Billy Ripken

Billy Ripken (born William Oliver Ripken December 16, 1964 in Havre de Grace, Maryland) was an American Major League Baseball player from 1987-1998. He played second base most of the time, and threw and batted right-handed. Ripken, who is the brother of Cal Ripken Jr. and the son of Cal Ripken Sr., played alongside his brother and was managed by his father as a member of the Baltimore Orioles from 1987-1988. Ripken remained with the team through the 1992 season and returned for a couple short stints later in his career.

1989 Baseball Card

Billy Ripken is perhaps best remembered however for an infamous baseball card. In 1989, Ripken's Fleer card showed the player batting right handed with the expletive fuck face written on the knob of the bat. Fleer subsequently rushed to correct the error, and in their haste, released versions in which the text was scrawled over with a marker, whited out with Correction fluid, and also airbrushed. On the final, corrected version, Fleer obscured offensive words with a black box. Both the original card, and many of the corrected versions have become collector's items as a result.

Related Topics:
1989 - Fleer - Expletive - Correction fluid

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Shortly thereafter, speculation began on how the expletive came to be on Ripken's card. At first, it was believed that a Fleer employee touched up the photograph and added the obscenity. Ripken later admitted that several of his Orioles teammates wrote the words on his bat as a joke, which went unnoticed during the photo shoot. Despite his confession, many find it highly implausible that Ripken and the Fleer employees invloved with the production failed to notice what was written on the bat and suggest that one or more of them knew about the obscenity but deliberately allowed it to slip through.

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