The Oklahoma Sooners officially announced the heartbreaking news of their best player’s death.
Ryan Minor, a 49-year-old MLB player and former two-sport standout at Oklahoma, passed away on Friday following a fight with cancer.
Most famously, he came in for Cal Ripken Jr. when the latter broke the MLB’s record of consecutive games played with the Baltimore Orioles in 1998.
Minor was an outstanding player in both baseball and basketball during his four years as a college student at Oklahoma. In 1995, Minor won Big Eight Player of the Year and was selected for the third team on the All-America basketball team. The Philadelphia 76ers selected him in the first round of the draft, and he spent two seasons as an NBA player with the Oklahoma City Cavalry.
Minor played baseball, joining the Oklahoma squad that won the College World Series in 1994. He was selected twice by MLB teams: the Orioles in 1996 and the New York Mets in 1995. After making his major league debut with Baltimore in 1998, Minor eventually took Ripken’s spot at third base, where he finished his MLB record-tying streak of 2,632 games played on September 20, 1998.
The former player for the Sooners was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame for the 2024 season.
Before formally retiring in 2005, Minor played for independent teams for a few years after making his major league debut with the Montreal Expos in 2001. After that, he started coaching baseball in the minor leagues, spending time as the Orioles organization’s manager.
