((Keith))

We beginwith the death of Seymour Perry

Berger.
Never heard of him?
((Keith OTS Sy Berger 1923-2014))
He inadvertently created the memorabilia
industry, enabled free agency, re-invented baseball, and
helped change a world in which the Phillies franchise
sold for 80-thousand dollars in 1943, into one in which
the Dodgers franchise sold for two **billion** dollars in
2012.
But mostlySeymour Perry Sy Berger made
baseball cards.
((ko v/o kids at ballgames in 60s))
In the perfect memory of youth that soothes
my middle aged dreams and similar dreams from
similar Boomers I know the water in the little plastic
pool in the back yard will be warm enough by noon, that
Soupy Sales will throw more pies than usual on this
afternoon's show, and that my eight-year-old's intuition
will have been proved correct: The new series of
baseball cards did get to Bill's Luncheonette this
morning.
((Keith OTS 1967 Topps Norm Cash))
Norm Cash, grunting his way through a
fearsome swing, will be squinting up at me from the
freshly-opened first pack. The cards will look so new
that they will seem as if they haven't fully dried.
((Keith OTS 1967 Topps pack and box))
The packs will be too pristine to be unwrapped,
but impatience will overcome reverence.
((Keith OTS 1967 Tom Seaver card))
The photographs will look like they were taken
yesterday of that new Mets' pitcher Tom Seaver, or
that kid in Minnesota, Rod Carew.
((ko v/o baseball cards of all eras))

All the generations before me and too many

after, have thrilled to the arrival of spring,
**announced** by the baseball card, whether it depicted
Derek Jeter, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Cy
Young, or Harry Wright. There have been organized
series of cards of baseball players issued off-and-on
since at least 1871.
But Sy Berger turned them into an institution.
((Keith OTS Sy Berger 1964 card - will send))
Berger joined Topps Chewing Gum in 1947 in
marketing. He ran contests. He tried to hustle bubble
gum. And in 1951, remembering the joy of his youth
collecting them in the 30s, he and Topps tip-toed into
baseball with a tentative issue of **playing-card** style
cards, and, a year later, he made the Great Leap.
((Keith OTS four or five 1952 Topps cards))
The **1952** Topps product would be not just
cards, but **chronicle**.
By the time the leaves began to turn, Berger
had churned out 407 different cards, both more, and
larger, than had been made before
((Keith OTS 1952 Mickey Mantle card))
including one of Mickey Mantle that remains
to this day the second-best known piece of sports
memorabilia of all time scarce because Sy Berger
didnt sell the series containing the Mantle card until
September or October and by then the kids were in
school or watching football.
((Keith OTS 1952 Mickey Mantle card text: THE 1952
MANTLES ARE SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES))
Scarce, because Sy Berger claimed he
eventually took the unsold stash thousands and
thousands of 1952 Mickey Mantles, **and** Jackie
Robinsons **and** Pee Wee Reeses and piled them
onto a barge and had them dumped into the Atlantic
Ocean.

((ko v/o 1952 Topps cards))

Berger made the originals at his kitchen table
using pieces of cardboard and scissors. And while
predecessors as long ago as 1863 had used photos, and
some in the 1880s had tried to make a card of **every**
player, and had used color, and others as early as 1911
had tried team logos and autographs and stats only
Sy Berger realized that to sell his gum, his cards had to
have **all** those ingredients.
((Keith OTS 1957 Ted Williams card))
And Berger did two more things. He invested
in color good color. Until the 70s, there was more
color baseball photography in a pack of Topps cards
than in a year of Sports Illustrated.
And in 1957, he oversaw the seemingly trivial
change ofthe **size** of cards. There had been seven
different sized sets issued just in the preceding
decade.
In 1957, Topps made them all.. two-and-a-half
by three-and-a-half.
Whether to be held gently, stuffed roughly in a
pocket, **drawn** on, or most damagingly of all,
flipped the smaller card fit perfectly in the hands of a
million boys. It was as fateful a re-measuring as the
decision to move the pitchers mound from fifty feet
from the plate, to sixty feet, six inches.
To this day, all real baseball cards, and
basketball cards, and Australian Rules Football cards,
are 2-1/2 by 3-1/2. The symmetry is as immutable and
as ineffable as the size of a dollar bill or the width of a
railroad track.
((ko v/o 1951 Topps Gus Zernial - White Sox))
Sy Bergers other great unnoticed innovation
was unceasing accuracy. While the very first cards were
in the stores in 1951, one player, Gus Zernial, was
traded from the White Sox to the As.

((ko v/o 1951 Topps Gus Zernial - As, blanked cap))

In the second print run, Berger changed
Zernials biography and painted over the C on his cap.
((Keith OTS 1967 Mickey Mantle card))
By the year Sy Bergers baseball cards
swallowed me whole, 1967, the meticulousness
bordered on fanaticism. I was the son of an architect so
even at age eight I got the consistency of the design
pattern. Each teams name was in one color and one
color only. The players name and position was printed
at the top, perfectly centered. First name, space. Last
name, space. Dot, space. Position.
((ko v/o 1967 Tom Reynolds front))
Exceptfor card number 458, Tom Reynolds.
I couldnt figure out card 458 to save my life.
((ko v/o 1967 Tom Reynolds back))
The **back** said Tommie Reynolds. T-O-MM-I-E, just like in the Mets yearbook.
((ko v/o 1967 Tom Reynolds front))
The front said TOM Reynolds. Worse than
that. It said TOM space space space REYNOLDS.
It made no sense.
((Keith OTS Tom Reynolds 1967 Topps text: TOM, TOM,
OR TOMMIE?))
20 years later Topps auctioned off decades of
its production materials and test printings everything
except locks of Sy Bergers hair. And there it was, on a
display board in the gym at Hunter College in New York,
the original, never-released sheet of 1967 cards
including the **first** version of number 458, Tom
Reynolds.
Which looked like this.
((ko v/o our faked TOMMY REYNOLDS 1967 Topps card))
Tommy Reynolds. T-O-M-M-**Y.**
But **Tommie** Reynolds spelled his first
name I-E, not Y.

So somebody maybe Sy Berger, more likely

somebody who knew Sy Berger would never accept the
mistake rushed to the metal printing plate and
manually
((ko v/o Tom Reynolds 1967 Topps variation card))
**Scratched off** the M and the Y
presumably on the premise that calling him Tom was
**less** of a mistake than misspelling Tommie.
But that left those little traces of the second M
and the Y.
((ko v/o Tom Reynolds 1967 Topps card))
So later they scratched the **traces** off. So
there are **three** different versions of the cards.
((Keith OTS Sy Berger 1971 image - will send))
And **thats** why, while other national
manufacturers of baseball cards came and went when
Topps started, none had lasted more than nine years
Topps became an institution.
((Keith OTS Marvin Miller circa 1966))
And why, when Marvin Miller was brought in by
the players to begin their union, he looked at the cheapo contracts Sy Berger had personally signed players to
and saw a revenue stream. And a union-wide all-player
contract with Topps became the **first** income for the
Players Association, which would never have gotten off
the ground without it, and never have forced free
agency, and never inflated baseball to the vast mediaindustrial complex it has become.
((Keith No OTS))
Sy Berger remained a Topps Vice President until
1997 and a consultant until his death yesterday at the
age of 91.
The legacy he left behind is so vast as to be
immeasurable.
It includes that 1967 proof card of Tommy
T-O-M-M-Y Reynolds, which I still need to complete my

set.
((f/s card))
Thank you, Sy Berger.