Athletes - Billy Ripken

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	Athletes - Billy Ripken

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.

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 3rd in the league.

In a 12-season career, Ripken batted .247 with 20 homers and 229 RBIs, and also 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.

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 the 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 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 facing the camera in standard English reading orientation (left to right), lined up straight. Had Ripken simply grabbed the bat and posed for the photo, not knowing or seeing what was on the bat, it was thought more likely that the words would have appeared at an off-center angle.

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Athletes - Billy Ripken

Major league career

1989 baseball card

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