BALTIMORE — At its essence, The Streak, as Cal Ripken’s historic string of consecutive games played became known, was about one man’s indestructibility, an almost supernatural physicality that, as the record-breaking 2,131st consecutive game approached on Sept. 6, 1995, gave Ripken an air of immortality. But almost everything that has followed that memorable night at Camden Yards — when Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s hallowed record in front of a packed stadium, a sitting president and a rapt national television audience — has driven home the opposite:  How fragile it all is — athletic greatness, the human body and life itself. No man is immortal, not even the Iron Man.  Mentally and physically exhausted from the massive build-up to 2,131, Ripken went on a 3-for-44 slump over the next two weeks. He ended The Streak voluntarily (at 2,632 games) in 1998, went under a surgeon’s knife in 1999 — the same year he lost his beloved father, Cal Ripken Sr., to lung cancer — and retired at the end of 2001.  And on Tuesday night, as if to drive it all home, Ripken, now 55 and nursing a recently injured shoulder, sat in a small VIP room off a corridor at Camden Yards and, for the first time, watched a highlights video of that momentous night, as it played simultaneously on the stadium scoreboard, on an evening set aside by the Orioles to honor its 20th anniversary.  “I like to preserve [the memories] on the inside,” he said, explaining why he hasn’t watched the replay in the past, “the way I remember it.”  [From the archives: The game story from Ripken’s record-setting night]  In that little room, he held back tears when he saw his late father’s proud, beaming face on the screen — “That kind of hit me hard, [how] we lost Dad way too early,” he said — and regarded with a mixture of bemusement and melancholy the younger, thinner, less bald version of himself, taking that reluctant victory lap around the field, as the game stopped for some 22 minutes.  “It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years,” Ripken said moments after emerging from the VIP room. “In some ways, it feels like it was yesterday. But you look at my kids — Rachel is almost 26 and Ryan is 22 — and the fact that they were 2 and 6 [at the time] drives home the point that it has been awhile.  “In some ways, it seems like a snap of the fingers.”  Streak was a balm, not a cure  Ripken would have been considered an immortal — in the strictly baseball sense — even if there had never been a Streak. His was a textbook Hall of Fame career — 3,184 hits, 431 homers, two MVP awards, two Gold Gloves, 19 All-Star Games — with the added historical markers of having redefined the position of shortstop and having played his entire 21-year career for his hometown team.  But it was The Streak that elevated him from a baseball star to a cultural icon, that bumped him from “SportsCenter” to the evening news. Despite its pedestrian underpinnings (after all, at a basic level it represented nothing more than showing up for work every day), the consecutive-games record brought together the perfect athlete — the telegenic Ripken, with his pristine image and icy blue eyes — with the perfect set of circumstances.  The consecutive-games-played streak didn’t belong to just anyone — it had belonged, for more than half a century, to Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, the Pride of the Yankees, a beloved and tragic figure who died from a disease that would come to be named for him.  And 2,131 didn’t come along at just any time — it came in the aftermath of the damaging players’ strike of 1994-95, which forced the unprecedented canceling of the 1994 World Series, witnessed the sight of replacement players in the spring of 1995 and had fans turning away from the sport in droves that summer.  [From the archives: Schaap, DeFord, Povich, Boswell on Ripken]  Though Ripken — or more accurately, The Streak — is frequently credited with “saving” baseball through the goodwill he (and it) engendered, it is not exactly true. It wasn’t until 2006 that Major League Baseball made it all the way back to its pre-strike levels of per-game attendance, and the steroids-fueled explosion in offense probably had more to do with that revival than anything else.  “I don’t think it necessarily saved the game,” Ripken said. “It came at the right time, where people were looking for something good. Once the World Series was canceled, everyone was aware of the damage that had been done to the game. So going into the [1995] season and seeing the media’s interest in the streak, I think it was an opportunity. It gave people a good feeling when they needed it, but by no means do I think it saved the game.”  And it is The Streak that, even 20 years later, maintains Ripken’s status as arguably the game’s most important ambassador — sometimes literally so, as when he has traveled as a special envoy for the U.S. State Department to China, Nicaragua and Japan. His reach within the sport extends from its highest level, as when he serves as an analyst for TBS, to its lowest, grass-roots levels: the Cal Ripken Division of the Babe Ruth League, for kids ages 4-12.  “Sometimes,” he joked about the kids he meets, “I have to get them to go Google me.”  Known as a meticulous planner and analyzer of situations, Ripken nonetheless leaves himself open to the possibility of a mid-life career change, often acknowledging his desire to run a major league franchise or manage in the big leagues someday. However, true to form — for someone who has been in the public eye for some 35 years now and somehow has managed to never once say something he regrets in public — he wouldn’t bite on a question regarding potential managing jobs in 2016.  “I’m 55. I’m young in some respects,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m content doing what I’m doing now — in continuing to make strides in areas of business, and in helping kids. But I analyze everything. I’m terrible in hypotheticals. I don’t think I can give you an answer.”  Iron Man to Tin Man  Just after 7 o’clock Tuesday night, Ripken strolled across the infield at Camden Yards in a navy pinstriped suit and a light blue dress shirt open at the collar. The iconic banners reading “2-1-3-1” — which were famously unfurled at the instant Ripken’s record became official on Sept. 6, 1995 — were back in their old spots on the wall of the B&O Warehouse, beyond the right field fence. (The Orioles were celebrating the 20th anniversary of 2,131 on Sept. 1 instead of Sept. 6 because the team would be away on the latter date.)  Stopping well short of the pitcher’s mound, Ripken took a spot about 25 feet from where Brady Anderson, his former teammate and good friend, dropped into a catcher’s crouch behind home plate. Anderson seemed to be giving Ripken some ribbing about choosing to throw his ceremonial first pitch from so close to the plate.  [From the archives: The Post’s 2,131 tribute page]  About 4 ½ hours earlier, Ripken had been riding his bicycle downtown — something he likes to do when he has business in the city, relishing the fact he often goes unnoticed in his helmet and sunglasses — when he misjudged a curb and went flying over the handlebars, landing on his right shoulder. The next day, he visited an orthopedist who diagnosed two tears in his rotator cuff, which will require surgery.  “People say, ‘You’re the Iron Man,’” Ripken joked later, “but I feel more like the Tin Man right now. I’ve got more aches and pains than you can imagine.”  In the infield grass, closer to home plate than the mound, Ripken grimaced and gingerly heaved the ball into Anderson’s glove.  “If you say you’re really hurt,” Anderson told him as they hugged afterward, “you must be really hurt.”  And then, Ripken disappeared into the Orioles’ dugout, gone again. They’ll bring him back, undoubtedly, in 2020 for the 25th anniversary and do this all again. They’ll play the video, and on the big screen in the stadium and the little one in the VIP room, Rachel and Ryan will still be youngsters, and Cal Sr. will still be beaming from his suite, and Cal Jr., with number 8 on his back, will still be jogging around the warning track and slapping high-fives with the fans.  And meanwhile, in real life, Ripken and all of us, we’ll be five years older and amazed again at just how long it’s been, and how quickly it’s gone by, like a snap of the fingers.
It’s been 20 years since Ripken set his unreachable record, but the time passed in the blink of an eye.