By Marty Appel
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Not every player in the \u201850s and \u201860s spent their off-season hunting and fishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tOf course if one read the backs of baseball cards, it may have seemed that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tBut in truth, there was a wealth of material to be found on the backs, a creative challenge for card companies and a treasure trove for baseball fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tOnce the idea of reviving the baseball card industry in the late \u201840s was made, decisions needed to be made about the \u201ccard backs.\u201d What goes there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tBowman made Blony bubble gum and Topps made Bazooka, (a successor to their non-bubble Topps gum), which was quickly becoming the more popular. It would have been tempting to just put an ad for the gum on the card backs, just as the early tobacco cards featured little more than ads for cigarettes. \u201cSweet Carporal Cigarettes: The Standard for Years,\u201d for example, was what one might find on the back of early 20th<\/sup> century cards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \tSy Berger, the World War II veteran and Bucknell grad charged with the baseball card project for Topps, was working with a blank canvas when he began making decisions of what went onto both the fronts and backs. Assisting him was the company\u2019s art director Woodie Gelman. Much of the work would take place after hours at Sy\u2019s kitchen table on Alabama Avenue in Brooklyn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \t\u201cSy would sometimes work until 2 or 3 in the morning,\u201d recalls his widow, Gloria. \u201cHe\u2019d come home from work, eat dinner, spend time with our children, untie his tie, put his slippers on, and sit at the table and go to work, gathering the facts for each player.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \tThe backs of Bowman cards repeated the player\u2019s name position and team, and then added place and date of birth, height and weight, whether he batted or threw left handed or right and the card number. Then there were eight to fifteen lines of editorial, such as on the back of Jackie Robinson\u2019s 1949 card, which said, \u201cWhen Brooklyn signed him to Montreal Royal contract, he became first Negro to enter ranks of pro ball.\u201d Cards manufactured by rival Leaf had a little bio information. Earlier, Goudy Gum (makers of Indian Gum) back in the \u201830s had cards featuring \u201cLou Gehrig Says\u201d sayings on the backs, with advice about clean living and being a better ballplayer, courtesy of Lou\u2019s agent Christy Walsh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \tThere were no statistics, other than might have been found in the editorial. In Jackie Robinson\u2019s case, there followed an ad for an adjustable, official baseball ring, which one could receive for 15 cents and 3 baseball wrappers. The word \u201cofficial\u201d was of course, widely used and never defined. There is no record of how many of those official rings are still being worn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \t Berger, an accountant by training, liked numbers and wanted stats. By the time Topps\u2019 1952 set was ready for sale, he had created what would long remain the prototype of what was expected on card backs. Card number, full name, (the nickname was on the front), place of birth, date of birth, current hometown, height, weight, throws and bats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tThe statistics in that first year of 1952 shows \u201cPast Year\u201d and \u201cLifetime,\u201d and Sy was careful to not specifically say \u201c1951\u201d for past year, since he thought the product might not have an annual release, and might sit on store shelves for more than a year. He didn\u2019t want the to appear outdated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \tThe stats included games, at bats, runs, hits, home runs, RBIs and batting average, along with putouts, assists, errors and fielding average. Over time, doubles, triples and stolen bases would appear, and fielding stats would fade away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For pitchers, there was games, innings pitched, wins, losses, percentage, hits, runs, strikeouts, walks, earned runs and ERA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSy was such a perfectionist that he would check and cross check reference books so that what he submitted was accurate,\u201d adds Gloria Berger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sy\u2019s reference books were The Sporting News books – the Register, Guide, Dope Book and record book, called \u201cOne for the Book,\u201d plus the American League Red Book, the National League Green Book, Who\u2019s Who in Baseball, the Little Red Book of Baseball (the Elias Sports Bureau record book), and a variety of periodicals featuring stats and player stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For many fans, as well as scouts, coaches and front office officials – those were the key measurements for generations. \u201cWhat are his card stats?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In some years the stats would cover the previous season and lifetime; in other years (often alternatively), they would be show the year-by-year columns. When computers made it easy to \u201cshrink\u201d the font size, Topps got national media attention with Nolan Ryan\u2019s 1994 card, his last, which showed 27 seasons of statistics – a record. The card was #34 in the Topps set, Nolan\u2019s uniform number. Sy had a formula for numbering the cards, with the \u201cstars\u201d usually getting numbers that ended in zero. Number 540 may not seem special at first glance, but to Sy, it made the player better than whoever had 541. And after Mickey Mantle died in 1995, Topps \u201cretired\u201d the number 7 (his uniform number) for a number of years as a tribute to all that Mantle meant to the trading card industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As much as Sy loved his statistics, Gelman, the art director, loved little cartoons. After all, Bazooka bubble gum was largely popular because of its Bazooka Joe comics. So the Topps cards evolved into a showcase for cartoon art, often with three panels replacing editorial copy. It made the product more fun in the hands of young fans. This is how fans could learn how Ted Williams risked his .400 average on the last day of 1941, or how Mike Jorgenson was born on the day Babe Ruth died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As for \u201chunting and fishing,\u201d Sy gleamed that information (as well as the player autographs) from The Baseball Register, which in turn got its information directly from player questionnaires distributed through their local team correspondents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Sy had an additional source of information – the players themselves. He bore the happy responsibility of visiting clubhouses in spring training and throughout the season to get players to sign contract renewals with Topps. Friendships were formed. If a player needed some new linoleum for their home, they called Sy. A new TV? Call Sy. A new toaster oven? Sy. The players were paid through a gift catalog in those early years, and they loved being able to surprise their wives with the gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sy\u2019s friendships were genuine, not based on the gifts which might show up in the mail. He was an engaging guy, perfect for working the clubhouses. His best friend, out of the thousands he dealt with, was no less than Willie Mays. They loved each other like brothers. Sy called Willie \u201cBuck.\u201d When Sy died in 2014 at 91, Mays said, \u201cHe helped me from my first days in the majors. I never could have made it without him. We worked together, we laughed together, we grew up together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a tribute to Sy in retirement, Topps later put its toe in the water with advanced metrics by providing \u201cCyberstats\u201d on the backs of cards in the mid \u201890s. Get it? SyBer stats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once card values began to soar after the popularity of weekend card shows, other manufacturers jumped in, and each manufacturer created different brands. The proliferation was rapid and left collectors breathless. When Mantle retired in 1969, there were basically 18 Mantle cards from Topps, plus one from Bowman, and a few bonus cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Ken Griffey Jr., retired in 2010, he had over 8,000 different variations produced by multiple manufacturers with multiple brands and subsets. It became a challenge, to say the least, to show creativity on the backs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grey backs gave way to white backs, a glossy \u201cUV coating\u201d was added, and a small company called Score became the first to use full color on both front and back. The rise of all these varieties coincided with the arrival of computers to help produce stats and to efficiently develop spread sheets to carry them. Slugging percentage and on-base percentage were always there, waiting to be used, but now advanced stats came along – and fantasy players demanded them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Topps reintroduced the Bowman brand I 1989 and made it the place to find what players did against each rival team the year before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A really daunting task befell Upper Deck, when they decided to produce a 6,742 card set featuring every Yankee home game from 1923-2008 to honor Yankee Stadium, as it was being torn down. A weary team of staffers worked long overtime hours to write the card backs – a description of every game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Topps, \u201cour sports team of seven only grew to ten, even as we did football, basketball, hockey and baseball,\u201d says Fred Girello, a veteran of those days, noting that Topps, Topps Finest, Stadium Club, and Bowman all needed to be different. \u201cSy was no longer doing the cards, and we brought in free lancers to help with the writing. We had only one computer until 1992. The copy was done by hand and typeset. It went to the accounting department to tabulate the columns, then to the art department, then back to us. The late Bill Haber, a god-like figure among baseball stat people, was our chief baseball guy. The demands for creativity and brand differential were overwhelming. But we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was indeed, a remarkable amount of information to be found on those 3 \u00bd x 2 \u00bd cardboards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the occasional chance to get an official ring. By Marty Appel Not every player in the \u201850s and \u201860s spent their off-season hunting and fishing. Of course if one read the backs of baseball cards, it may have seemed that way. But in truth, there was a wealth… Continue Reading
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