August 24, 2020 • 21 mins
A billion dollar baseball team’s social media is stolen by a random college kid in Michigan. No one is safe, especially not the team’s underperforming second baseman. And a cautionary tale about an MLB player forever haunted by two words scribbled on the end of a bat, and the man who became obsessed with him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Trickeration, a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
back to Trickeration, your number one spot for stories about
deception in sports. I'm your host, Matt Waxman. Each week
bringing you tales of delightful dishonesty by hoaxers, scammers, pranksters,
and on and off the field cheaters. If you'd like
(00:24):
to hear stories about people who played by their own rules,
this is the podcast for you. Today we are serving
up to helpings of sports deceit. First, a college kid
with an appetite for disruption takes aim at his favorite team,
and later a member of baseball royalty takes a self
inflicted punch. Okay, onto the show. My girlfriend was you know,
(00:48):
she was like she she didn't really even understand what
was going on. I'm like, this is big, you know,
Like I'm sorry, I'm not I'm not really into it
on the Sunday morning, but you know it's like I
have four hundred thou people we're trying to get hold
of me. This voice you're hearing is Ricky Padilla. He's
a rising senior at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(01:10):
And when they're playing the utility and fielder on the
baseball team, started at short, second catcher, and third base.
Ricky is a big baseball fan. I'm a huge, huge
Padres fan, and I'm really just a huge San Diego
sports fan. For a Mother's Day promotion in a company,
I think it was Budweiser tweeted at the Padres, if
(01:32):
you change your name to the San Diego Madres for
Mother's Day, we'll do something special for Padres fans at
your next home game. Deal. And then when the potter said, oh,
you're on, we go back to the scene of the heist.
It was a Sunday morning on I think it was.
It was Mother's Day, so back in May, and it
(01:54):
was like in the morning, East Coast time. So I
was sitting in the library getting ready to study for
some final exams. He logs onto Twitter and sees the
Padres have successfully changed their Twitter handle to at Madres.
But did they remember to put a hold on at Padres.
So I opened up my settings in the app, and
(02:17):
I was like, let's check it out, Let's see if
it's if it's taken. It it wasn't taken. So Ricky
attempts to change his user name from his current handle
at Ricky Padia twenty two to at Padres and shockingly,
Twitter said the handle was available. It was easy as
that took about twenty seconds, and then checked out my
(02:37):
own profile and there was at Padres for the one
day promotional switch. The Padres forgot to put a hold
on the team's official handle, and when I got it,
I was like, oh man, this is gonna be fun.
Ricky was now in control of the team account and
it's four thousand followers, but really the entire baseball Twitter
verse was at his fingertips. At first, I didn't really
(02:59):
belie leave it. You know, I'm like, there's no way
that Twitter would let this happen. So, you know, I
screenshot at it, sent it to all my teammates and
I'm like, yo, like you guys go look up at
Padres on Twitter. And they were like, no way, Like
why is your profile coming up? If at that time
you went to at Padres Twitter, the profile photo was
no longer of Manny Machado but at Calvin University college
(03:22):
baseball player with a soul patch and shaggy curls. People
were like, this kid is like the younger Kenny Powers.
And then um and then I started getting all these
notifications from from fans tweeting now about trades. Somebody asked, like,
you want some tickets, So I said, yeah, you got
two of them behind the home plate. And then somebody
(03:42):
else asked me about Ian Kinsler, who's obviously washed up,
so that somebody was like, you know, can we d
F M d F a designate for assignment meanings send
the fourteen year veterans second basement to the miners, effectively
releasing him. And I was like, Oh, let's do it,
you know right now, Like, nobody should have a contract
(04:03):
playing that bad. You tweet that the team should designate
for a Simon he had kids lare because he's playing badly. Yeah,
but I mean at the time, everybody in San Diego
was really fed up with this, and that's why everybody
kind of loved it. So you were like the voice
of the fans. But you've gotten control of the team account.
Yeah yeah. And when you're tweeting out about players, do
(04:24):
any of the players see it? Uh? Yeah? Like three
days later, Ian Kinsler hit a home run in like
the bottom of the ninth, and then when he came
across home plate, he just gave everybody the bird and
he started just flipping off the stands and he said
like he said, like all you like, you know, people
immediately started like flooding my d ms and like did
(04:45):
you see what did? Like that's because of you, because
you you just said a d F a him last
week like on his own team's platform, so you know
he had to have seen that. And when you do
have control of it, are you totally glued to this
or you're like, well, I just have this thing and
I'm going about my day and drew all my attension
in and even like my girlfriend was, you know, she
(05:06):
really even understand what was going on. I'm like, this
is big, you know, like I'm sorry, I'm not I'm
not really into it on the Sunday morning, but you know,
it's like I have four hundred people trying to get
hold of me. So your girlfriend was like, let's go
get brunch, and you're like, no, you don't understand what's
happening here. Yeah, yeah, you know, I was like on
my phone, so I promised to put it down for
an hour while we were at brunch, and that's what
(05:27):
I did. It could have been much worse for the Padres.
Looking back at it. I wish I would have tweeted
at MLB, you know, and people wanted me to do
much worse stuff with it, but I wanted to keep PG.
If that happened, where like somebody that was like anonymous
gout ahold of it, you know, could have turned like
very poorly. How did you even think to do this?
(05:53):
Have you ever done anything like this before? You especially
involved in social media? What led up to having this? I? Yeah,
you know what, I honestly think that any kid that's
under the age of like twenty three United States would
have had the same idea. You know, I'm not a
gurgle or anything like that. It was just and I was,
I was just I had to have been like that
first person I noticed it. So when did the padres
(06:15):
reach out to you? And how did they reach out
to and what do they say? So I got the
account at seven am, and I want to say it
was around noon. That's when they DM me from the
you know, from like the actual handle because the team
account wasn't public domain at Jack's minions stepped in and
rerouted the hijacked handle back to the team. It was
(06:36):
like a you know, snap of finger. I was back
at Ricky Pidia twenty two. So where did the breakdown happen?
How could the marketing arm of a professional baseball team
dropped the ball like this? Well, I later learned they
worked out something with Twitter where Twitter was supposed to
hold on to it that night, and then something went wrong,
So you know it was it was more or less
(06:56):
like twitters fault. But yeah, you know, I I hope,
I hope nothing too that happened to any of the
people working in the marketing department for the Padres domain.
Disputes between pro sports teams and squatters often become ugly
and protracted, the most famous being in ten when the
owner of nets dot com turns it into a porn
site in an unsuccessful attempt to get Brooklyn's team owner
(07:19):
to the negotiating table. But with that Padres having already
been returned to the team, Ricky had zero leverage in
his negotiation. Some people didn't understand that, and they were like, man,
you got to like sell it back for X amount
of dollars or ask for BP with Manny Machado and
Fernando Tatis, So I tweeted out of them and I
just said, you know, I think I said that can
(07:41):
I can I just have some free tickets for not
causing too much damage And then they said yes, like
we'll give you four for a game this summer, and
that was really nice of them. Do you ever reach
out to the Padres be like, hey, I've shown that
I can handle this. You know, have about a job,
you know. I even applied actually to Padre's internship for
the twenty summer and like they're marketing department. I got
(08:03):
an email back about a month later and they said, no,
we're not interested. So I think that was a clear
cut response. So what was the publicity like when this
story went public, who's writing about it? And what's the
response you're getting? Like Barstool Sports, ESPN and we'll be
Network USA today. It was national news for a couple
(08:24):
of days there, which is pretty crazy to look at.
Why do you think the story received so much attention?
I think it's it's really just like the uniqueness of
it was what drew people's attention, but kind of shows
that stuff like that can happen. It's like, I'm just
some kid that goes to a small school in West
Michigan takes over a team's Twitter handle in San Diego.
(08:46):
It's pretty weird. That shouldn't happen. And what's it like
having a single Internet moment that becomes attached to your
name and where everyone who googles you sees all of
these responses. Is that positive or negative? It's sweet, It's
it's it's real sweet. When I meet people for the
first time, they're like, oh, the Twitter guy, Like, now
I'm just kind of known as that one dude that
(09:08):
that was Padres for four hours. There was, however, one
negative aspect of the story for Ricky. People call me
Mr Padre and I'm like, no, I'm not not Mr
Padre because Mr Padre was Tony Gwynn. So that's the
only negative thing I'd say that comes out of it.
So I have to throw that out there. Maybe you're
Mr Madre. Sure I'll take that. And how are the tickets?
(09:32):
How is the game? The only thing I would say
is the tickets. They were like the weirdest seats in
the stadium. I couldn't see the left fielder. I mean,
how many seats are there in the stadium where you
can't see the whole field? But how to have been
like the one section they put you in the worst
seats in the house. I think they hit you with
(09:52):
obstructive view at a spite they might have might have alright,
time for a quick break when we come back. Two
bad words written over thirty years ago, forever altered the
lives of two men. Obviously his play on the field.
(10:24):
He wasn't a Hall of Fame player. He didn't bat
three hundred fifty home runs. Billy Ripken twelve seasons over
dred of bats. If you could sum up his career
in two words, what would those two words be? Fox face?
Former Oriol second baseman. Billy Ripken is best known for
two things, being the younger brother to iron Man shortstop
(10:45):
Cal and for sharp being those two words on the
knob of his bat, forever commemorated in his card. You
could hold it from three ft away and it's clear
as day. It's not like you need to magnify glass.
And he will forever be linked for that one post.
This is John Petterson, the number one collector of the
(11:06):
notorious Billy Ripkin card and the world's foremost expert on
all things surrounding it. I mean a lot of people
have hobbies doing we're working, working on cars. I'm not
that guy, the three kids, two dogs, not a whole
lot of time to be, you know, doing a lot
of other things. But I could still say I'm a
baseball card collector. But my baseball card collecting kind of
(11:27):
revolves around this card. Fifteen years ago, John launched bill
Ripken dot com, a website devoted to every imaginable facet
of this card. At a meeting place for funck face
enthusiasts around the world. I don't want to use the
word obsession, but feel free to describe what it has become.
Well you said that, I didn't, but yeah, it's great.
I love it. And what was the response in the
(11:49):
public when this card came out? Um, I guess it
was shock. The first I heard about it was my
dad showed me a newspaper article and it was, Hey,
somebody's this governed a baseball card with the bad word
written on it. I was sixteen years old. I hadn't
collected baseball cards and probably five years, and it kind
of piqued my interest. And you read through the article
(12:11):
and you realize it's, uh, it's Cal Ripken's younger brother Billy.
If it had been Joe Schmo playing for the Milwaukee
Brewers or something. I would never have thought twice about it.
But when you see the word Ripken, that's Baseball Royalty
right there. That's like Prince Harry doing something over in England.
I mean it's it's like, oh, this is a little
brother Billy up to no good, and it just adds
(12:31):
to the allure of it. His dad was the at
the time, had just been the manager of the Orioles.
His brother it was a future Hall of Famer. It
was a big black eye to the family. So my
first thing was I wanted to go see the card.
I want to see it in person. This is before
the Internet. You couldn't just google it. So I go
to the baseball card show and needless to say, about
(12:52):
an hour later, I walked out of there with the
with the card and about twenty dollars less in my pocket.
Even when I spent twenty dollars in the baseball card,
I felt dirty walking out of there, thinking I just
threw away a couple of tanks of gas on my car.
When the card comes out and people ask ripped in
about it, what was his original explanation for how this happened.
I didn't know anything about it. This is my batting
practice bat. You know, somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
(13:14):
I turned, I took a picture. That was it. I
didn't know what was going on. Um, it was my
teammates playing a practical joke on me. I think he
may have even used the words in one article. It
may have been my brother. He never really come out
and said, hey, listen, of course I did it. It's
my fault. You know, I didn't do it on purpose.
It was an accident, but I did write those words
on a bat. What was their response from the public.
(13:36):
Was there a strong demand for from this card? Originally
in the late eighties into the early nineties, baseball cards
were in high demand. To begin with, it was the
popular thing to collect. People were investing money in baseball cards,
believe it or not, and uh thinking they could buy
a dollar card and sell it for ten dollars in
a year, a hundred dollars and ten years. So yeah,
there was it was something different about this card. You
(13:57):
weren't collecting or buying a Hall of Fame or future
Hall of Fame player. You were doing it for one reason,
and that's the own a little piece of history, I guess.
And what was Flear's response when they found out the era,
it was shocked, it was embarrassment. It wasn't something that
was designed by Flears saying hey let's dump up some sales.
Let's let's put on a baseball card that everybody's eve
(14:17):
me talking about for the wrong reasons. I think it
was more of something slipped to the cracks. So I'm
sure there was a frantic three week period or so
late January of n and maybe February of nine nine
where the company was just scrambling. Um. I think estimates
say we're a hundred thousand, probably more were produced, and
(14:40):
then of course the company themselves they're like, hey, we
gotta get this off the market. They basically said, hey,
if you have the card, send it back to us.
We'll mail you a replacement. I can only fathom how
many baseball cards rolled off the printer every day at Flear. Um.
I bet half a million we're I produced because they
(15:00):
were pumping out cards so much there and you're trying
to now destroy the Billy Ripken card to keep it
out of circulation. And how did they handle it in
terms of trying to cover up the obscenity. Yeah, they
started covering it up. They started, you know, putting black
scribbles or white scribbles on it, and people would be like, listen,
(15:21):
you're you're you're trying, but you're not doing good enough.
And finally they come up with a a black box
version of a cover up. Just put a big old
black box in the end of the bat and say,
there you go. That that's all we're gonna do about
it now. I've also heard they may have used white
out to obscure the bat knob. You know. It could
have just been somebody at the desk, you know, saying,
(15:43):
here's a dab of white out, or I'm gonna put
a little, you know, piece of white tape on it
and submit it back into circulation. I have some cards
that could fit that description, but who knows what the
original origins are and when did you start collecting this
card and what life has that taken on. It wasn't
until probably the late nineties where I discovered that beautiful
(16:03):
thing called eBay and I was searching for something totally random,
and I said, hey, whatever happened to the Billy Rippon card?
I started looking. I said, you know, what's a card
like that work today? Needles to say, I was disappointed
where my investment back in nine was now worth maybe
(16:24):
ten dollars in two thousand, So again not discouraged. There
was more of well, let's see what else is out there.
And I met a couple of people on eBay that
also collected this card, and we started sharing some stories.
They would show me cards that were kind of not
really mainstream variations of the card, but they were like little,
(16:46):
little subtle differences, and it definitely got me going again
with with baseball cards. Over the course of the thirty
plus years, what has been the marketplace for this card?
What are the ebbs and flows of the value? The
late eighties, the demand was through the roof. People were
paying a hundred hours plus for a very common variation
of a baseball card. It was ridiculous. People were buying
(17:09):
the hype and nothing more. But I think once baseball
cards kind of peaked in the nineties, the card value
went down and it didn't really go up and value
a whole lot. Since this isn't a super valuable item,
what's the motivation for collecting it? Um? Well, number one,
it's cheap. I don't like collecting fancy cars or boats
or airplanes. I it's a cheap, fun hobby for me.
(17:31):
I love the days where I can pick up a
subtle variation on eBay for let's say, two dollars or
three dollars, and I get in the mail. I look
at him like, oh, yeah, that was that was fun.
In two thousand eight, twenty years after he scribbled those
immortal words, Billy Ripken finally admitted the real story behind
the bad obscenity. He came clean. He said, yeah, I
(17:52):
want to be on the record for this. Uh you know,
I I did it. Um, I used it as my
batting practice bat. His His excuse was, my father was
pitching batting practice at you know, four o'clock and it's
three five, and I'm still in the clubhouse and I
got to grab my bat and run up, run out
there and take batting practice. I want to make sure
I grabbed the right bat, so I wrote face on there.
(18:16):
Now again, you know, how hard is it just to
write your number or something else on the bat? But
you know that was his Uh, that was his story.
He probably never thought it would get to the level
it got to. I can only imagine if Twitter was
around back then or anything else. But he took a
lot of backlash for it. And have you ever met
Bill Ripken? Uh, let's see one time. Yeah, I went
(18:40):
to a baseball card show in Baltimore, probably I'm guessing, uh,
ten to fifteen years ago. He was signing autographs. There
weren't many people in line to get his autographs, so
it was kind of a short stay. So this is
still kind of the before the admission. I guess eight
by ten picture for him to sign. If somebody puts
down a baseball carter a picture for him to sign,
and it's that picture. Obviously, it's the first thing he
(19:03):
thinks of. He wrote, John, good luck, Bill Ripken. So
now if you look at the last three letters of
luck U c K, they match identically to what is
written on the bat. I didn't ask him to write
that on the picture. He chose to write that, and
I thought it was kind of a neat little way
of a wink wink, like, hey, you know, we both
know who wrote that on there. What life is this
(19:25):
card taken on in pop culture? Um? Well, people that
were let's say ten years old, it's twenty years old
back in the eighties are now in their forties and fifties.
And they have disposable income, let's say, and they have
a little taste for nostalgia. Um, it's uh, it's crazy.
People are making replica baseball bats with the with the
(19:45):
words on the and and people will paint pictures. People
will make all kinds of art to hang on the wall.
People that are followers of baseball still know what the
the f base card is. And the last question for
you what what role has this card played in your life? Well,
it's something I can, you know, do all my free time.
(20:09):
And I can share it with my kids, I can
share it with my wife. I can you know, talk
to other people about it. I mean, anytime you have
a hobby and you meet people with like minds, it's
always fun. People all over the country sharing pictures, sharing stories.
I love getting emails that say, hey, liquid I found
or what do you think of this card? Um? Have
you heard this story? And it's great. I love it.
(20:29):
It's something that keeps me going. All right, That is
it for today. A big thanks to Mr Montre Ricky Padilla.
If you're interested in having Ricky hijack your team or
(20:50):
company's social media account, reach out to him at Ricky
Padia twenty two on Twitter or just throw him a
follow him and thanks to John Petterson, whose website in
is Bill Ripken dot com. If you have any questions, Also,
the tip line for future episodes for Trickeration is open.
Send us an email at Trickeration Nation at gmail dot com,
(21:11):
or send us a note on Instagram or Twitter both
at Trickeration, and as always, please rate and review if
you're liking the show. And finally, as we do, at
the end of every show, we check in with the
legend Chris mad Doug Russo. Chris, how do we do today, Maddie,
Good job, keep up to good work. Thank you, Chris.
All right, everyone, see you next week. Trickeration is a
(21:33):
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Trickeration, a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
back to Trickeration, your number one spot for stories about
deception in sports. I'm your host, Matt Waxman. Each week
bringing you tales of delightful dishonesty by hoaxers, scammers, pranksters,
and on and off the field cheaters. If you'd like
(00:24):
to hear stories about people who played by their own rules,
this is the podcast for you. Today we are serving
up to helpings of sports deceit. First, a college kid
with an appetite for disruption takes aim at his favorite team,
and later a member of baseball royalty takes a self
inflicted punch. Okay, onto the show. My girlfriend was you know,
(00:48):
she was like she she didn't really even understand what
was going on. I'm like, this is big, you know,
Like I'm sorry, I'm not I'm not really into it
on the Sunday morning, but you know it's like I
have four hundred thou people we're trying to get hold
of me. This voice you're hearing is Ricky Padilla. He's
a rising senior at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(01:10):
And when they're playing the utility and fielder on the
baseball team, started at short, second catcher, and third base.
Ricky is a big baseball fan. I'm a huge, huge
Padres fan, and I'm really just a huge San Diego
sports fan. For a Mother's Day promotion in a company,
I think it was Budweiser tweeted at the Padres, if
(01:32):
you change your name to the San Diego Madres for
Mother's Day, we'll do something special for Padres fans at
your next home game. Deal. And then when the potter said, oh,
you're on, we go back to the scene of the heist.
It was a Sunday morning on I think it was.
It was Mother's Day, so back in May, and it
(01:54):
was like in the morning, East Coast time. So I
was sitting in the library getting ready to study for
some final exams. He logs onto Twitter and sees the
Padres have successfully changed their Twitter handle to at Madres.
But did they remember to put a hold on at Padres.
So I opened up my settings in the app, and
(02:17):
I was like, let's check it out, Let's see if
it's if it's taken. It it wasn't taken. So Ricky
attempts to change his user name from his current handle
at Ricky Padia twenty two to at Padres and shockingly,
Twitter said the handle was available. It was easy as
that took about twenty seconds, and then checked out my
(02:37):
own profile and there was at Padres for the one
day promotional switch. The Padres forgot to put a hold
on the team's official handle, and when I got it,
I was like, oh man, this is gonna be fun.
Ricky was now in control of the team account and
it's four thousand followers, but really the entire baseball Twitter
verse was at his fingertips. At first, I didn't really
(02:59):
belie leave it. You know, I'm like, there's no way
that Twitter would let this happen. So, you know, I
screenshot at it, sent it to all my teammates and
I'm like, yo, like you guys go look up at
Padres on Twitter. And they were like, no way, Like
why is your profile coming up? If at that time
you went to at Padres Twitter, the profile photo was
no longer of Manny Machado but at Calvin University college
(03:22):
baseball player with a soul patch and shaggy curls. People
were like, this kid is like the younger Kenny Powers.
And then um and then I started getting all these
notifications from from fans tweeting now about trades. Somebody asked, like,
you want some tickets, So I said, yeah, you got
two of them behind the home plate. And then somebody
(03:42):
else asked me about Ian Kinsler, who's obviously washed up,
so that somebody was like, you know, can we d
F M d F a designate for assignment meanings send
the fourteen year veterans second basement to the miners, effectively
releasing him. And I was like, Oh, let's do it,
you know right now, Like, nobody should have a contract
(04:03):
playing that bad. You tweet that the team should designate
for a Simon he had kids lare because he's playing badly. Yeah,
but I mean at the time, everybody in San Diego
was really fed up with this, and that's why everybody
kind of loved it. So you were like the voice
of the fans. But you've gotten control of the team account.
Yeah yeah. And when you're tweeting out about players, do
(04:24):
any of the players see it? Uh? Yeah? Like three
days later, Ian Kinsler hit a home run in like
the bottom of the ninth, and then when he came
across home plate, he just gave everybody the bird and
he started just flipping off the stands and he said
like he said, like all you like, you know, people
immediately started like flooding my d ms and like did
(04:45):
you see what did? Like that's because of you, because
you you just said a d F a him last
week like on his own team's platform, so you know
he had to have seen that. And when you do
have control of it, are you totally glued to this
or you're like, well, I just have this thing and
I'm going about my day and drew all my attension
in and even like my girlfriend was, you know, she
(05:06):
really even understand what was going on. I'm like, this
is big, you know, like I'm sorry, I'm not I'm
not really into it on the Sunday morning, but you know,
it's like I have four hundred people trying to get
hold of me. So your girlfriend was like, let's go
get brunch, and you're like, no, you don't understand what's
happening here. Yeah, yeah, you know, I was like on
my phone, so I promised to put it down for
an hour while we were at brunch, and that's what
(05:27):
I did. It could have been much worse for the Padres.
Looking back at it. I wish I would have tweeted
at MLB, you know, and people wanted me to do
much worse stuff with it, but I wanted to keep PG.
If that happened, where like somebody that was like anonymous
gout ahold of it, you know, could have turned like
very poorly. How did you even think to do this?
(05:53):
Have you ever done anything like this before? You especially
involved in social media? What led up to having this? I? Yeah,
you know what, I honestly think that any kid that's
under the age of like twenty three United States would
have had the same idea. You know, I'm not a
gurgle or anything like that. It was just and I was,
I was just I had to have been like that
first person I noticed it. So when did the padres
(06:15):
reach out to you? And how did they reach out
to and what do they say? So I got the
account at seven am, and I want to say it
was around noon. That's when they DM me from the
you know, from like the actual handle because the team
account wasn't public domain at Jack's minions stepped in and
rerouted the hijacked handle back to the team. It was
(06:36):
like a you know, snap of finger. I was back
at Ricky Pidia twenty two. So where did the breakdown happen?
How could the marketing arm of a professional baseball team
dropped the ball like this? Well, I later learned they
worked out something with Twitter where Twitter was supposed to
hold on to it that night, and then something went wrong,
So you know it was it was more or less
(06:56):
like twitters fault. But yeah, you know, I I hope,
I hope nothing too that happened to any of the
people working in the marketing department for the Padres domain.
Disputes between pro sports teams and squatters often become ugly
and protracted, the most famous being in ten when the
owner of nets dot com turns it into a porn
site in an unsuccessful attempt to get Brooklyn's team owner
(07:19):
to the negotiating table. But with that Padres having already
been returned to the team, Ricky had zero leverage in
his negotiation. Some people didn't understand that, and they were like, man,
you got to like sell it back for X amount
of dollars or ask for BP with Manny Machado and
Fernando Tatis, So I tweeted out of them and I
just said, you know, I think I said that can
(07:41):
I can I just have some free tickets for not
causing too much damage And then they said yes, like
we'll give you four for a game this summer, and
that was really nice of them. Do you ever reach
out to the Padres be like, hey, I've shown that
I can handle this. You know, have about a job,
you know. I even applied actually to Padre's internship for
the twenty summer and like they're marketing department. I got
(08:03):
an email back about a month later and they said, no,
we're not interested. So I think that was a clear
cut response. So what was the publicity like when this
story went public, who's writing about it? And what's the
response you're getting? Like Barstool Sports, ESPN and we'll be
Network USA today. It was national news for a couple
(08:24):
of days there, which is pretty crazy to look at.
Why do you think the story received so much attention?
I think it's it's really just like the uniqueness of
it was what drew people's attention, but kind of shows
that stuff like that can happen. It's like, I'm just
some kid that goes to a small school in West
Michigan takes over a team's Twitter handle in San Diego.
(08:46):
It's pretty weird. That shouldn't happen. And what's it like
having a single Internet moment that becomes attached to your
name and where everyone who googles you sees all of
these responses. Is that positive or negative? It's sweet, It's
it's it's real sweet. When I meet people for the
first time, they're like, oh, the Twitter guy, Like, now
I'm just kind of known as that one dude that
(09:08):
that was Padres for four hours. There was, however, one
negative aspect of the story for Ricky. People call me
Mr Padre and I'm like, no, I'm not not Mr
Padre because Mr Padre was Tony Gwynn. So that's the
only negative thing I'd say that comes out of it.
So I have to throw that out there. Maybe you're
Mr Madre. Sure I'll take that. And how are the tickets?
(09:32):
How is the game? The only thing I would say
is the tickets. They were like the weirdest seats in
the stadium. I couldn't see the left fielder. I mean,
how many seats are there in the stadium where you
can't see the whole field? But how to have been
like the one section they put you in the worst
seats in the house. I think they hit you with
(09:52):
obstructive view at a spite they might have might have alright,
time for a quick break when we come back. Two
bad words written over thirty years ago, forever altered the
lives of two men. Obviously his play on the field.
(10:24):
He wasn't a Hall of Fame player. He didn't bat
three hundred fifty home runs. Billy Ripken twelve seasons over
dred of bats. If you could sum up his career
in two words, what would those two words be? Fox face?
Former Oriol second baseman. Billy Ripken is best known for
two things, being the younger brother to iron Man shortstop
(10:45):
Cal and for sharp being those two words on the
knob of his bat, forever commemorated in his card. You
could hold it from three ft away and it's clear
as day. It's not like you need to magnify glass.
And he will forever be linked for that one post.
This is John Petterson, the number one collector of the
(11:06):
notorious Billy Ripkin card and the world's foremost expert on
all things surrounding it. I mean a lot of people
have hobbies doing we're working, working on cars. I'm not
that guy, the three kids, two dogs, not a whole
lot of time to be, you know, doing a lot
of other things. But I could still say I'm a
baseball card collector. But my baseball card collecting kind of
(11:27):
revolves around this card. Fifteen years ago, John launched bill
Ripken dot com, a website devoted to every imaginable facet
of this card. At a meeting place for funck face
enthusiasts around the world. I don't want to use the
word obsession, but feel free to describe what it has become.
Well you said that, I didn't, but yeah, it's great.
I love it. And what was the response in the
(11:49):
public when this card came out? Um, I guess it
was shock. The first I heard about it was my
dad showed me a newspaper article and it was, Hey,
somebody's this governed a baseball card with the bad word
written on it. I was sixteen years old. I hadn't
collected baseball cards and probably five years, and it kind
of piqued my interest. And you read through the article
(12:11):
and you realize it's, uh, it's Cal Ripken's younger brother Billy.
If it had been Joe Schmo playing for the Milwaukee
Brewers or something. I would never have thought twice about it.
But when you see the word Ripken, that's Baseball Royalty
right there. That's like Prince Harry doing something over in England.
I mean it's it's like, oh, this is a little
brother Billy up to no good, and it just adds
(12:31):
to the allure of it. His dad was the at
the time, had just been the manager of the Orioles.
His brother it was a future Hall of Famer. It
was a big black eye to the family. So my
first thing was I wanted to go see the card.
I want to see it in person. This is before
the Internet. You couldn't just google it. So I go
to the baseball card show and needless to say, about
(12:52):
an hour later, I walked out of there with the
with the card and about twenty dollars less in my pocket.
Even when I spent twenty dollars in the baseball card,
I felt dirty walking out of there, thinking I just
threw away a couple of tanks of gas on my car.
When the card comes out and people ask ripped in
about it, what was his original explanation for how this happened.
I didn't know anything about it. This is my batting
practice bat. You know, somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
(13:14):
I turned, I took a picture. That was it. I
didn't know what was going on. Um, it was my
teammates playing a practical joke on me. I think he
may have even used the words in one article. It
may have been my brother. He never really come out
and said, hey, listen, of course I did it. It's
my fault. You know, I didn't do it on purpose.
It was an accident, but I did write those words
on a bat. What was their response from the public.
(13:36):
Was there a strong demand for from this card? Originally
in the late eighties into the early nineties, baseball cards
were in high demand. To begin with, it was the
popular thing to collect. People were investing money in baseball cards,
believe it or not, and uh thinking they could buy
a dollar card and sell it for ten dollars in
a year, a hundred dollars and ten years. So yeah,
there was it was something different about this card. You
(13:57):
weren't collecting or buying a Hall of Fame or future
Hall of Fame player. You were doing it for one reason,
and that's the own a little piece of history, I guess.
And what was Flear's response when they found out the era,
it was shocked, it was embarrassment. It wasn't something that
was designed by Flears saying hey let's dump up some sales.
Let's let's put on a baseball card that everybody's eve
(14:17):
me talking about for the wrong reasons. I think it
was more of something slipped to the cracks. So I'm
sure there was a frantic three week period or so
late January of n and maybe February of nine nine
where the company was just scrambling. Um. I think estimates
say we're a hundred thousand, probably more were produced, and
(14:40):
then of course the company themselves they're like, hey, we
gotta get this off the market. They basically said, hey,
if you have the card, send it back to us.
We'll mail you a replacement. I can only fathom how
many baseball cards rolled off the printer every day at Flear. Um.
I bet half a million we're I produced because they
(15:00):
were pumping out cards so much there and you're trying
to now destroy the Billy Ripken card to keep it
out of circulation. And how did they handle it in
terms of trying to cover up the obscenity. Yeah, they
started covering it up. They started, you know, putting black
scribbles or white scribbles on it, and people would be like, listen,
(15:21):
you're you're you're trying, but you're not doing good enough.
And finally they come up with a a black box
version of a cover up. Just put a big old
black box in the end of the bat and say,
there you go. That that's all we're gonna do about
it now. I've also heard they may have used white
out to obscure the bat knob. You know. It could
have just been somebody at the desk, you know, saying,
(15:43):
here's a dab of white out, or I'm gonna put
a little, you know, piece of white tape on it
and submit it back into circulation. I have some cards
that could fit that description, but who knows what the
original origins are and when did you start collecting this
card and what life has that taken on. It wasn't
until probably the late nineties where I discovered that beautiful
(16:03):
thing called eBay and I was searching for something totally random,
and I said, hey, whatever happened to the Billy Rippon card?
I started looking. I said, you know, what's a card
like that work today? Needles to say, I was disappointed
where my investment back in nine was now worth maybe
(16:24):
ten dollars in two thousand, So again not discouraged. There
was more of well, let's see what else is out there.
And I met a couple of people on eBay that
also collected this card, and we started sharing some stories.
They would show me cards that were kind of not
really mainstream variations of the card, but they were like little,
(16:46):
little subtle differences, and it definitely got me going again
with with baseball cards. Over the course of the thirty
plus years, what has been the marketplace for this card?
What are the ebbs and flows of the value? The
late eighties, the demand was through the roof. People were
paying a hundred hours plus for a very common variation
of a baseball card. It was ridiculous. People were buying
(17:09):
the hype and nothing more. But I think once baseball
cards kind of peaked in the nineties, the card value
went down and it didn't really go up and value
a whole lot. Since this isn't a super valuable item,
what's the motivation for collecting it? Um? Well, number one,
it's cheap. I don't like collecting fancy cars or boats
or airplanes. I it's a cheap, fun hobby for me.
(17:31):
I love the days where I can pick up a
subtle variation on eBay for let's say, two dollars or
three dollars, and I get in the mail. I look
at him like, oh, yeah, that was that was fun.
In two thousand eight, twenty years after he scribbled those
immortal words, Billy Ripken finally admitted the real story behind
the bad obscenity. He came clean. He said, yeah, I
(17:52):
want to be on the record for this. Uh you know,
I I did it. Um, I used it as my
batting practice bat. His His excuse was, my father was
pitching batting practice at you know, four o'clock and it's
three five, and I'm still in the clubhouse and I
got to grab my bat and run up, run out
there and take batting practice. I want to make sure
I grabbed the right bat, so I wrote face on there.
(18:16):
Now again, you know, how hard is it just to
write your number or something else on the bat? But
you know that was his Uh, that was his story.
He probably never thought it would get to the level
it got to. I can only imagine if Twitter was
around back then or anything else. But he took a
lot of backlash for it. And have you ever met
Bill Ripken? Uh, let's see one time. Yeah, I went
(18:40):
to a baseball card show in Baltimore, probably I'm guessing, uh,
ten to fifteen years ago. He was signing autographs. There
weren't many people in line to get his autographs, so
it was kind of a short stay. So this is
still kind of the before the admission. I guess eight
by ten picture for him to sign. If somebody puts
down a baseball carter a picture for him to sign,
and it's that picture. Obviously, it's the first thing he
(19:03):
thinks of. He wrote, John, good luck, Bill Ripken. So
now if you look at the last three letters of
luck U c K, they match identically to what is
written on the bat. I didn't ask him to write
that on the picture. He chose to write that, and
I thought it was kind of a neat little way
of a wink wink, like, hey, you know, we both
know who wrote that on there. What life is this
(19:25):
card taken on in pop culture? Um? Well, people that
were let's say ten years old, it's twenty years old
back in the eighties are now in their forties and fifties.
And they have disposable income, let's say, and they have
a little taste for nostalgia. Um, it's uh, it's crazy.
People are making replica baseball bats with the with the
(19:45):
words on the and and people will paint pictures. People
will make all kinds of art to hang on the wall.
People that are followers of baseball still know what the
the f base card is. And the last question for
you what what role has this card played in your life? Well,
it's something I can, you know, do all my free time.
(20:09):
And I can share it with my kids, I can
share it with my wife. I can you know, talk
to other people about it. I mean, anytime you have
a hobby and you meet people with like minds, it's
always fun. People all over the country sharing pictures, sharing stories.
I love getting emails that say, hey, liquid I found
or what do you think of this card? Um? Have
you heard this story? And it's great. I love it.
(20:29):
It's something that keeps me going. All right, That is
it for today. A big thanks to Mr Montre Ricky Padilla.
If you're interested in having Ricky hijack your team or
(20:50):
company's social media account, reach out to him at Ricky
Padia twenty two on Twitter or just throw him a
follow him and thanks to John Petterson, whose website in
is Bill Ripken dot com. If you have any questions, Also,
the tip line for future episodes for Trickeration is open.
Send us an email at Trickeration Nation at gmail dot com,
(21:11):
or send us a note on Instagram or Twitter both
at Trickeration, and as always, please rate and review if
you're liking the show. And finally, as we do, at
the end of every show, we check in with the
legend Chris mad Doug Russo. Chris, how do we do today, Maddie,
Good job, keep up to good work. Thank you, Chris.
All right, everyone, see you next week. Trickeration is a
(21:33):
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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