Taylor’s 28-year search for Cal Ripken history comes down to eight tickets

It’s one of baseball’s most iconic records: For 2,632 straight games over 17 seasons, Cal Ripken Jr never missed a day in the Baltimore Orioles’ lineup. For the past 28 years, lifelong Orioles fan Rick Taylor has been amassing a collection to match it, trying to gather a ticket from each game of Ripken’s “Iron Man” streak, which lasted from 1982 to 1998.

After decades of searching, Taylor is just eight tickets short of completing what experts agree is already one of the most impressive collections of baseball tickets ever assembled.

“Did I ever really think I would get this far? No, not really,” said Taylor, a retired 69-year-old food industry salesman who lives outside Baltimore. “But I always said to myself that if I could ever get down to single digits, I think I could do it.”

Taylor’s collection now fills 16 boxes in his collectible-filled basement, each ticket individually protected in a hard plastic holder and labelled with its corresponding game number – the physical manifestation of a record that many believe will never be broken. “The amount of time and the effort to put something together like that is astonishing,” said Mike Provenzale, a production manager at Heritage Auctions, which is not affiliated with Taylor’s collection. “Everyone marvels at Ripken’s record. It’s almost an equal feat of perseverance to put together a collection of that many tickets.”

Taylor's collection now fills 16 boxes in his collectible-filled basement. Photos: Associated Press

Taylor’s pursuit, though, comes as physical tickets have largely become a thing of the past, with teams shifting toward digital passes and QR codes that offer little of the appeal of an old-fashioned ticket stub.

“It’s devastating,” Taylor said, lamenting that younger collectors will never be able to build similar collections that span the careers of today’s stars like Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge. “It would be impossible to put together a run like this today,” said Matt Fuller, head of ticket authentication at PSA, which authenticates and grades collectibles.

Taylor initially had a more modest goal: a ticket from every game in which Ripken hit one of his 431 career home runs. But when a fellow collector asked him if he had thought about expanding the search to encompass the Iron Man streak, Taylor was intrigued: “I said, ‘That would be crazy, but you might have something there.’”

So Taylor began placing ads in “The Baltimore Sun,” which quickly yielded calls from people offering to sell or trade their tickets to him. As a local, finding a ticket from each home game was relatively easy, Taylor said, even if he had to pay $4,400 in 1999 to win an auction for the jewel of his collection: a May 30, 1982, ticket that marked the first game of Ripken’s streak.

The road games have proven much tougher. Over the years, Taylor has gone to card shows, scoured eBay and even bought the tickets of other Ripken fans who’d given up on their own Iron Man collections. A lively Facebook group called Booger’s Ticket Stubs has also been a big help, as members help each other track down things on their friends’ wish lists.

A few years ago, things had slowed to a trickle: 2023 yielded one ticket. 2024, zero. But then he got three in 2025. And this year, amid a renewed push to publicise the collection on social media, Taylor has already gotten five more.

That leaves eight largely uneventful road games from the 1980s still missing: four against the Minnesota Twins, three against the Texas Rangers and one against the Kansas City Royals. Taylor can recite the dates by heart: 6-4-82 in Minnesota. 8-21-82 against the Rangers. 4-25-84 vs. the Royals.

Taylor partially attributes the difficulty in finding the Twins and Rangers tickets to the fact that both teams were mediocre in the mid-80s and did not command large crowds, further increasing their scarcity. He is offering $100 per ticket to garner interest.

“I’m just hoping there are people who see that someone needs those tickets – because they’re out there,” Taylor said. Fuller, from PSA, agreed: “I have no doubt they’re out there, collecting dust in a desk drawer, a scrapbook or a shoebox.”

The fact that Taylor has already found so many of those obscure tickets is astounding, Provenzale said, recalling the poorly attended Rangers games he used to attend while growing up in the 1980s.

“To find somebody that held on to a ticket like that, it’s jaw-dropping,” Provenzale said. Taylor is searching for tickets that few thought to save. But for today’s fans, there may soon be no physical tickets at all.

For years now, tickets to sporting events have been largely distributed digitally or via printable PDFs, neither of which has the appeal or style of a ticket on cardstock. Some teams will print out a ticket for a nominal fee. Others have ceased the practice entirely.

Taylor recalled attending an Orioles game last year in which the Dodgers’ Ohtani hit two home runs. Knowing some of his friends collect Ohtani tickets, Taylor went to the Orioles’ box office to buy 10 bleacher tickets for $35 each. The only problem? Taylor says the Orioles staffers refused to print the tickets, offering only digital tickets instead, something Taylor had no interest in paying for.

“They turned down $350,” Taylor said. “They can print the tickets; they just don’t want to.” In a statement, the Orioles defended digital ticketing, citing reduced fraud, better communication with fans and a smoother entry process. The team said it still provides physical tickets in certain circumstances, such as when a minor doesn’t have a cellphone.

Ironically, it’s this shift away from physical tickets that has increased their appeal, Provenzale said. He said the market grew about a decade ago and “exploded” about eight years ago, appealing both to memorabilia collectors, as well as card collectors, who value condition.

Associated Press