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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.
Major League Career
Although he was not the great hitter that his brother was (he ended his major league career with just 20 home runs, 229 RBI’s and a .247 batting average), Ripken was a good defensive second baseman and utility player. In 1990, Ripken led the league in sacrifice hits with 17, though he had 19 the year before that, which was 3rd in the league.
In a 12-season career, Ripken batted .247 with 20 homers and 229 RBI’s, and also stole 25 bases, scored 287 runs, and had 674 career hits in 2729 at bats. He played in 912 career games.
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.
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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