BAA, BAA, BAA...

A long, long time ago, I took a look at the Topps Baseball Achievement Awards.  This was the reward system, still active in some form, that succeeded the more well-known (and so-called) Rookie Banquets that were documented in very collectible programs from 1959-66. These ceremonies were highlighted by the bestowment of the Rookie All Star Awards, as memorialized the following season, where the batter or top hat trophy was added to the winner's cards (except when Topps screwed up). They still hand out the award and put the little loving cup trophy on the card, although I don't know if there's still a banquet anymore.

Topps stopped with the Rookie All Star Team (proper name) programs in 1966 and then sometime thereafter changed the name to the Baseball Achievement Awards (BAA), likely due to the fact they started recognizing a wider circle of people, such as Team Scouts, and more players beyond the Annual Rookie Team winners. It's not clear when this initiated but by the late 1970's this was how the ceremony and associated recognition was handled. I believe it's this period that saw the BAA first have a program made up but can't be exactly sure which year marked the beginning.  I have several 1980's BAA programs in my collection but as we will see, 1978 seems to be the earliest year that can presently be traced. Like so:

You can see some of the various awards that were awarded during the ceremony on the cover, including the Rookie All Star trophy that Topps had been putting on the various winners cards from 1973, when the cup replaced the fancier (and likely more expensive) "top hat" trophy.

You can see the 1978 program was designed as a foldout:

We got your positional winners right here, ten in all.  Sorry for the blurry images, it's all I've got.  I can't really see any HOF level talent in the various Minor League Player -of-the-Month winner; a good chunk of these guys never played in the bigs.  Even Minor League Player of the Year Champ Summers, despite 11 seasons in MLB, had already played for the A's and the Cubbies, won the award as a 32 year old (not a typo) in AAA ball after being sent down by the Reds. He did play until 1984 with a couple good seasons mixed in but overall was undistinguished. His career WAR was 3.0, ouch!

There were ten winners as a lefty and righty pitcher were named, in this case John Johnson and Rich Gale, respectively. Johnson bounced around after his 1978 A's debut and last pitched in the majors for the 1987 Brewers. Gale also bounced to and fro, concluding with Boston in 1984.

The rest of the squad was a mixed bag. Bill Nahorodny had a 1976 cup of coffee in Philly, then another sip in 1977 with the White Sox. Mostly a backup catcher after his award-winning 1978 season, he last played with the Mariners in 1984.  As for Dave Revering at First Base, he started his career strong but after a midseason trade to the Yankees in 1981, flamed out a year later after splitting time in New York, Toronto and Seattle.

The strength of the selections was clearly up the middle in the infield. Paul Molitor at 2B and Ozzie Smith at SS was a HR for sure. Bob Horner at 3B was no slouch either and had a solid career, almost all with the Braves. He was the rare player who never spent a day in the minor leagues and once hit four homers in a single game, so not too bad a selection there.

The outfield was not nearly as talented as the infield. Bob Molinaro had come up with Tigers in 1975, drank coffee for them in '76 and again with the White Sox in '77. His 1978 season was OK but he simply had no power.  He was eventually picked up on waivers by Baltimore but curiously the Chisox grabbed him back off waivers two years later and he finished up where he started, with the Tigers in 1983.    

Rick Bosetti was in 13 games for the Phillies in 1976 and then 41 games for the Cardinals in 1977. His 1978 selection as a Blue Jay stretches the limits of "rookie" if you ask me.  Bosetti's last season was in Oakland, in 1982.  And around in right, we have Hosken Powell, who played six big league seasons  before hanging up his spikes in Toronto in 1983.

All in all, a fairly representative batch of players from the All Star Rookie selection committee.

You can see the the foldout nature of the program more clearly here:

Compared to the superb run of 1959-66 Rookie Banquet programs, the BAA versions were very much lacking in production values.

Topps Topics: Studies in Uncut Sheet Arrays - 1958 to 1960

 

Presenting part two of an ongoing series examining the use of short prints and double prints by Topps in their vintage era; part one can be found HERE. Today Mark Pekrul is looking at the 1958 to 1960 press sheets for the annual Topps Baseball sets. Mark, who posts as “deweyinthehall” on Net54 Baseball  has dug into these along with a couple of other stalwarts over there and worked to reconstruct most of the print arrays for all Topps Baseball series from roughly 1955 to 1970.  This work has essentially been compiled independently of anything I’ve posted previously. Mark maintains a website that covers Topps Baseball sets from 1965 to 1994 in some commendable depth as well,  CLICK HERE to be transported.

As a reminder, from 1957 through 1995, all Topps standard-sized (i.e. 2.5 x 3.5 inches) sets (baseball, football, hockey, basketball and non-sports) were printed on sheets containing two large blocks of cards, 11x12 cards each.  Creating groups of 132 cards each, in many cases this gave us complete set counts which are very recognizable today – 132, 264, 396, 528, 660 and 792.  Some early hockey and football sets, as well as many non-sports sets, had only 66 cards – exactly half of 132.

When we hear the term “uncut sheet” today, we typically think of a roughly 2' x 4' sheet of 132 cards. However, a full standard-sized uncut sheet was twice as large, and included 2 groupings of 132 cards (as above).  The margins were white (even for sets with colored borders, such as 1971 or 1962) and contained various notations including positioning and cutting guides and other errata.  They eventually even featured commodity codes, just like Topps used for cases, boxes and packs.

Down the middle ran a thick white space called the “gutter” – full sheets were sliced down the gutter before each half-sheet, or ‘slit’, was then fed into a cutter. 

Each slit contained 12 rows of 11 cards.   For ease of reference, we can label the rows A-L and columns 1-11. Any card position can then be designated as A-1 (far upper left), L-11 (bottom right), and so forth, as shown below.

             SLIT A                                                                      SLIT B

And away we go…

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1958 Topps Baseball – 494 Total Cards in Set

Series 1: 1-110, 110 different cards

1958 was the first of many times a set’s first series would contain 110 cards.  To accommodate 10 different rows of 11 cards on a 24 row full sheet, it was necessary for each row to appear twice and for either one of those rows to appear four additional times, two to appear two additional times, or four to appear one additional time.  

In later years, for which we have images of 110-card sheets, we know it was the rule that four rows would appear one additional time each.  While we have no images of 1958’s series one sheets and reconstructions have yet to be made, we do have several partial sheet images.  This permits us to identify with a high degree of certainty that two of the four over-printed rows, in which each card will appear in quantities 50% greater than the other series 1 cards, are arranged thusly, as per the head card in each:

Don Drysdale (25)

Jim Landis (108)

Don Mossi (35)

Del Ennis (60)

Billy Hoeft (13)

Bobby Richardson (101)

Hank Aaron (30)

Tim Thompson (57)

Duke Snider (88)

Early Wynn (100)

Willie Mays (5)

 

and

Jim Rivera (11)

Von McDaniel (65)

Giants Team Card (19)

Bob Lemon (2)

Billy Hunter (98)

Al Kaline (70)

Cal Neeman (33)

Billy Pierce (50)

Don Zimmer (77)

Gil McDougald (20)

Morrie Martin (53)

 More research is needed to identify which other two rows were overprinted.

Series 2: 111-198, 87 different cards.  What should have been the 88^th card, #145, Ed Bouchee, was never issued due to, um…legal problems he encountered in January, 1958.  Card #115, Jim Bunning took #145’s place on the series 2 press sheet, in addition to its own, and was printed in double the quantities of the other series 2 cards. 

Series 3: 199-286, 88 different cards

Series 4: 287-374, 88 different cards

Series 5: 375-440, 66 different cards

Series 5 was arranged in the 66-card pattern, and each slit was identical.  Here is an image of slit B, which also shows column 11 from slit A, with the gutter in between:

                                       

Series 6: 441-495, 55 different cards

As it is a 55-card series, one of the five rows had to have been printed only three times, to the other four rows’ four times each.  While we have images of each series 6 row, they are all disembodied from sheets or slits, and we do not have enough information to know which row of 11 cards was short-printed.

The series 5 press sheets do contain a curiosity, however.

Here are two rows – anything seem unusual?

 

                                                                                            

Notice how the All Star cards of Stan Musial (476) and Mickey Mantle (487) appear three times each on the same row.   Musial was a key last minute signing by Topps and we can only surmise that they wanted to provide kids with a greater chance of obtaining cards of two of the most popular stars of the day by making each of these cards available in greater quantities than the other series 6 cards. 

While no images exist, we know that for some of its total print run series 6 included only the usual one of each per row, and that the four other spaces were taken up in one row by Carroll Hardy (446) and Preston Ward (450) and in the other by Billy Harrell (443) and Gary Geiger (462).   So, these four are seemingly available in lesser quantities than other series 6 cards and possibly in far lesser quantities than the Mantle and Musial All Stars.

 

1959 Topps Baseball – 572 Total Cards in Set

Series 1: 1-110, 110 different cards

As with all other 110-card series, we know that 44 of these cards were over-printed by 1/2, but we have no images or reconstructions to allow us to know which specific cards these were.

 

Series 2: 111-198, 88 different cards

Series 3: 199-286, 88 different cards

Series 4: 287-374, 88 different cards

Series 5: 375-440, 66 different cards

Series 6: 441-506, 66 different cards

Series 7: 507-572, 66 different cards

Series 2-4 were arranged in the 88-card pattern, and those in series 5-7 in the 66-card pattern.

1959 was Topps’ largest set yet.  They increased from 1958 by nearly 100 cards, and added a 7^th series.  Topps sets would include seven series from here through 1970.

 

1960 Topps Baseball – 572 Total Cards in Set

Series 1: 1-110, 110 different cards

Series 2: 111-198, 88 different cards

Series 3: 199-286, 88 different cards

Series 4: 287-374, 88 different cards

Series 5: 375-440, 88 different cards

Series 6: 441-506, 66 different cards

Series 7: 507-572, 66 different cards

The 1960 set was constructed in exactly the same manner as the 1959 set.  Again, because we lack imagery from series 1, we cannot tell with certainty which 44 cards were over-printed and exist in quantities 50% greater than the other 66.

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Stay tuned, it get really interesting as we approach the expansion era.