My Youthful Obsession with Fuck-Face
Monday, December 15, 2008
The value of these cards was something I took for granted at the time; I never sold them, of course, but I’d pay for them and trade them in the ad-hoc pirate networks me and my friends would set up, with the gold standard determined in the monthly issues of Beckett. If any of this sounds familiar–obsessive gathering and organizing, finding missing pieces to complete sets, setting up sub-rosa networks for “trading”, then you’ll understand why my segue into music collecting was such a natural progression.
And which is why this article, about the third-most famous baseball card ever (after the Honus Wagner tobacco card and the Mantle Bowman rookie) was such a joy to read, especially because the perpetrator of the stunt was interviewed, and blithely confessed to his crime. Quick synopsis: Billy Ripken, younger, less-talented brother of Cal, decided to make a name for himself in a way that young boys across this great land of ours could appreciate: writing “Fuck Face” on the bottom of his bat. It went unnoticed on the first run of cards, and obviously became a collector’s item before it was altered by Fleer (see article for variations). You can probably imagine how completely amazing this was to a 12-year old. Neither myself or any of my friends had the card in question (we read about it in Beckett, of course), but were not going to sit and let history pass us by. We raided every local card store we could find, hoping like the kid in Willy Wonka to stumble across the golden ticket that we could surreptitiously show to kids in shop class, and mooch off the legend to give ourselves a bit of precious, obscenity-driven 7th grade social capital.
Oh man, this is a blast from the past. We were definitely collecting together — almost exact same time-frame, an unfortunate moment since it seems our adolescence coincided precisely with a moment of overproduction in the card industry, making even those carefully collected complete sets worth bupkis. (I had a clatch of Wally Joyner rookie cards. And felt a little suspect/resentful of Upper Deck’s sudden, pricey entrance into the game with those $14 Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards.) And Beckett’s! Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
fuck yes Fuck Face!
i definitely had that card, as well as a blacked out version if i remember correctly.
my uncle gave me his 1967-69 Tops cards in the mid-late ’80s and i proceeded to use them, and Beckett (obvs) to procure modern day cards i deemed more valuable.
one trade i remember well is that i traded a Nolan Ryan rookie card for a Donruss Don Mattingly rookie.
what can i say? Yankees fans are as Yankees fans does…
“If any of this sounds familiar–obsessive gathering and organizing, finding missing pieces to complete sets, setting up sub-rosa networks for “trading”, then you’ll understand why my segue into music collecting was such a natural progression.”
Brilliant, and so embarrassingly close to home.
Yes, i must admit, this is embarrassingly close to home for me too. We must’ve grown up at the same time.
I grew up in Indy myself, and distinctly remember going to Indianapolis Ice hockey games around 1993-96. Back then, there was a small makeshift card shop at every game, sprawled across 3 or 4 folding banquet tables that were set up in the space behind the goal. Between periods, they’d open up for 20 minutes to sell cards. My weekly allowance went solely to purchasing cards at Ice games back then.
Oh yeah, and I still have a shoebox (an Air Jordan shoebox, no less!) full of Becketts in a closet somewhere from that same era. They’re even stuffed in plastic sleeves.
man, I’ve got like 30 Don Mattingly cards sitting at home. Dude was my favorite. I have the complete ‘84 Topps set. I used Bar Mitzvah money to buy it.