Cal Ripken Jr. (pictured) played his 2,131st consecutive Major League Baseball game, breaking the 56-year-old record set by Lou Gehrig.

Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr., nicknamed "the Iron Man", is an American former baseball shortstop and third baseman who played his entire 21-season career in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Baltimore Orioles (1981–2001). One of his position's most productive offensive players, Ripken compiled 3,184 hits, 431 home runs, and 1,695 runs batted in during his career, and he won two Gold Glove Awards for his defense. He was a 19-time All-Star and was twice named American League (AL) Most Valuable Player (MVP), in 1983 and 1991.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league in North America composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and is considered the premier professional baseball league in the world. Each team plays 162 games per season, with Opening Day held during the last week of March. Six teams in each league then advance to a four-round postseason tournament in October, culminating in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions first played in 1903. MLB is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.

To compile a streak of consecutive games in Major League Baseball, a player must appear in every game played by his team. The streak is broken if the team completes a game in which the player neither takes a turn at bat nor plays a half-inning in the field.

Henry Louis Gehrig, also known as Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig, was an American professional baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees (1923–1939). Gehrig was renowned for his prowess as a hitter and for his durability, which earned him the nickname "the Iron Horse", and he is regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Gehrig was an All-Star seven consecutive times, a Triple Crown winner once, an American League (AL) Most Valuable Player twice and a member of six World Series champion teams. He had a career .340 batting average, .632 slugging average, and a .447 on-base average. He hit 493 home runs and had 1,995 runs batted in (RBIs). He is also one of 20 players to hit four home runs in a single game. In 1939, Gehrig was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and was the first MLB player to have his uniform number retired by a team when his number 4 was retired by the Yankees.