Billy Ripken

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William Oliver Ripken (born December 16, 1964 in Havre de Grace, Maryland) is a former second baseman in Major League Baseball from 1987-1998. He 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.

After retirement, Billy partnered with brother Cal to form Ripken Baseball, which owns two minor league teams, the Aberdeen Ironbirds and Augusta Greenjackets.

[edit] 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 RBIs 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 third in the league.

In a 12-season career, Ripken stole 25 bases, scored 287 runs, and had 674 career hits in 2729 at bats. He played in 912 career games.

Ripken appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated on May 2, 1988. The Orioles had lost their first 18 games of the season (they would lose three more before collecting their first win against the Chicago White Sox), and Ripken's photo was used in an emblematic fashion to symbolize frustration at the team's struggles.

[edit] 1989 baseball card

Billy Ripken's 1989 baseball card depicting the words "fuck face"

Billy Ripken is perhaps best remembered, however, for an infamous baseball card. In 1989, Ripken's Fleer card showed the player holding a bat with the expletive fuck face written in plain view 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 the offensive words with a black box (this was the version included in all factory sets). Both the original card and many of the corrected versions have become collector's items as a result. There are at least ten different variations of this card, image here.

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. As related by Ripken, some of his Orioles teammates played a joke by writing the words there, and they went unnoticed during the photo shoot.

Despite his confession, many find it highly implausible that Ripken and the Fleer employees involved 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. One reason for this suspicion is that the obscenity is right-side up. Had Ripken simply grabbed the bat and posed for the photo, not knowing or seeing what was on the bat, odds are that it wouldn't have been so straight.

There is a musical group from Massachusetts, "The Billy Ripken Fuck Face Card," that takes its name from the Fleer baseball card incident. To quote one of the bandmembers, drummer Shawn Fogel: "The background of course is that Billy wasn't that good — or liked by his teammates — but got on the team because his brother Cal insisted on it." While this doubtless makes a good story for a band name, the accuracy regarding Ripken's placement with the Orioles and his relationships with teammates is unknown.