Cal Ripken Jr. was baseball’s Iron Man. He broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games streak on September 6 1995 playing in his 2131st straight game. The streak continued into the 1997 season and was almost broken on August 14 1997 when the Orioles were scheduled to play the Mariners at 7:35pm EST on a Thursday evening. That was the night however that the “Lights Went out in Camden Yards.”

Rumor has it that Ripken who was allowing Kevin Costner to stay at his home during a movie shoot in Baltimore caught his then-wife in bed with the A-list actor (articles linked below). Cal then beat up Costner pretty badly and the confrontation prevented him from getting to the ballpark on time. Distraught and humiliated Cal apparently had no intention of playing that evening and was willing to let the streak come to an end. Upon hearing this the Orioles owner and a select group of team officials allegedly concocted a false narrative that the stadium lights could not be turned on due to "electical failure." Thus the game was postponed and Cal's streak remained alive.

There were reports that Ripken was actually at the ballpark at gametime ready to play. There were also stories that his wife showed up at the stadium looking worse for wear and the “men upstairs” needed to do something to usher her out of Camden Yards. Needless to say whatever happened that night the game was postponed until the next day as part of a Friday August 15th doubleheader. Fans could use their Thursday August 14th tickets to get into Friday's first game during the day although many had to work and could not attend.

Presented here is a ticket stub from the notorious game that wasn't played on August 14 1997. It was presumably used the next day for Game 1 of the DH in which the Orioles won 4-3. Scott Kamieniecki got the win over Randy Johnson. Randy Myers was credited with the save. Ken Griffey Jr. scored a run off of his walk and A-Rod went 2 for 4 with a double. Jeff Reboulet and Jeffrey Hammonds both hit Home Runs off Randy Johnson. Ripken drove in a run with a sac fly and was also hit by a pitch in his four plate appearances. Perhaps Johnson was ticked off about having to wait an extra day to pitch and took it out on the Iron Man. The stub has been graded EX 5 by PSA and is the only example in any grade showing up in the PSA pop report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/10/25/cal-ripken-kevin-costner-rumor/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-costner-of-love/
https://www.knupsports.com/mlb/breaking-down-the-cal-ripken-conspiracy-theory/
https://www.audacy.com/sports/mlb/did-fake-power-outage-preserve-ripkens-games-played-streak