In an interview with CNBC, Billy Ripken revealed the truth about his 1989 Fleer card: It was really his bat and it really says “Fuck Face” on it. I can now die a happy man (and I can do it clutching my Ripken “Fuck Face” card).
Too funny. I didn’t even know about that.
What a weird guy. He thinks Fleer’s people enhanced the writing on the bat.
I bought a lot of Fleer cards that year, trying to get one of those. Never had any luck.
The writing on the actual card is ridiculously clear. Much clearer than the pictures found on other baseball cards from the 80s. While I’m not sure I believe that, if the people at Fleer ever admitted that they did enhance it, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I got at least one of the censored cards. 
He wrote “Fuck Face” on it because a “3” would have been too confusing?
Wow. There’s a good chance I owned one of those cards, and never knew about this…
We-e-ee-e-ll, depending which way you look at it, a “3” could look like an “E” or a “W” or an “M”, but “fuck face” only ever looks like “fuck face”.
I was dealing in cards at that point. Fleer was a brand you couldn’t buy in huge quantities, the way you could Topps. So, I had two employees driving to every Lawson’s in the Akron Metro area for two days buying every box of Fleer we could get. I’d say we got a few hundred of them. I think I remember getting $10-25 each for them. The idea that they were worth $500(presented in that article) is ludicrous. A year later, no one cared.
From the article linked in the OP:
It could be coincidence, but Rick Vaughn is the character played by Charlie Sheen in Major League. Billy was always an asshole and I wouldn’t trust this story to be gospel.
Coincidence. The spokesman for the Orioles at that point WAS Rick Vaughn. Checked my newspaper database.
Thanks for looking.
Billy could be on the up-and-up for this one.