Cal Ripken Jr. had accomplished just about everything he had set out to do by the spring of 2000. He won a World Series ring early in his career with the 1983 Orioles. He had captured Rookie of the Year honors and two American League MVP awards. He had, of course, broken and far surpassed Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played. And in September 1999, Ripken became the first primary shortstop to reach 400 career home runs.

But when back surgery ended Ripken’s 1999 season with about a week left to play, it also left him just nine base knocks shy of one last check box: 3,000 hits. So the Iron Man was still on a mission when his Orioles suited up for the second of a two-game set against the Twins at the Metrodome on this day 20 years ago. Let’s take a trip back to April 15, 2000 -- a 6-4 win for the visiting Orioles -- for today’s box score of the day.

Player of the Game: Cal Ripken Jr., 3B, Orioles

Ripken always seemed to rise to the big moments in his career, and that was no different on this evening in Minneapolis. Needing three hits to become the 24th member of the 3,000-hit club, Ripken responded with three singles as part of a 3-for-5 day at the plate. The first came on a fourth-inning liner to right field off Twins starter Sean Bergman, followed by an infield single on a Baltimore chop -- of all things -- in the fifth. Unwilling to let the suspense linger any longer, Ripken shot a clean ball back up the middle in his very next at-bat for hit No. 3,000.

The game came to a halt and Ripken received yet another standing ovation, just as he did the night he passed Gehrig in 1995 and the night he finally took himself out of the lineup in ‘98. His stature in the game was so great by that point that he was getting standing O's no matter where he suited up.

''I was relieved,” Ripken said postgame. “I felt a weight was lifted from my shoulders.''

The first man to greet Ripken at first base was his longtime friend, teammate and then-Orioles first base coach Eddie Murray, who also collected his 3,000th hit on the Metrodome turf in 1995. Ripken joined Murray, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Dave Winfield and Carl Yastrzemski as just the seventh player with at least 3,000 hits and at least 400 homers.

Remember him? Todd Walker, 2B, Twins

Perhaps you recall Walker as the gritty, consistent second baseman for the Twins, Rockies, Reds, Red Sox, Cubs, Padres and A’s who finished his career with a .289 batting average. But perhaps you don’t know that Walker, a Major League mainstay for so many years, came close to never making it to the bigs. He tore his rotator cuff between his junior and senior year of high school in Louisiana while spiking a volleyball, and the doctors who examined it said the area “looked like cotton in water.” Rotator cuff surgery was less common back then, but Walker bucked the odds and became a superstar at LSU before the Twins took him with the eighth overall pick in the 1994 Draft.

Walker went 1-for-5 with an RBI single in the fifth inning in this game, but the 2000 season would turn out to be his last with his original club. The Twins traded him to the Rockies in mid-July for first baseman Todd Sears and cash considerations, and Walker would go on to hit .304 over parts of two seasons in hitter-friendly Colorado. He knocked two homers and hit .370 for the Red Sox in their dramatic 2003 ALCS loss to the Yankees, and finished his 12-year career with 1,316 hits.

He wore THAT uniform? Charles Johnson, C, Orioles

Johnson was one of the Marlins’ first stars and one of the better all-around catchers in baseball during the 1990s. But Dec. 1, 1998, saw him change uniforms twice in one night; first he was traded from the Dodgers to the Mets in a deal involving fellow catcher Todd Hundley, then promptly flipped to the Orioles in the swap that sent closer Armando Benitez to Queens. You might also recall that Johnson left Miami in the first place in the trade that made Mike Piazza -- ever so briefly -- a Florida Marlin.

When Johnson arrived in Baltimore, many saw him as the defender behind the plate that the Orioles had needed for years. That held true, but unfortunately Johnson’s hitting fell off during his first season in orange and black in 1999. Johnson came back to enjoy a career year (31 HR, 91 RBIs, .961 OPS) in 2000 -- and he knocked a second-inning solo homer in this contest against the Twins -- but the Orioles traded him alongside Harold Baines to the White Sox before that year's Trade Deadline for another catcher in Brook Fordyce. Johnson enjoyed a great career, and he also had a knack for being involved in trades with some names in them.

Before he was big: Torii Hunter, CF, Twins

Nine Gold Glove Awards, five All-Star Games and two Silver Slugger Awards were all still off in the distance for Hunter in April 2000, though he had committed just one error across nearly 1,000 innings in the outfield the year prior. After starting hot out of the gate to begin the 2000 campaign (including a triple to lead off the fifth inning of this game), Hunter slumped so badly at the plate that he was sent down to Triple-A to work on his swing. He proceeded to tear up Pacific Coast League pitching, including a four-game home run streak and three grand slams in the span of a couple weeks, prompting the Twins to call him back up by the end of July.

The 2001 season was when it all clicked at the Major League level for this future Twins hero, as Hunter would lead his club with 27 homers and top the American League with 14 assists from the outfield en route to his first Gold Glove. A year later, he’d find himself hoisted on Barry Bonds’ shoulder at the All-Star Game.

Last call: Albert Belle, RF, Orioles

While it was slightly overshadowed by the bludgeon-ball environment of the time, Belle’s 2000 campaign was still quite good (.281/.342/.474, 23 HR, 109 OPS+). In driving in 103 runs for Baltimore, Belle became just the fourth player to string together nine consecutive 100-RBI seasons, joining Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig and Al Simmons. None of those RBIs came in this game, but Belle -- wearing No. 88 for the O's -- did come home to score on a passed ball after he doubled in the seventh inning.

Degenerative hip osteoarthritis unfortunately made this the last season of Belle’s prolific (and perhaps underrated) career at age 34. He retired after homering in his final career plate appearance against the Yankees at Camden Yards, but his presence was still felt -- almost literally -- in Baltimore for years to come. In a strange twist, Belle remained on the Orioles’ 40-man roster through the end of the 2004 season, staying there as a condition of the insurance policy that reimbursed the Orioles for the remainder of the five-year, $65 million contract that Belle signed before the 1999 campaign.