"Fuck Face" Baseball Card Celebrates 20-Year Anniversary

2009 marks the 20-year anniversary of the infamous 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken baseball card, which features a young Ripken (son of Cal Sr. and younger brother of Hall of Famer Cal Jr.) holding a baseball bat with the expletive “F*ck Face” written in plain view on the knob of the bat.

Many sports enthusiasts in their mid-to-late 20s and up might recall this infamous error card which, shortly after its January ’89 debut, made national headlines and took the sports card collecting world by storm.

“Everyone had to have one,” said 31-year-old Ismael Benhamida, a Philadelphia-based business entrepreneur who was an avid sports card collector throughout the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s. “It was the first and only time a modern day baseball card ever made national headlines.”

Originally listed as a five-cent common in the ’89 Fleer set, at its peak, the card demanded as much as $500. Both kids and adults were ripping open packs like mad in search of card number 616, which quickly became the sports card equivalent to Willie Wonka’s Golden Ticket.

Benhamida recalls, “Growing up, I had a neighbor who somehow found out about the error card before it went public. And he knew a kid that had just opened up an early wax box case of 1989 Fleer, so he went over to the kid’s house and swooped up all his Ripken cards -- like over 20 of them, for only $10 or $15. The deal also included 200 or so random common cards, so it wasn’t too obvious of a hustle.” Benhamida adds, “Needless to say, the kid who sold my neighbor the cards for pennies on the dollar was pissed once word about the card’s error went public.”

According to CNBC sports business writer Darin Rovell, initial reports from Fleer stated that approximately 3,000 cards containing the obscenity were released, but it is now believed that more than 100,000 actually hit the market before the error was corrected.

PSA (Professional Sports Authentication), one of the hobby’s most reputable grading and authenticating companies, has professionally graded 914 Billy Ripken “F*ck Face” error cards to-date.

Fleer subsequently released approximately 10 different variations of the card that obscure the obscenity.

Early corrected variations, which appear to be hand corrected by Fleer in haste, have black marker scribble, whiteout correction fluid and even airbrush covering the curse. These early variations hold more value than later versions.

The final corrected version, which is the card included in Fleer’s 1989 factory set, has the obscenity covered with a computer-generated, solid black box.

A list of corrected variations can be found on the website www.billyripken.com, a site maintained by a man named Donovan Ryan that focuses almost exclusively on the card. The site has received over 30,000 visits to-date.

Ever since the time of the card’s release, Ripken has claimed that teammates playing a clubhouse prank were responsible for writing the obscenity on the knob of the bat. However, just recently, Rovell wrote that Ripken admitted to him that he (Ripken) wrote the obscenity on the bat.

“I got a dozen bats in front of my locker during the 1988 season. I pulled the bats out, model R161, and noticed -- because of the grain patterns -- that they were too heavy. But I decided I’d use one of them, at the very least, for my batting practice bat.”

“Now I had to write something on the bat. At Memorial Stadium, the bat room was not too close to the clubhouse, so I wanted to write something that I could find immediately. There were five big grocery carts full of bats in there and if I wrote my number 3, it could be too confusing. So I wrote ‘F*ck Face’ on it.

“After the season was over, in early January, I got a call from our PR guy Rick Vaughn. He said, ‘Billy, we have a problem.’ And he told me what was written on the bat and I couldn’t believe it. I went to a store and saw the card and it all came back to me. We were in Fenway Park and I had just taken my first round of BP. I threw my bat to the third base side and strolled around the bases. When I was coming back, right before I got up to hit again, I remember a guy tapping me on the shoulder asking if he could take my picture. Never once did I think about it. I posed for the shot and he took it.”

As others have speculated, Ripken believes that Fleer knew about the obscenity, and in an attempt to generate publicity, allowed the error to pass through production.

“I can’t believe the people at Fleer couldn’t catch that. I mean, they certainly have to have enough proofreaders to see it. I think not only did they see it, they enhanced it. That writing on that bat is way too clear. I don’t write that neat. I think they knew that once they saw it, they could use the card to create an awful lot of stir.”

Today, both the “F*ck Face” error and early corrected variations of the card remain coveted items amongst collectors. However, they don’t draw nearly the same prices now as they did back in 1989.

A “F*ck Face” error card graded by PSA a “Mint 9” (with “Gem Mint 10” being the highest) recently fetched $39.76 on eBay, while ungraded examples, depending on condition, range anywhere from $5-$18. An early black marker scribbled corrected version graded by PSA a “Mint 9” recently sold for $19.95 at auction, whereas an ungraded version in “NM” (Near Mint) condition ended at $1.95.

“It was all the press attention that originally drove the price up on the card,” said Benhamida. “Once the press hype dropped, so did the demand for the card. The card is more of a novelty item nowadays, a fun conversation piece.”