Cal Ripken Jr.’s divorce from his wife Kelly was finalized on Thursday morning, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Ripken, the Baltimore Orioles legend and baseball Hall of Famer, and his wife were married for 29 years, but had been separated for the past year, the Sun reported. Maryland law required couples have a one-year separation before divorce proceedings can commence.
The couple have two children.
"Kelly has been a great mother to two fabulous children and a wonderful, faithful wife for the duration of the parties' relationship, which lasted more than 30 years,” Sanford Ain, an attorney for Kelly Ripken, said in a statement released to the Sun. “This is a difficult time for her and she asks that her privacy and the privacy of her children be respected. Kelly looks forward to the next chapter in her life, which will be focused on philanthropy and her commitment to promoting women's health, most currently through 'A Woman's Journey' at Johns Hopkins Medicine."
Ripken, rivaled perhaps only by former Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas in Baltimore sports lore, is baseball’s all-time consecutive games leader, breaking Lou Gehrig’s record in 1995 and extending his streak to 2,632 games before finally taking a day off in September 1998. He retired three seasons later in 2001.
He has remained a marketing force in Maryland, with ownership of the Orioles’ Class A club in his hometown of Aberdeen, also the headquarters for Ripken Baseball, which has blossomed into a formidable youth baseball organization.
