SHOCK VALUE : While Officials Scramble to Recall Billy Ripken’s 1989 Baseball Card, Collectors Are Having a Field Day

There has been Billy Beer. There has been BillyBall. But there never has been anything like the Billy card controversy that is raging among baseball card collectors.

There have been cards printed with the wrong picture or a misspelled name, or a prankster wearing his glove on the wrong hand or holding a shattered bat, so-called error cards to hobbyists. But--at least in the modern era of collecting, since Topps and Bowman sets entered the market in the late 1940s and early ‘50s--there has never been a card recalled until this week.

When collectors and dealers began opening the 1989 Fleer packs they found some curious writing on the knob of Billy Ripken’s bat.

There is the Baltimore Orioles second baseman in a casual pose, with his bat resting on his shoulder. And there, on the knob, readable if you look closely, is a 2-word obscenity, “ . . . Face,” which may or may not be Ripken’s clubhouse nickname but was certainly not intended for the bubble-gum set.

And there is the red-faced Fleer Corp. in Philadelphia, getting angry calls from the Orioles and the baseball commissioner’s office, trying to recall shipments from its distributors, reportedly with the threat of a shipping cutoff if a large percentage of cases aren’t returned.

All the parties involved are embarrassed--through a team spokesman, Ripken claims he was the victim of a teammate’s prank--and say that Fleer has done everything possible to recall the cards.

The upshot is, the cards that got out before the recall have become the hottest collectible on the market, both a dream and a nightmare for card dealers and collectors as the supply rapidly dries up.

At a card show in Lomita last weekend, the card was being sold for as much as $35, and collectors were snapping up unopened 36-pack Fleer boxes for $50, about twice the normal price. Some dealers were refusing to sell packs, preferring to sit on the cards as speculators drive up the price.

At a card collectors’ auction Saturday in Westchester, a Ripken card sold for $30, and a 660-card Fleer set including the card went for $75.

Several Los Angeles area dealers said they were refusing to carry the card and wouldn’t deal Fleer cards until general printing resumed. All dealers contacted said that they were getting dozens of calls inquiring about the card.

One Southland dealer contacted Monday still had Fleer packs available--at a hefty $3 apiece--but wouldn’t sell them to minors. So Billy Ripken has finally topped his all-star brother, Cal: He’s on the first adults-only baseball card.

Fleer executives declined to return phone calls, and it is not known how many Ripken cards were distributed and how many Fleer hopes to destroy. Nor is it clear how the obscenity got by the photographer and Fleer editors.

If Fleer manages to destroy most of the objectionable cards, the existing Ripken cards figure to be subject to rampant price speculation for a while. One Los Angeles dealer said an East Coast dealer had offered him $35 a card. Another dealer said he has heard of the card selling for more than $100 in the Baltimore area.

Fleer, the Orioles and major league baseball, which has a hand in marketing baseball cards, wish this one would just go away. A spokesman for Commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s office said the printing “was a very unfortunate incident. . . . Once we found out about it, we made sure Fleer knew about our unhappiness.”

Bob Miller, the public relations director for the Orioles, said Ripken has a reputation for being a joker among his teammates but didn’t find this incident humorous.

“Billy said he was not aware that word was on the bat,” Miller said. “Fleer claims it was unaware. We’ve got our own opinions, they’ve got their opinions about how it happened. I’m not sure it’s worth pointing fingers at anybody.

“One thing is certain--we want to get as many as possible back and destroyed. There are a lot of things Billy Ripken can do to get famous. This wasn’t one of the ways he wanted. Maybe in 100 years we’ll look back and think this was funny. But it will take about that long.”