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!

Time For Three

It recently occurred to me that I have not managed to show a full cover run of the Topps Rookie Banquet Programs from 1959-66.  Given out at the annual awards banquets hosted by Topps brass every fall, the programs from these events are coveted collectibles.

I've covered all the past years but two: 1960 and 1965.  I only have a weird angle shot for the 1960 edition, which was the second banquet:

Not the best shot but it shows the trophy in great detail.

Our last missing piece is the 1965 version and it's a beauty, if slightly cut off in this scan I nicked from 4192cards.com.

The interior is fairly typical:

The venue was The Americana Hotel, which is now the Sheraton, just north of Times Square in NYC; a hotel where I have attended a few dinners myself over the years.

As noted in a previous post, these banquets turned into the Baseball Achievement Awards in 1967 and resulted in a much smaller (and cheaper) program being distributed. They still have the dinner every year from what I can tell and this will be the 55th year the rookie awards have been handed out.

Now the most famous banquet program in 1964's as Topps released a boxed card set that year.  36 oversized (3" x 5 1/4") cards came in a real snazzy foil enhanced slipcase and now go for quite impressive sums.  However, Topps also printed a program that year, it's just smaller than the other rookie banquet programs and fits in the slipcase that held the cards:

It is said the interior matches the card set with one exception - Luis Tiant, the Topps Minor League Player of the year (card 34A). I don't know if this is true or not so if anyone has the skinny, drop me a line.

Here is the slipcase for comparison:

I believe the '64 program is the toughest one of them all-it rarely seems to come with the card set and not too many have turned up over the years. The 1964 "program" is one of the great all-time Topps items IMHO.

Membership Has Its Privileges

Back at it kids, with more peeks at Topps Sports Club news today!

The cover of Issue #3 had confused me when I first encountered it as I wasn't sure if there was, in addition to the Bobby Clarke 8x10, one of Dave DeDusschere.  Now that I have the full issue in hand, thanks to Friend o'the Archive David Eskenazi, I can see why I was confused as it took some time for me to grok that only the Guest Columnist (who most certainly did not pen the words of wisdom in each issue) got the photo insert honors.  Double D was so prominently featured that I thought he might have a glossy as well but I was, after a full review of the issue, quite shockingly, wrong.  Anyhoo, here we go.

The aforementioned page 1:

DeBusschere was interviewed by Herb Goren, who was a big name sportswriter and, having been the PR Director for the New York Rangers seems a likely candidate to have penned the Clarke piece.  In fact, given his CV, he may have ghosted all of the guest columns.

Page 2 is for continuity:

Page 3 is where the fun begins. The Pen Pals are long moved away folks...

More fun happens on page 4. Love the book reviews, I read all of them back in the day except the Modern Encyclopedia of Basketball:

More continuity takes up most of page 5 as did the Collectors' Corner:

Many familiar names are listed in the effort to put kids in touch with various collectors clubs around the country, which details I have to imagine were provided by Woody Gelman. Some noteworthy names were proffered: Jim Nowell organized what was essentially the first baseball card convention and Richard Egan wrote a very early E card guide that was a masterwork of organization in the pre-Internet days.  John Stirling also published a price guide in 1977 that was the best one yet.

An old vaudeville joke made an appearance in "Hot Dog" on the sixth and final page:

This came with two inserts I think.  The Clarke 8x10 was of course in there:

It's paper but really well done.  In fact, the entire package was unfailingly professional is every aspect and that expense probably helped doom the club.  But before that happened in 1976, Topps reached out to their subscribers to pump the membership numbers:

I have no idea who Darrell West was. I assume it's just a made up name as the newsletter would seem, to me at least, to have been an outside production with specific input from Topps. I will say that the $2.50 for three issue was money well spent given the preview cards and extras included with each mailing but it may have been too much for the average pre-teen back then.

The flip side tries the old soft sell:

I'm sorry but if it took you hours to get through a typical issue, even with all the games and quizzes, you probably were not the brightest bulb in the package!  The premium offers were mostly well beyond the typical fare offered by the Bazooka Joe comics:

We've visited the vinyl Sports Card Locker, or something very close to it, before, so that was already a known quantity to loyal Topps consumers. The athletic shoes and the kicking toe were not typical fare though:

1976 kicked off with a baseball issue, of course:

Joe Garagiola had a long association with Topps, going back to at least 1959 and was the MC for the annual Rookie Banquets.

Page 2 is, once again, devoted to continuity:

Embiggen the crossword clues here as the puzzle can still be worked on!

Pen pals galore, as the card collecting hobby was really taking off in 1976:

Did Topps make an unforced error on page 5 with the Collector's Corner presenting a repeat Q&A about the 1974 Washington National League cards?  It had already been asked and answered in the very first issue! I do like how they steered collectors to the two largest buyers of aftermarket cards from Topps: Card Collectors Company and Larry Fritsch.

Too bad that picture of Garagiola and Johnny Bench never made it into the 1976 set, although the Kurt Bevacqua contest winner card is a classic.

Here is the rest of the crossword clues and puzzle:

The Joe Morgan 8x10 was another winner:

Finally, we know at least one more issue was produced as a Lynn Swann photo extra is in my collection, I just need the newsletter!

A Photograph, A Memory

Further to last week's post featuring invitations and other ephemera from some 1960's Topps Rookie Banquets, today we have some snapshots taken, presumably, by Paul Dolembo.  These photos look like they were taken behind the scenes and after the banquet ended as several players are seen holding their rookie award trophies.  There's a half dozen in all and I'll kick it off with a guy who didn't win a rookie award, namely Alva (Al) Cicotte, who was the 1960 Minor League Player of the year at age 30 following a stellar season with the Toronto Blue Jays.  Check out the trophy he got, it is MASSIVE:

If his last name seems familiar, Alva was the great-nephew of Ed Cicotte, permanently banned by MLB in 1920 as one of the Black Sox and arguably on track for eventual Hall of Fame enshrinement. Alva did not have the talent of his grand uncle unfortunately and his biggest claim to fame may have been being traded to the Cardinals for Leon Wagner (who went to the Angels then in the AL expansion draft) a couple of weeks prior to the banquet. Cicotte, would end up having his contract sold to the fledgling Houston franchise about a year after he received this award and became an original Colt 45. According to SABR, he signed with the Detroit Tigers for the final week of the 1977 season in order to qualify for his major league pension.

Next we see Cicotte flanked by Tony Curry of the Phillies and Julian Javier of the Cardinals, both rookie award winners in the outfield and second base, respectively.

Javier makes another appearance, this time with Dick Stigman, the left-handed pitcher rookie award winner from the Indians.  Check out Javier perusing the 1960 program, which looks like so:

Stigman again, with Chuck Estrada to the far right.  I whiffed on ID'ing the fellow in the middle as he didn't match up with the notation on the back of the photo ("Jim Gentile?") but Keith Olbermann was able to figure out it was Marv Breeding, a second baseman with the Orioles, being flanked. Breeding's rookie season with the O's in '60 was pretty good and looks to have been superior but Javier got the nod at 2B. Breeding was a whiz with the leather from what I can find.

Ron Hansen, the rookie award selection with the Orioles at shortstop, relaxes with Breeding:

Think about how good the O's farm system was.  They had three guys make the all rookie team in 1960 and yet all were gone when the "Baby Birds" won the 1966 World Series with yet another crop of youngsters!

Closing things out, MC Joe Garagiola gets a laugh out of Tony Curry and his Phillies teammate Jimmie Coker, the rookie award catcher for 1960.

Unfortunately, there are no shots of the other rookie award winners for the year: the aforementioned Jim Gentile (1B, Orioles), Ron Santo (3B, Cubs--HOF 2012), Frank Howard (OF, Dodgers, or Tommy Davis (OF, Dodgers). All-in-all, the 1960 winners were pretty representative of the rookie teams over the years.

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.

Tricky Tacks

Well oddball items just keep popping up from the 1960's Rookie Banquets Topps used to throw every year.  Take a gander at the baubles below: a tie tack and cuff links purportedly given to J.C. Martin, a 1961 Rookie All Star award winner (even though he had a card in 1960 he only had cups of coffee in 1959 and '60) who must have led the AL catching field in a weak year.  In 1961 Martin played in 110 games while batting .230 and knocking in a whopping 32 runs in what may have been his best offensive season.

Here is JC's 1962 card, showing his major prize:

Here is the full set:

I was hoping the back views would show manufacturing details but it only looks like patent pending stamps were impressed:

As you can see, the motif is taken from the actual trophy:

Here is a closeup of the tack, it's got some slight damage but I like it just the same:

While he may not have been a slugger, he was a whiz with the glove and got himself some additional hardware with the 1969 Mets, who directly benefited from a lucky play of Martin's in Game 4 of the World Series.  With the immortal Rod Gaspar on second base in a 1-1 game, Martin pinch hit for Tom Seaver in the bottom of the 10th.  He bunted and the pitcher fielded the ball and threw it to first, hitting Martin, running to the inside of the baseline, in the arm. The Orioles cried interference but the ump said JC had not intentionally done so and the run counted.  The tally put the Mets up 3 games to 1 and they never looked back.  This play allegedly led to the creation of the running lane to the outside of the baseline, commencing 45 feet away from the bag, for the 1970 season.

Topps immortalized the play, although not with the end result but rather the beginning, on a World Series card in the 1970 set:

Now I was (and am) a huge Mets fan and remember quite well the final out of the World Series that year, having just come home from school in time to witness it in glorious black and white, but I've always preferred his regular 1970 card; I just think it looks sharp:

JC was gone by then though, traded to the Cubs in the offseason.  Did you know the Mets carried three catchers on their postseason roster in '69?  Yep:  the starter Jerry Grote, Duffy Dyer and ol' JC.

All American Boys

Well the flow of cool and unusual Topps items just keeps on rolling....

Friend o'the Archive Justin Davenport has sent along scans of his Topps Award watch and I am definitely blown away.  Check this bad boy out:

Here is a close up of the dial; you can see the a small representation of the ubiquitous Topps Rookie Trophy in between the words "Topps Award":

We know they gave out jewelry at the Rookie Awards Banquets back in the day but this is a little bit of a different beast.  The back reveals why:

That says Topps First Team All America 1969.  So it appears the watch was given to the collegiate All Americans by Topps that year.  For the record, they were:

P Larry Gura
P Burt Hooton
C Bob Williams
1B Mike Walseth
2B Dick Gold
3B Les Rogers
SS Bill Stein
OF Bob Long
OF Paul Powell
OF Larry Pyle

Most folks think of football when they hear All Americans but the awards are still being given out for baseball and many other sports each year.

That is one of the neatest things I have seen in a long time!