Cards I Love Part 5- 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken

I spent my last year of elementary school at Carman Trails in Manchester, Missouri.  I only went there for two years during fifth and sixth grades.  Unfortunately, my sixth grade homeroom teacher was not a very interesting.  A little dry.  She liked to talk about herself, grandkids, and how she missed teaching kindergarten.  Her main subject was reading, which she taught by reading to us.  Did I read stuff during sixth grade?  I am not sure.

We rotated to other classrooms for math, science, and language/writing.  Thirty years later, the thing I remember best was my science teacher reading us "Two Minute Mysteries" to waste time during class, and the time she let us play with Freon in sandwich bags.  As a person who is currently employed as a teacher, I am miffed at how any of these people faired well on their evaluations.

Baseball cards were really fun in sixth grade.  The middle school me had not yet ruined them by putting way too much time into them over school work.  At this point, I was still just opening the packs to find cards of players that I liked, but that would change during this year.  There are a few of these posts that revolve around the sixth grade me.  Things changed in bad ways for awhile after 1989.

When did I first see the Bill Ripken card?

I do not know, but it was all the rage in sixth grade when it came out that spring.  More likely, it was all the rage with sixth graders who collected baseball cards.  Carmen Trails is/was a bunch of middle class white kids in suburban St. Louis, so probably a healthy number.

There was one kid in my sixth grade class who used this card as a bookmark.  I knew that person from fifth grade through my mid/late twenties.  I never heard him talk about baseball.  I never saw him read a book.  Probably a "stick it to the man" type of kid and an adult.  

I am sure that there are plenty of people who will tell you that the Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card is the best card you can own from 1989.  They are probably right.  Those same people were also probably either adults that year, or they were not alive or very young.  As for me, as someone approaching middle school, it was hard to believe that any baseball card could be cooler than one that said "FUCK FACE" on it.  

How did this happen?  It's almost too incredible to believe.  

This was one of the first non-Cardinal, non-players I watched in person, common baseball cards that I really enjoyed.  Bill Ripken was not a very good player, but this card is simply incredible.  Other Bill Ripken cards in my collection were just herded into a box of Orioles commons.  However, the 1989 Fleer Bill Ripken card was an instant classic.  

I was aware that there were variations created where Fleer hid the "FUCK FACE" writing on Ripken's bat, but sixth grader me did not care about black or white scribbles.  Give me the baseball card with the F bomb.  

Later on in life, I spent a little time reconnecting with this card and found a few of the variations.  I am not an expert on the card by any means, but I believe that most of my variations involve black boxes or scribbles.  Those are really easy to find and inexpensive.  

I know this is a different post than the others that I have made during this past week, a little less serious, and far less personal connection to the card.  Still, the Bill Ripken card was a memorable one for many who collected in the late 1980s.  Maybe as a near middle schooler at the time, a card with a curse word on the front stands out more than it should, but I am sure others share enjoyment in owning this card.