Culture

Cal Ripken Speaks About Mother's Bizarre Kidnapping

74-year-old woman forced from home at gunpoint, driven around, then returned unharmed.

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At the press conference on the 6th floor of the B&O Warehouse, Cal Ripken used the word that's been on the minds or lips of everyone around here since his mother's abduction: "Bizarre."

Ripken immediately added, in deference to the police officials sitting in front of him Friday morning, that he didn't have any law enforcement experience, so he couldn't say what made Vi Ripken's kidnaping so bizarre. But you didn't have to be a criminologist to agree with his word choice.

Someone with a gun kidnaps the 74-year-old mother of baseball's Iron Man from her home in Aberdeen, drives her around the Beltway and central Maryland in her own car for a day, then drops her off, unharmed physically, within about 100 yards of her house. No ransom demand.