PLAYER #59 - DON MOEN (1982-94)

There's Cal Ripken in baseball, Glenn Hall in hockey and Don Moen in football. What do these guys, aside from being great athletes, have in common?

Well, they were known as great athletes for extended periods of time without ever taking a break, voluntary or otherwise.

For shortstop Ripken, it was for breaking Lou Gehrig's seemingly insurmountable record of 2,130 straight games, a streak that is still continuing to this day. For goaltender Hall, it was his 502 straight games tending the net for the Chicago Blackhawks, a mark that in this day and age of back-up goalies, will likely never fall.

And for linebacker Moen, it is the 198 straight games he played for the Argonauts from 1982 to 1993, an unbelievable record of longevity, especially considering the physical demands of his position.

"I tried not to think about it when I played, but now it's something I can really look back on," said Moen. "It's the thing I'm most proud of after the two Grey Cup championships."

Those championships, in 1983 and 1991, were career highlights, "especially the second one," said Moen. "The first year I played (1982) we went to the Grey Cup, and in the second year we won it, so I didn't appreciate it as much as I should."

The eight-year wait between titles can make a man mighty thirsty for that champagne. "I probably played one of my best games in (the '91 Grey Cup)," admitted Moen, who played a total of 222 regular season games, also a team record, and 17 playoff games in Double Blue.

It wasn't until mid-way through his 12th season in 1993 that he missed a game, due to a freak injury that occurred when teammate Reggie Pleasant missed a tackle and accidentally hyperextended Moen's knee. Initially feared to be season-ending, the durable Moen, who always stayed in great shape and lifted weights constantly, missed only one game.

Another freak accident, this one while mowing his lawn and having a piece of metal imbedded into his leg, forced him to miss his second game in 1994, and then a popped tendon in his foot saw him miss two more before the year was up. After the season, the man known as the "Ironman" decided to call it quits.

"The old iron started to rust," admitted Moen, who doesn't regret his decision. "I wanted to make sure I left when I wanted to go, and I knew it was time to leave."

Already established in the business world during his playing days, when he worked as a stockbroker, financial planner and marketing consultant, including a year in the Argo front office with president Ron Barbaro, Moen was prepared to make the switch full-time, and is now the national sales rep for "Sportscope", a 24-hour information cable channel that is already beamed into 1.6 million households in Canada, and is set to apply for a full- service license from the CRTC in September.

Born in Saskatchewan and raised in Kamloops, Moen now lives in Oakville with his wife Gillian and kids Chelsea and Connor.