For months, Spiro Alafassos had floated an idea during planning meetings for Cal Ripken Jr.’s big day, only to have those closest to the Orioles icon rebuff it.

Wouldn’t it be great if Ripken did a lap around Camden Yards? Alafassos, then the manager of ballpark entertainment and special events, would say in the buildup to history. And the answer, without fail, was something along the lines of: “That’s never going to happen.”

Ripken doing a lap around Camden Yards in the middle of a game? Get real. The understated Iron Man putting himself into the starlight and delaying a game to do it — the only game he ever wanted to play? Inconceivable.

Until Rafael Palmeiro and Bobby Bonilla pushed Baltimore’s own out of the dugout once more in the middle of the fifth inning on Sept. 6, 1995. He took a few hesitant steps. The fans roared. The occasion grabbed hold of a player who infrequently allowed the moment to influence him, and those first steps turned into a dozen, and a hundred, and a hundred more.

“He started working his way up the warning track,” Alafassos said, “and before you knew it, it was happening.”

A lap around Camden Yards for the Baltimore region’s favorite son.

The making of that moment began long before, when Ripken played in a loss at Memorial Stadium on May 30, 1982. He hit eighth in the lineup and played third base. He walked and struck out in three plate appearances.

On May 31, 1982, Ripken’s name was back on the lineup card. He hit seventh and played third base. He reached base all four times and drove in a run.

On June 2, 1982, Ripken’s name was again on the lineup card, and on it went.

The making of a streak begins with one day, then two, then three. It begins innocuously in a game few would remember if not for the importance of a record 13 years in the making. It builds through the routine, and it accumulates as the Earth passes around the sun not once or twice but 13 times.

So Ripken trotted around Camden Yards, completing a lap of his own 30 years ago Saturday, when he played his 2,131st straight game. In doing so, he passed Lou Gehrig for the all-time record for consecutive appearances. He then kept it up for an additional 501 games to cement himself as baseball’s most durable player.

On Saturday, the Orioles will commemorate the record-breaking moment when Ripken passed the New York Yankees legend.

As the 2,131st game approached, Baltimore began counting down to the day with large numbers on the B&O Warehouse and a rising sense of anticipation.

The only thing not choreographed was Ripken’s lap around the stands, when he high-fived and hugged familiar people. For 22 minutes, play stopped. That was so unlike Ripken, who only ever wanted to play, and yet it seemed so right.

“We all knew [the record-breaking game] was coming, but no one knew how it was going to play out,” said Ken Rosenthal, then a baseball columnist for The Baltimore Sun. “And it played out just beautifully, almost like a movie.”

In the 30 years since then, few moments in baseball stand out at the national level like Ripken’s record-breaking game, and the buildup to it. The home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa rose to prominence, although its allure is tarnished by the steroid use of that era. The 2001 World Series, coming on the heels of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., drew the public eye — in part as a way to cope with a national tragedy.

But what separates Ripken is a sense of the ordinary. His record is not one that involves cranking a home run 400-plus feet, or hurling a pitch nearly 100 mph. His record is one of simplicity, and in achieving it, he captured the hearts and minds of a country.

“The guy who shows up to work every day is not the hero,” said John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian. “The hero is the guy who hits the grand slam homer in the ninth to turn the game around. So, this was a very different sort of accomplishment, and it was one mail carriers and accountants could identify with.”

A relatable superhero

The morning of Sept. 6, 1995, was unlike any that came before it for Ripken, and it had nothing to do with the fanfare that would follow that evening.

For a player who valued routine, there was suddenly a new aspect to consider: Rachel, his 5-year-old daughter, was beginning kindergarten. That is a milestone in its own right, and the fact Ripken drove her to school that morning fits into the character element many around the country most appreciated.

“At the core,” said Ryan Ripken, who was 2 at the time, “my parents just wanted to make it as normal as it possibly could be during a time when my dad was doing something so extraordinary.”

In the years since right-hander Ben McDonald retired, he gained an increased understanding as to why his teammate’s streak seemed to be such a big deal. McDonald agreed at the time, of course, that what Ripken was accomplishing made him a standalone figure of endurance in a sport that values that trait more than most others.

But McDonald, who now works as an analyst during games on Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, asked fans why Ripken’s record in particular meant so much both then and now.

“They all said to me: ‘I can’t relate to Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire and Sosa doing the home run chase. I can’t relate to that. It’s cool to watch and it’s great for the game of baseball. But what I can relate to is Cal Ripken Jr., and I can relate to having to get up and go to work pretty much every day,’” McDonald recalled. “I think that’s why it hit home with so many Americans, because it was something that they’ve all done, or millions of people do every day.”

As is the case with many cities around the world, Baltimore carries a chip on its shoulder. The populace values the hardworking nature of their history, even if industries change over time.

In Baltimore, particularly, Ripken was the hometown boy who played for the Orioles his whole career. That elevated the moment. For fans of other franchises, what Ripken achieved became just as laudatory, even if he played in a different uniform.

“He was breaking a record that everyone knew, and was also set by a player whose life ended tragically,” Rosenthal said. “That resonated, first of all, with people. And the other thing, it’s a record built on hard work, and people really were captivated by that.”

Added Alafassos: “It just became something that everybody could root for. Nobody could root against Cal Ripken doing this, right? And that’s what made it so special.”

The timing, coincidentally, was paramount for baseball. The date of Ripken’s 2,131st game had been delayed until September because of the premature ending of the 1994 season. A work stoppage, which canceled the 1994 postseason and delayed the beginning of the 1995 season, cast baseball in a bitter light.

It became the longest strike in MLB history, and it left a stain on the public perception of the sport.

And then Ripken continued his march toward immortality.

“Baseball had been shaken like an earthquake,” said Charles Steinberg, the head of public relations in Baltimore before he departed for the San Diego Padres in 1995. “Coming out of that darkness is your local hero, homegrown, an Oriole all the way, and you’re celebrating that he’s doing what letter carriers do, and what firefighters do. They show up to work every day. It restored baseball to its rightful place in Americana. It restored baseball to its rightful place in reminding us of the values we love, the values we honor.”

In that way, baseball rallied around Ripken. He showed up. He did his job. He did it well, over and over and over again.

Earning his place

McDonald couldn’t fathom making a start with anyone else behind him at short.

Ripken, who became a two-time Gold Glove shortstop on top of his 19 career All-Star nominations, served as “security blanket” for McDonald and so many others. After all, while toughness and luck and perseverance all play a role in this story, Ripken wouldn’t have played so many games in a row if he hadn’t been good.

“I used to always joke with him,” McDonald said, “like, ‘Look, bro, I don’t care when you take a day off, that’s your business. Whatever you do. But don’t you take it off when I’m on the bump. On my fifth day, I don’t want you to take a day off.’ He used to always laugh.”

But McDonald wasn’t really joking.

Early in McDonald’s career, Ripken called pitches from shortstop for an entire season to ensure the former No. 1 overall pick — and, by extension, the team — found success.

“He was obviously a hell of a defender, a heck of a player and a hitter, but more importantly, he was like having a coach on the field for us,” McDonald said.

That presence carried Ripken through various slumps at the plate, and even when hobbled with the knee sprain in 1993 and a herniated disc in 1997. There was an air of infallibility surrounding Ripken, even when reality left him with his fair share of maladies.

In 1993, after a brawl between the Seattle Mariners and Orioles, Ripken came closest to breaking his streak, two years before history was made. As Rosenthal and another Sun reporter entered the clubhouse the next day, they split the task of speaking with every player on the team to determine whether there had been any injuries suffered in the fracas.

Every player but one.

“We didn’t think there was any possibility he was hurt,” said Rosenthal, who’s now a senior writer for The Athletic.

At the airport a day later, Rosenthal picked up a copy of The Washington Post. In it, he read with increasing horror an account from Thomas Boswell, detailing how close Ripken came to missing a game.

His knee was swollen and he could hardly walk. He told his wife, the column read, that he didn’t think he could play that night. Kelly Ripken pointed out that that would mean the end of Cal Ripken’s streak.

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” she said.

“That really struck me,” Ripken told Boswell. “People automatically believe that the streak has become me. Even the person closest to me in the whole world. ... I’m here simply to play. However things work out is fine. The streak just happened. I didn’t ask for it.”

Reading that account, Rosenthal flung the paper into the seat next to him.

“I was so pissed,” said Rosenthal, who’s able to laugh about it now. “I didn’t even conceive that he could be hurt. I didn’t think it was possible.”

A few years later, after Ripken had already surpassed Gehrig, the back pain that was surely playing a part in a September slump (Ripken hit .156 in September 1997) prompted Rosenthal to suggest the ending of the streak.

“I wrote something to the effect of, ‘Is this a great idea?’” Rosenthal recalled. Then, in the postseason, Ripken hit .385 with a 1.031 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, dispelling any thoughts of taking him out of the lineup.

“He had that way about him. He was an amazing physical specimen that way,” Rosenthal said. “He definitely took pride in it. I don’t care what he says. It wasn’t just, ‘I’m just showing up every day.’ There came a point he wanted to do this, and that’s fine. It was a great goal, and there’s nothing wrong with admitting it.”

Except even to this day, Ripken won’t admit it.

Only recently, 30 years later, has Ryan Ripken begun having in-depth conversations about the streak, and his father’s motivations behind it, on his YouTube show.

“It was all because he felt like his teammates, the team, the organization and the people who came to watch, they deserved that, so he had to try to match that,” Ryan Ripken said.

Ryan Ripken played professional baseball as well, reaching the Triple-A level with the Orioles. He can understand now the difficulty of what his dad accomplished; even if he wanted to play every day, it’s a mental challenge, as well as a physical one, to produce that many games in a row.

“You have to be good for a long time, and you have to be able to make a difference to guys on the field when you don’t have your best game,” said Ryan Ripken, who will throw out a ceremonial first pitch Saturday, as he did Sept. 6, 1995.

“It’s through good, bad, the ugly, everything that you can name, can you show up and be dependable? Can you continue to push forward, put your best foot forward, even if you don’t have it that day?” Ryan Ripken continued. “Physically, mentally, emotional, you could be depended on, and that I think is a big part of why people could resonate with the streak.”

Planning a celebration

Before Steinberg departed to join former Orioles president Larry Lucchino in San Diego, he and a team of individuals from across the organization pondered how to make the magic of one night stretch into days and weeks.

“Streak Week” was born out of that idea, fleshing out the pageantry of game 2,131 for an extended period.

“You wanted everyone to benefit from it,” Steinberg said. “You wanted to cast as wide a net as you could so people by the hundreds of thousands, not the tens of thousands, could somehow participate.”

But the breakthrough — part of the iconic imagery from those days and weeks — came after Steinberg departed. And at first, an idea from Alafassos was met with another stop sign.

Alafassos had been watching Eddie Murray close in on 3,000 hits at Jacobs Field in Cleveland, and he saw a walkway where small banners held the numbers of each progressively nearing knock.

“That’s when I had that eureka moment of, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got the Warehouse. We could do this, times 100,’” Alafassos said. “It’s the perfect backdrop.”

To convince others, however, was more of a challenge. Alafassos said then-owner Peter Angelos was against any signage on the B&O Warehouse because he didn’t want to open the door for the possibility of advertising one day defacing that red brick façade. To put banners up, Angelos thought, would be to open a door that couldn’t be closed again.

“I kind of sulked,” Alafassos said. But Julie Wagner and John Maroon, the former the director of community affairs and the latter the media relations director, told Alafassos to make a mock version of his idea anyway. Once finished, “we went up to John Angelos the next day and sold him on it, and he talked to his dad and got it approved,” Alafassos said.

The numbers arrived for game 2,108, and they continued throughout Ripken’s run to 2,131. Each night, the energy rose. And while Alafassos and the ballpark entertainment staff tried to keep the camera off Ripken those first few nights, they couldn’t keep the future Hall of Famer out of the picture for long.

On the videoboard, before the bottom of the fifth inning, an excerpt from the MLB rulebook alerted fans to the fact the game had now become official. They accompanied it with an instrumental John Tesh song, “Day One,” and it became a nightly ritual.

The third out from the top of the fifth inning on Sept. 6, 1995, of course, led to a roar that wouldn’t stop. In Ripken’s mind, as ever, was the game. He doffed his cap and waved to the crowd, but he began to worry about the final four innings, and when they’d ever finish them.

“Rafael Palmeiro came up with the idea: ‘You’re going to have to take a lap around this ballpark before we get this game started again.’ I go: ‘That’s a dumb idea. I’m not doing that,’” Ripken said on Baseball Bar-B-Cast, a podcast from Yahoo Sports.

But he relented, and one step led to the next.

“I first was thinking, maybe I’ll run around fast and get this over with,” Ripken said. “But then, when you start looking into everyone’s eyes, there were people I knew by name. There were people I knew by face that had been there all along.”

As Bonilla and Palmeiro shoved Ripken down the line to begin the lap of honor, Alafassos screamed: “Thank you, thank you!” It’s what Alafassos had wanted all along.

Yet they hadn’t budgeted that into the program. For the first part of Ripken’s route, there was no music, just the roar of the fans. Then Alafassos recalled the sticky note left on his desk that morning from part owner Steve Geppi, who requested Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time” be played at some point that night.

“It’s the perfect song for the perfect moment,” Geppi told Alafassos’s assistant.

That perfect moment arrived when Ripken began his lap, and it sent those within the scoreboard control room scrambling through a stack of CDs, looking for Houston’s record. They found it, they played it, and it felt as though “the baseball gods shined on us, because all the contributions people suggested worked so well,” Alafassos said.

When Ripken looks back, that lap around the ballpark is one of his favorite moments in his career. It almost never happened.

“It was just one of those great, personal human moments,” Ripken said, “because the celebration that was so big went down to a personal level, almost one to one.”

An unbreakable record

As much as baseball likes to think of itself as the unchanging game, it is not that. The game has changed, perhaps slowly at first but in leaps and bounds as time has gone on. Speed is king — be it pitch velocity or exit velocity. Baseball is a harder, faster game than it was in yesteryears.

Even without that, Ripken’s record may have been unbreakable.

“Look at how far Gehrig surpassed Everett Scott, and how far Ripken surpassed Gehrig,” Thorn said. “It’s implausible that the game of the future will permit such feats.”

Matt Olson is the closest, and yet he’s only nearing 800. It would take Olson, a first baseman for the Atlanta Braves, roughly 11 more seasons to sniff Ripken’s record of 2,632 consecutive games played, and Olson is already 31.

The tactics surrounding player usage are also different. There are more platoon matchups in baseball than in days of old, and teams are more cautious about sitting players for a minor, nagging injury as they consider the long-term repercussions.

“It’s not even conceivable that anybody will even go near it, in part because of the way we look at the game today,” Rosenthal said. “Load management is not really a thing in baseball, but teams are mindful of it. I always felt, not only will no player do it, no player is going to want to do it. It’s not something guys aspire to. It takes an unbelievable amount of physical and mental stress to do what he did, and I always just marveled at it.”

Added McDonald: “To me, it’s the best record there is.”

It stands to reason that, even as historic as Bonds’s 73 home runs were in 2001, a player may come close. For as dominant as Nolan Ryan’s career was (he finished with a record 5,714 strikeouts), there may be another strikeout-dominant ace who avoids the sort of injuries that are beleaguering pitchers these days.

But Ripken?

His record is not one of brawn, although it took that. It’s not one of intricate skill, although that was necessary, too.

It’s one of perseverance — a characteristic with which America can identify from its earliest days as a nation. And because of that, even 30 years on, Ripken stands alone.

“Celebrating the ordinary is what baseball does best,” Thorn said. “Like no other sport do we attach our hearts to the game the way we do to baseball.”