The 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken error card is like a virus: it began life in a dark corner of anonymity before gaining a toehold and burning through the hobby faster than we could even catch our collective breath.
For many collectors, it defines an entire generation of the hobby.
Indeed, today the card stands as probably the best (worst?) single embodiment of the entire so-called Junk Wax Era we could ever hope to find, gracing us with overproduction, poor quality control, a funky card design, questionable decisions, and massive hype (maybe even of the manufactured variety) all in one little swath of cardboard.
Did I mention overproduction? Or massive hype?
At the same time the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr., rookie card was trying to elevate the hobby and make us feel guilty for not washing down our Mylar packs with caviar, the Billy Ripken error card was the 1980s equivalent of clickbait — “Buy me! Buy me! Buy me! I’m super rare! The forbidden fruit!”.
If you were there, just a glimpse of that long-ago Fleer fiasco gives you all sorts of hobby flashbacks, good or bad.
But just in case you weren’t in the hobby in 1989 and therefore feel sheltered from the trauma, or if you’ve tried to block it from your mind, let’s go ahead and fix that up for you with a little background before we move on to drier facts like card variations and values.
Be forewarned, though: while I’ll keep the actual text below pretty much clean and safe for kids and pastors, there are a couple of images of dirty words. Or, dirty word, I should say. Actually, THE word. The big one. The one that threatened Ralphie with Lifebuoy blindness.
NOT THAT!
Oh yes … that.
(Note: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon and eBay listings for the cards being discussed.)
1989 Fleer Billy Ripken Error Card – The Setup
The Baltimore Orioles entered the 1989 season as baseball’s laughingstock, coming off a ridiculous 54-107 showing in 1988 that left them buried so far in last place in the American League East that they were also granted an honorary last-place finish in baseball’s other three divisions.
Pretty much every aspect of the 1988 O’s stunk like a bucket of forgotten crabs left to marinate in the Baltimore dugout during a long July roadtrip.
Even the already-legend Cal Ripken Jr., stumbled to a .264 batting average with 23 home runs and 81 RBI. Eddie Murray paced the team with 28 home runs and 84 ribbies, for what it’s worth.
If there was anything at all to look forward to in Baltimore, it was that the Orioles at least had some young talent edging toward the major leagues. The pitching staff that summer featured 24-year-old Jeff Ballard in the rotations, with Bob Milacki, Curt Schilling, Pete Harnisch, and Gregg Olson all clocking some MLB innings at under 25 years of age.
Meanwhile, guys like Brady Anderson, Craig Worthington, and Steve Finley gave the Baltimore faithful at least a glimmer of hope among position players.
But the one young guy who really made his presence felt during that summer spent in baseball’s outhouse was none other than Billy Ripken, who just so happened to be Cal’s younger brother.
After appearing in 58 games as a rookie in 1987, the 23-old “Bill” entered the 1988 season as the Orioles’ starting second baseman.
And, so it was that Baltimore set out to find their fortune, led by manager Cal Ripken Sr. in the dugout and the double-play combo of Cal Jr. and Billy in the field.
That experiment lasted six games, when the winless O’s canned Cal Sr. and replaced him with Frank Robinson.
If only the Rip Brothers Show had been as mercifully short!
While Cal was struggling through is own troubles at the plate, Billy hit like a middle infielder: .207 batting average, 2 home runs, 34 RBI, 48 OPS+ (or 52% worse than the MLB average, in other words).
Add in a defensive profile that also showed the younger Ripken as something less than you might hope for in your second baseman, and the sophomore checked in at -1.6 WAR (Baseball Reference version) — yes, negative 1.6, easily the worst mark on a bad team.
All of which is to say that, by the end of the 1988 season, collectors had pretty much already cleared a permanent home for Billy Rip’s 1988 rookie cards in our commons bins.
And nobody at all was looking forward to pulling Billy Ripken baseball cards from our 1989 wax packs.
1989 Fleer Billy Ripken Error Card (#615) – What It Is
That all changed after about the second copy of the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken card saw the light of day.
See …
By 1989, the hobby had done exploded (in my local vernacular), and if there was one thing that the dizzying activity of the previous few years had taught us, it was that the next “mania” was just a wild hair (wild Herr?) away. And, though the Error Mania from earlier in the decade had subsided to a large degree, swallowed by Rookie Card Mania, we were always on the lookout for any gaffe a card company might make.
They couldn’t burp sideways without our calling them out for it.
And so it didn’t take long at all for 1989 Fleer to set the hobby ablaze, not when eagle eyes across the nation spotted the vulgarity in perfect synchronicity:
In case you missed it, or in case you’ve been living under said crab bucket for the last three decades, the “error” is right there on the knob of Ripken’s bat.
“F#*@ FACE”
“F–K FACE”
“F FACE”
“RICK FACE”
The card is known by all of those euphimisms, but usually by the full, straight-out vulgarity.
It was shocking.
It was horrifying.
It was amazing.
But … how could something like this happen?
Well …
How Did the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken Error Card Happen?
This was, of course, the first question that parents, teachers, priests, and English teachers across the land screamed from the cardboard mountaintops when the Billy Ripken F-Face card first came to light.
How in the world did something like this happen? Why did a bat like that even exist? How did the censors not kill the card before it made it out of the shadows? WHO IS JOHN GALT?????
There was much immediate speculation. Among the theories were:
- Ripken did this alone because he’s a jerk.
- Another player (or players) — maybe even Cal — pranked Ripken.
- Fleer planted the card to generate publicity.
- Ripken and Fleer conspired to perpetrate this act.
- C. Nettles created the error to turn down the heat.
- KGB
Ripken himself has waffled on an explanation over the years, claiming ignorance early on before blaming teammates.