. The following year he graduated from Aberdeen High School and the Susquehanna League disbanded.

In 1957, Cal began his baseball career as a catcher in the Orioles’ class C minor league in Phoenix, Ariz. By 1960, he advanced to class B ball in Fox Cities, Wis., where he had a .281 average with 74 runs batted in.

Cal played AAA ball in Rochester, N.Y. in 1961 and went on to become a player/manager for Baltimore’s class D in Leesburg, Fla.  In 1964, Cal found himself in another Aberdeen, far from home. It was Aberdeen, S.D. and he was named the Northern League’s Manager of the Year.

More than a  decade later, he began managing the Orioles’ farm system in 1974 before becoming a scout in 1975. In 1976, he became a coach for the Orioles. Cal, Sr. would see his son and namesake, Cal, Jr. named as the American League Most Valuable Player in 1983, just two years after his debut in the game.

However, that wasn't his only parental triumph, baseball-wise. In 1987, Cal, Sr. became the only father to manage two sons on the same team at the same time when his younger son, Bill, joined the Orioles.

So, now you have the rest of the story when it comes to the birth of Ripken baseball. It comes from deep within the roots of a family tree homegrown in Aberdeen.

Join me next week as we find out about the industry on which the foundations of this town were built.