Letters To Sy Over

I've recently been resuscitating a CD-R that was sent to me some time ago with thousands of scans covering Topps Vault items sold by them from 2007 to mid-2013 on eBay. Some of the files are corrupted at this point but I've managed to save about 70 percent of them. However, I cannot trace who sent me this wonderful time capsule so please ping me if it was you!

Some of the most esoteric items on the disc were letters sent to Sy Berger from 1993-95 thanking him for the $500 payments that secured each player's signed release for the Topps Archives (yessir) Official Reprint sets from 1994 and 1995, reprinting the originals from 40 years prior in each case.  There's nothing earth-shattering here but the letters are all handwritten and highlight some long-lasting friendships that Sy had formed over the many decades he was the Sports Director at Topps.

Here's one from Andy Pafko dated March 28, 1994, referencing the 1994 Official Reprint of the 1954 Baseball set:

Pafko would receive another $500 a year later for the 1955 Official Reprint set:

Don Mueller, who was nicknamed Mandrake the Magician for his uncanny ability to slap balls through the infield, sent this note on some really neat "Almost Original 16" stationery, which he must have saved from his playing days (did all ballplayers of a certain vintage get pads of these?).  The inclusion of the logos for the Orioles (the relocated Browns from 1954) and old Athletics elephant (the style shown here debuted for the 1954 season during their last year in Philadelphia) logos may point to 1954 for the stationery, kind of ties things together nicely!.

Ned Garver had some really sweet professionally designed stationery too:

Garver was handing over his check to a group founded by ex-Brown Chuck Stevens, who was the Secretary of the Association of Professional Ball Players of America (APBPA) from 1960 until 1998. APBPA offered financial and other assistance to down-on-their-luck ex-ballplayers. Stevens lived a long life and was the oldest living ex-major league player until his death on May 28, 2018.

Gene Woodling wrote Sy in 1995 and intimates there were some freebie boxes going to the players:

We'll end this fun look at old stationery with Phil Cavarretta, writing on his wife's:

These half-dozen notes really showed the human side of these five ex-players and how people from one rare profession really form bonds like those from any other profession.

And if you are doing the math, and assuming everybody got the same amount, then Topps had to pay out $124,500 for rights to the original subjects for the 1954 reprint (for 249 subjects as neither Ted Williams card was included thanks to his exclusive deal with Upper Deck at the time, and assuming the O'Brien's received $500 per O'Brien) and $103,000 for the original 1955 subjects rights.  1954 also saw  eight additional (and quite) crummy fantasy "rookie cards" Topps added to the mix for no good reason at all, so you can tack on $4K for those.

The Williams cards from 1954 could eventually be found in reprint form from both Upper Deck and Topps. Upper Deck, through some creative licensing arrangements, in their strangely titled but wonderfully executed three-card 1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes - 1994 Topps Archives 1954 set gave the world both reprinted Williams cards plus a fab ersatz Mantle.  I never copped a Mick, so forgive the scans here:

However I do have Williams reprints, but only one is from Upper Deck.  The other is from the 2001 Topps Archives set (nice ring to that!).  Let's go in reverse order, Upper Deck first for #250 and embiggened to show details:

Here's some mixed-up indicia for ya: 

Note the obverse follows the Topps reprint set as it carries a top border.  The 2001 Archives Ted Williams "Through the Years" cards on the other hand, did give us the original full-bleed top borders:

Looks a lot better, right?  However, Topps didn't use glossy white stock for the reverse and the result was decidedly murky:

So my 1954 Topps reprint set is a real Franken-set!  

You'll Never Leave Harlan (With Your Career) Alive

An interesting Sy Berger letter, in more ways than one, floated into my possession last week courtesy of a Friend o'the Archive and mine.  Feast your eyes on this wonderful missive:

Mr. William J. Weiss turns out to have been the official statistician for the Pacific Coast League starting in 1950 and held that position for 31 years!  He also maintained statistics for at least eight other minor leagues at various times and is enshrined as an executive in the PCL Hall of Fame.  In 1982 he won a 1923 World Series program at auction and quickly realized that he was in possession of Baseball Hall of Fame property, which was easily determined by the procurement stamp and accession number displayed on the first page of the item in question.  

Weiss contacted Cliff Kachline at the Hall of Fame and the story, as relayed by Bill James in his 1995 book Whatever Happened To The Hall of Fame, turned out to be a twisted one. The program had been on loan to the Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball and it eventually turned out over 400 items had been sent to the Commissioner's office in 1973 as part of a research project and never returned to the Hall. These got put away eventually when whatever projects they were needed for concluded.  At some point thereafter, when the storage situation at work got too hairy, Joe Reichler, who was Bowie Kuhn's right hand man and his Director of Public Relations to boot, "helpfully" lugged several boxes of goodies home, some of which held old World Series programs and other assorted treasures.  He kept these in his garage, until selling off some things within, none of which were his of course, to help defray his son's college tuition.  

After the sordid details were outlined in some 1983 Sporting News articles, a criminal investigation was launched into the Commissioner's office by the New York State Attorney General. This seems to have spurred Kuhn into action and MLB replaced the lost items, or made restitution to allow for repurchases of the ones they couldn't retrieve. New York State subsequently dropped the investigation and a couple of the HOF's long time employees, including Kachline, ultimately got the sack.  

You may also (or only) know Reichler's name from the several editions of the Baseball Encyclopedia he edited.  If I recall correctly -- and I think I do since it was my LCS at the time -- some of these purloined World Series programs ended up at the same shop where Bill Mastro once allegedly hacked off the Gretzky Wagner from part of an uncut sheet of T206 cards.

As for the contents of Sy's letter to Weiss, who looks to have been a part-time bird-dog west coast talent scout of sorts for Topps in addition to his other skills, it was to relay "steak money" to two minor league prospects. One of them, John R. Taylor, a catcher, spent 1961, which was his his first season in organized ball, in the Yankees farm system.  He initially plied his trade in Class D ball, first in  Harlan, Kentucky and then Auburn, New York where he hit a combined .151 for the year before the Yankees jettisoned him via unknown means.  He ended up in the Phillies system in 1962, where he managed a whopping .175 average for another Class D team in the Alabama-Florida League and was not seen again. I'm guessing, without too much effort, that he was in the "good field-no hit" category. His biggest claim to fame was possibly (I can't determine if they overlapped) being a teammate of Mel Stottlemyre's in Harlan for a spell.

I think the other guy was Richard Holden, a pitcher who spent 1961 in C and B ball as a Braves farmhand and eventually, albeit briefly, made it to AAA in '62 as member of the Giants organization before backsliding in 1963 and exiting OB.  Baseball can certainly be a cruel game.

The Organization Men (and Women)

Friend o'the Archive Keith Olbermann sent along a really neat Topps item recently and I think you'll all agree it's one of the more amazing pieces to be discussed here. I've previously shown an example of Topps Jamboree, a newsletter designed for the wholesalers and jobbers Topps relied upon to distribute their products but this particular item seems geared to the far-flung Topps salesmen around the US.  I'll get into dating in a minute but let's gawk at this wonderful piece first.

Here's a nice shot of Topps HQ in Brooklyn and a letter from Sales Manager Hugh Spencer to kick things off:

I can't find a good reference to John Dromey, at least the one who would have written the below piece but he wrote for an industry trade magazine called International Confectioner and that's where this story originated, in a longer form:

Take Mr. Dromey's exhortations with a grain of salt in places.  I'm not sure about the American Leaf Tobacco Company (ALTC) being the largest wholesale tobacco company in the US but they did have an impressive presence nationwide, or at least east of the Mississippi River.  Their scale is hard to measure though as so little is available on the company. The "Profitable Sales Aid of Silence" tagline though is 100% accurate-it's how the Shorin's operated for decades, i.e. letting their products do the talking.

The referenced real estate venture had at least one very major hiccup in 1933, when the building housing the ALTC (and apartments on the upper floors), a joint venture of their father's with another family (the Rabkin's), went bust and 7 Debevoise St. was foreclosed upon. This act makes the comments about ALTC reasonably suspect to my mind as well, although prior to the Depression things may have been quite rosy in both empires.

The filling stations though, which went by the American Gas Stations (AGS) moniker, are much more quantifiable. They certainly were doing well enough to get bought out by the Standard Oil Co. of New York (Socony) or what we would now call Mobil, in 1938, although latter day family accounts and those of others differ on just how well things were going. 

A 1939-40 New York City tax photo documents one such station; all seem to have been located in Brooklyn  although I have a recent report of one possibly being in Queens.  This may be one of the few photos showing the operation as any other tax photos I could find showed the switch to Socony Sobol Brothers) had already occurred. AGS sold Socony products so the oil major must have had a pretty good idea of what they were buying.  Around fifteen AGS station existed at their peak.

Similar chains around New York City (such as Sobol Brothers), were also being gobbled up at this time by much larger companies. AGS should not be confused with the American Oil Company (AMOCO), which was originally a brand of Standard Oil's but got trust-busted into an independent in 1911.  They later re-associated though and both Standard and AMOCO stations co-existed for many years before various mergers somewhat reunited them. The AGS stations were rebranded as Socony's Sobol's after the deal closed (Mobil had bought them too!) and I'd imagine would have been filtered down to Mobil stations eventually. One location was still active (as a BP IIRC) until five or six years ago and one or two others may still be service stations.

The "American" theme, which featured red, white and blue prominently, would be reflected in Bazooka's livery once the product was launched in 1947.

Now we get to some Shorin's.  I think I've only seen one other picture of Ira and maybe two of Abram over the years. Joe looks like Joe and Phil looks like a super-villain!

We see some offspring next.  Joel Shorin would end up as President of Topps and Phil Shorin's role must have been expanded at some point (I'm not as up to speed on the third generation as I am on the original nuclear families). Check out young Sy Berger!

The references in Berger's bio lead me to think this newsletter is from the second half of 1948 as I believe his first son was born earlier that year and the other jobs described match up with that dating. Eddie Shookoff's son gave me a valuable interview for my book and I believe Mel Bohrer was a car pool buddy of Woody Gelman and Sy Berger's for many years. I suspect Phil Jr. and Sy also interacted quite a bit as Berger had some involvement in procuring premiums from Japan after the war. Charles Zubrin also featured prominently for decades at Topps. 

I want to match up some of the initials of the secretaries below to some Topps correspondence I have but it's a back burner item:

As the "Changemaker" is still front and center and with no reference at the end to the penny tab version of Bazooka (that being a mid-1949 effort), I think my latter part of 1948 date estimate stands up pretty well. 

These "house organs" are hard to find and I have no idea how long this publication ran. I'd love to find more copies of this one and Topps Jamboree.

Berger's Baltimore Barge Balderdash

I've been reviewing a small mountain of old hobby publications these past few months and am presently in the midst of a mid-70's run of Sport Fan, which was put out for many years by Bob Jaspersen.  If there was ever a hobby 'zine that resembled a gossip sheet, I suspect Sport Fan would be case #1, although most publications of the era had a lot more personal notes in them than anything put out since the mid 80's. Reports of specific cards at specific prices changing hands were commonplace and a lot of convention and gathering photos were taken with collectors wives' portrayed in the pictures the accompanying articles and not just in Jaspersen's publication. Hell, I would have loved to have attended some of those mid 70's soirees, some were even held in taverns!

One of the more common features in Sport Fan (and other hobby pubs of the day) was massive coverage of collector's conventions, which often ran on for three or four very informative 8 1/2" x 11" pages. By 1975 the larger gatherings were garnering media attention and the Sixth Annual Mid-Atlantic Sports Collectors Association (MASCA) show held the last weekend of April outside of Baltimore was no exception. The show was well extremely well attended and brought at least one notable figure to town: Sy Berger, Sports Director of Topps.

Berger was interviewed on Convention Eve by local radio host Ted Patterson on WBAL and this may be where the legend of the 1952 Baseball High Numbers getting dumped at sea began. Sport Fan has the front page scoop:

As readers of this blog know, I do not buy the story and have been looking for its origins for some time now. It's possible Sy trotted this tale out prior to this but the next day (4/25/75) the Baltimore Sun ran a piece highlighting it (and Sy) that would certainly have given it legs with the hobby and without:

I'm surprised he didn't add something about cement shoes to further embellish the narrative! Also, it's 97 cards in the series but that's a minute point. Bonus chestnut in column one's penultimate paragraph: the 250,000,000 cards printed annually story, first promulgated around 1959 IIRC. Classic shot of Mr. Berger though!

I have nothing against Sy and in fact consider him a true innovator, a fantastic PR ambassador for Topps and an astute businessman but for reasons I've discussed here previously just can't believe this tale and have to think it was all "corporate PR" fluff as he was certainly a man to toe the company line. No matter, the 52 highs are legendary and so is Sy!

This will be my last mid-week pandemic post and the blog will be returning to its standard, weekly  Saturday posting schedule. Hopefully it's been a little bit of a diversion these past couple of months for some of you.

Problematic

A short time back I posted a canvass of eBay's supply of 1952 semi-high and high number Baseball cards. As long time readers of this blog know, I do not necessarily believe the story of Sy Berger riding a barge out to sea in 1960 and dumping what would now be several zillion dollars worth of '52 high numbers into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey.  Too many of the cards exist today and Topps had so many alternate avenues available to dump excess stock that it just doesn't add up.

We know some high numbers were shipped off to Venezuala. We also know a bunch were sold in Canada (no link here but enough on www.net54baseball.com exists if you want to shuffle over there and take a gander). Take that information, add in a dose of the usual paranoid Topps practice of having their employees deflect any probes into the actual workings of the business and sprinkle it with some oft-repeated hoary bits of PR department blather and you get the idea nobody, but nobody wanted these cards, or so the story went.

But here's the thing....Topps did have ways to burn off excess cards and had being doing so since their first card returns came back in 1949.  They sold early versions of Fun-Paks, slipped overstock into Trading Card Guild aftermarket offers and often, very quietly backdoored unsold and returned product through "unofficial" hobby dealers.  The first of these unofficial dealers was Sam Rosen-Woody Gelman's Stepfather-who started selling excess Topps stock in the early 50's and I suspect handled the Trading Card Guild orders initially before things eventually went to more of an arm's length agreement.

Back to the '52 highs.  The biggest problem I have with the dumping at sea story is the lack of highs from the Card Collectors Company's 1959 catalog after Sam Rosen had stocked them in his prior catalogs:

Look at the 1952 Topps entry.  You cannot buy a card above #310.  A year later, the highs are  available, right around the time Sy Berger purportedly went out to sea:

A dime for anything below #311, 35 cents for highs.  The availability is back and the premium pricing is starting to be baked in right around the time the barge full o'highs dumped her load in the Atlantic Bight.

1961? Well, the catalog got fancier with photos and the '52 highs must have financed the snazzier look (not, really):

Yup, the highs have jumped to fifty cents a pop, an almost 43% increase.  Other dealers had high number inventory at this time and at least one, Bruce Yeko, was on good terms with Woody Gelman.  Yeko had a good inventory of '52 high numbers in 1963, although not enough to offer the full series for a single price:

(courtesy David Kathman)

Those $1 high numbers match CCC in 1962 & '63.  I'm also curious about some other series pricing in these early catalogs. There's no scarce mid-series indicated in '57 and high numbers outside of 1952 are not yet commanding a premium.

That #1-99 pricing tranche is suspect but the highs were going for 7 to 8 times the lows and semi-high's a mere eleven years after they were issued.

Woody maintained his supply of '52 highs at a dollar apiece until at least 1968, where he had enough still to offer a de facto 10% discount if you bought the whole series intact. Woody seems like he still had a gaggle of highs by the time the Year of The Pitcher kicked off:

Not among the "very rare"-Mickey Mantle!  I'm going to track the scarce and high number pricing patterns shortly and will trace the '52 Mantle pricing through the years as well.

Sign Here Kid

Happy Wednesday kids!  Back at it with some midweek cheer from Friend o'the Archive Roy Carlson.

Hobby veterans are aware that Topps used to sign up almost any and all promising minor leaguers (Maury Wills excepted!) with a contract stipulating a $5 payment to retain their rights.  Famously called "Steak Money" as the idea was the player could go buy a nice steak to celebrate, I think it's possible that term is actually a neat enhancement of "Stake Money" but no matter. Today we get a peek at one of these contracts, that of Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins no less.

Jenkins was a Barbadian Canadian from Ontario whose mother was descended from a "passenger" on the Underground Railroad. Ferguson was a tall (6' 5") righthander who came to baseball late but clearly found his path once he started playing.  His height and inexperience relegated him to first base duties initially but his arm got noticed by Gene Dziadura, a Phillies scout who roamed the province and who would work out with the young Fergie, having him throw pitches into ever shrinking targets for accuracy, chop wood to hone his delivery and heave a heavy hammer to develop his curve.

Jenkins signed with the Phillies in 1962, although his referring Scout was apparently Tony Lucadello, who also had the distinction of recruiting Mike Schmidt. His signing caught the attention of Topps of course and he signed with them on June 22nd of that year.  Here is his steak money deal; I have never seen one of these before:

Sy Berger signed a LOT of autographs on contracts over the years.  Not sure who "Parnell" was but I can advise it is not former major leaguer Mel Parnell. Perhaps a witness?

Fergie was under 21 and needed a parental signature to make it legal though:

Jenkins was actually 19 at the time - LOL!

Here is the key clause in this one:

It's a little fuzzy but in addition to the $5 Jenkins would receive $125 once he had 31 consecutive days on the active roster of a major league club. This is a phrase I have seen before in Topps contracts and it's important as it partially explains why Topps often didn't issue full cards of players who were not yet major league ready.  This applied to some degree to players that had retired but like anything else with Topps there is consistency in their inconsistency.  To wit:

1) Lou Piniella: 1964 Topps card #167 (shared with Mike Brumley as Senators Rookie Stars).  Piniella did not debut until September 4, 1964, after Washington had traded him to the Orioles. I'm assuming some rookies who had "Rookie Stars" multi-player card debuts had not yet fulfilled the 31 day requirement but must have had a side agreement to allow their premature Topps debut. Fodder for another post for sure.

2) Sandy Koufax: Retired November 18, 1966.  Team Captain on the 1967 Topps Punchout cards but nowhere to be found in the 1967 regular issue.  The Punchouts seem to have been developed and produced in late 1966, before the regular issue even.

3) Mickey Mantle: Retired March 1, 1969, Topps #500 that year. Late retirement in terms of the upcoming season but still had a card that could seemingly have been pulled given the later series it was in. Possibly the customary two year contract extension from Topps allowed this.  Too bad most other stars didn't get the career summary card. Additional fodder for the future.

Payment made:

That bank was fairly close to Topps HQ.  They used Manufacturers Hanover for their business financing but I guess the allure of a local branch of what eventually became Citibank was too convenient for them.  Note the check was issued months before he actually signed with Topps and the "pay to" field was blank. Someone (Parnell, a secretary, Berger?) other than Jenkins (see below) looks like they filled it in. I guess Sy Berger wandered around with a pile of fungible $5 checks!

Ferguson was able to endorse his own check for deposit, although I'm puzzled how he got anywhere near Williamsport at the time. I'm not positive but it looks like the local bank stamp for deposit was done on July 13th.

So the check was cut in March, paid to Jenkins upon signing in June, cashed in July but his parent didn't sign and make it legal until August-whew!

Jenkins was traded by the Phillies to the Cubs on April 21, 1966, after appearing in seven major league games the year before and one prior to the trade.  He was sent along with John Herrnstein (a scrub essentially) and Adolfo Phillips (a useful player for several years but let go in the 1969 expansion draft) for Bob Buhl (37 years old and totally shot) and Larry Jackson (three good years for the Phils, with 41 wins but still), in one of the worst trades ever in major league history.

Here's the 1966 Topps debut of Jenkins:

1967 gives us another look at his sig ("Fergie" now), and Shea Stadium, plus his new togs:

Jenkins is a guy I would see pitch a couple of times at Shea, my dad always seemed to buy tickets for games where an opposing ace would face off against Seaver or Koosman and the Mets would zip through a game in about 2 hours and 20 minutes! Sometimes we both skipped school (he was a teacher!) to go.

I saw some memorable games in the 70's as a result. I can't quite recall but I remember the Mets dropping one to Fergie 1-0 and another where I think they won in 10 but I'd need to scour Retrosheet to figure all that out.  No matter, Jenkins could pitch with the best of them and often did!

Mantle-Pieces

It's looking like a pretty good year for Bowman ephemera, based upon a couple of unique and interesting bits that recently hit the auction block.

The first item to catch my attention was this shot of Joan Crosby (whozat? you ask) from June of 1953, offered by RMY Auctions:

To fill you in, Joan Crosby was one of the agents used by Bowman to secure players for their baseball cards; her territory covered the Northeast US, including Philadelphia and New York.  It turned out her inability to access the MLB clubhouses of the time provided a major opening for Sy Berger at Topps, who of course had access to players in the clubhouses and who was also the son-in-law of Jerome Karpf, Managing Editor of the New York Evening Post which, I am assuming, also helped.  

Ms. Crosby worked for an outfit called Art Flynn Associates, which also employed a fellow named Jack Tanzer who covered their more western territories. Berger of course, eventually hired a MLB scout by the name of Turk Karam to assist him in his signing efforts.

The copy on the reverse is Mad Men-esque:

For reasons I will get into momentarily, I don't believe she wrote card backs as that was, by all accounts I have read, the province of Bowman's art and ad agency run by George Moll.  Perhaps she worked for them at some point although I doubt it. Also dig the Woody Gelman red crayon at the upper right, likely referring to his filing system at Topps, which must have ended up with a trove of Bowman documentation post purchase.

If that wasn't enough, Heritage Auctions recently offered up Mickey Mantle's 1951 and 1955 Bowman contracts and a couple of other related items.  I suspect a collection of Bowman related ephemera is being dripped into the hobby, with the choicest pieces now appearing.

Herewith the Mick's agreement to be Bowman-ized:

That stamp on top means this document was a deposition entered into evidence in the original lawsuit Bowman filed against Topps, asserting the right to use the phrase "baseball" in selling bubble gum cards was solely Bowman's. I've got a cancelled check Bowman wrote out to Whitey Lockman in 1949 that also has the same stamp.

Turns out Mickey got some steak money four days earlier to start the process:

The 1956 end date is interesting, isn't it?  I wonder if a number of the early Bowman signees had contracts ending that year; it may help explain why Topps was able to buy Bowman out from John Connelly in February of that year if he didn't want to get into a low rent bidding war as he was preparing to greatly expand his other business, Crown Cork & Seal.

If there was any question as to who Mantle signed with, it was memorialized in this acknowledgement:

Topps prevailed in the original suit filed against them by Bowman but appeals and new suits emerged and in early 1953 a ruling came down asserting ballplayers (and everybody in the United States) had the right to control how their image and name was used by third parties. Ongoing legal actions seem to have dragged things out even further until, in the early days of 1955, this document was signed.

All of this gives more insight into a very important and interesting time in the early 50's for Topps and Bowman. Hopefully more Bowman documents leak out soon.

Mays and Means

Exciting times here at the Main Topps Archives Research Complex kids! I was recently contacted by Ken Liss, whose father, Norman, handled PR for Topps for more than 30 years. I'll hopefully fill in his details a little more down the road (a brief overview is here) but it looks to me that Norman Liss commenced his work for Topps right around the time the Rookie All Star project (1959 start) got underway, maybe a just a smidgen later.

Ken has kindly sent along three shots featuring Willie Mays during a 1974 visit to the Topps plant in Duryea, Pennsylvania that also feature his dad:

Clockwise from left:  Norman Liss, the Say Hey Kid and a man believed to be Ken Byrnes, Topps VP of Manufacturing. If I didn't tell you the year, you could probably guess at it pretty closely given the haberdashery and grooming of the times.

Here's a bit more of a closeup:

Wide ties were definitely the "in thing" in '74!

Here the boys are touring the manufacturing floor, with none other than Sy Berger (a Mays confidant and friend) in tow:

Look at those bags of what must be sugar off to the right-and can't you just smell the Bazooka?! Ken Byrnes recollected this visit a couple of years ago, it's a fascinating read.

There was a groundswell of publicity surrounding Topps and the Duryea plant in the mid 1970's, from Sy Berger's starring role in the Great American Baseball Card Flipping ,Trading and Bubblegum Book to inserts in various baseball annuals and mainstream magazines through things like Willie's visit to Duryea. Norman Liss would have been the instigator of all this PR.

A Tale Of Two Banquets

Over the course of this decade, as my collecting interests have moved more and more toward Topps Chewing Gum, the company (as compared to the cards they sold) I've accumulated a few old PR photos of various events, many of which have appeared on this blog over the years.  Two of my favorites are from the Topps All Star Rookie banquets, which were held from 1959-66 (and thereafter renamed the Baseball Achievement Awards, which continue on to this day).

The first picture has a mysterious element to it as I cannot identify two of the dais-sitters nor the year of the event:

Tilting rightward from the lectern, we have a waiter laying out rolls (the butter is already on the table), Sy Berger of course, then a gentleman who looks familiar to me but I can't identify, Shag Shaughnessy, Joe Garagiola (the ever-present MC for these events), and finally another unidentified man.  The banner behind the dais portrays a generic All Star Rookie Trophy and reads:

TOPPS

All Star Rookie

Young America's Favorite

As we can see here, the players name, team, position and year would be engraved as well, thanks to an offering from Lelands awhile back:

I'm not certain there was always such a large wood component in all years and have to confess I never realized the ballplayer icon stands atop well, a top hat!

Friend o'the Archive Keith Olbermann thinks the dating would be no later than 1962 based upon how Joe Garagiola looks. I can state it's not from 1966 as the setting was different for that luncheon, namely the Hotel Americana in NYC:

That dais has no mysterious element at all, except maybe what kind of cheese was being served. Even if it wasn't obvious to me who was who, the back is helpfully captioned:

It's also not the 1960 Banquet.  As Mr. Olbermann helpfully pointed out, the 1961 program has some photos of the 1960 event, which was held at the Hotel Manhattan. Here Joel Shorin is presenting MC Joe Garagiola with an oversized 1960 Topps card they created especially for the occasion:

Below,  Shag Shaugnessy is presenting a trophy to pitcher Al Cicotte, who was the Topps Rookie Player of the Year for 1960. Cicotte went on to have a mediocre major league career and his biggest claim to fame turned out to be his lineage: he was the grand nephew of Black Sox pitched Ed Cicotte. Shag was an integral part of the selection committee and retired as President of the International League in 1960.  Did you know he's a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame?

Here's the 1960 All Star Rookie selections:

I can also state it's not the 1963 Banquet, which had a different banner (Fifth Annual). It's also not from 1959 despite there being no mention of the annual progression on the banner but maybe they did not show it each year. The 1959 luncheon was held at the Hotel Manhattan.

So we have a checklist of sorts for the annual luncheon honoring the All Star Rookies (and now updated thanks to our comments section):

1959 Hotel Manhattan

1960 Hotel Manhattan

1961 Waldorf-Astoria 

1962 Waldorf-Astoria 

1963 Waldorf-Astoria 

1964 Waldorf-Astoria 

1965 ????

1966 Hotel Americana

If anyone has thoughts on the first picture's mystery subjects and can confirm the year of the event, I'm all ears!