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[1] and was managed by his father as a member of the Baltimore Orioles from 1987-1988. When 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 the photo was used in an emblematic fashion to symbolize frustration at the team's struggles.
Ripken remained with the team through the 1992 season and returned for a couple short stints later in his career. He also became a father to one daughter by the name of Miranda.
After retirement, Billy partnered with brother Cal to form Ripken Baseball, which owns two minor league teams, the Aberdeen Ironbirds and Augusta Greenjackets.
[edit] 1989 baseball card[2]
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.[3]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Billy and Cal Ripken are one of only four brother combinations in major league history to play second base and shortstop on the same club. The others are Garvin and Granny Hamner, for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1945; the twins Eddie and Johnny O'Brien, with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the mid-1950s, and Frank and Milt Bolling, for the Detroit Tigers in 1958. See [1].
- ^ The 1989 Billy Ripken Fleer Baseball Card, Before and After" (Snopes.com)
- ^ Baseball card variations, from billripken.com
[edit] External links
- billripken.com
- Baseball-Reference.com - career statistics and analysis
