He admitted years later that he wrote the expletive on the knob. But he forgot it was there when he posed for a baseball card photographer before a game at Fenway Park. During my recent Bird Tapes Podcast interview with…
John Eisenberg revisits the infamous story behind Billy Ripken's 1989 Fleer baseball card, which featured an expletive scrawled on the bat knob. The photo was taken during an Orioles batting practice at Fenway Park in September 1988, when Ripken agreed to pose for a photographer while holding his personalized practice bat.
Ripken later confessed to CNBC that he wrote the profanity himself to easily distinguish his bat, but had forgotten it was there during the shoot. Although Fleer halted production to correct the image and denied intentionally releasing it, the card became a famous pop culture sensation.
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