THE CLI-FI REPORT

 

by Dan Bloom

 

 

In the past few years that I have been lucky enough to have this Internet gig as an occasional columnist for this online Jewish newspaper in California, and always under the kind guidance of an editor who forever steers me to the right way of saying things, I've often used Google to look here and there for Jewish stories. Or just stumbled upon them. Yes, I'm a stumbler.

And yes, ''there's a Jewish story everywhere'', as the editor's motto puts it.

 

 

So imagine my surprise when the other day I chanced upon another Jewish story, and this one about baseball and trading cards in the 1950s and 60s.

 

Actually, I was reading an obituary of Seymour "Sy" Berger in Time magazine, written by a Jewish kid from Vermont who grew up to become a baseball card star-gazer, Josh Wilker, who in middle age now lives in Chicago. Wilker wrote a poplar book in 2010 titled "Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Basebball Cards" that my friend Ted Anthony of the Associated Pess wire service said "summons time and place and nostalgia in a rush of feeling and memory" and going on to praise the book this way: "In Wilker's hands, a pack of baseball cards becomes a Gen-X tarot deck, as if arranging them just so can unlock life's secrets."

So after reading Wilker's Time magazine "appreciation" of the long life of Sy Berger, "the father of the modern baseball card," as dozens of obits across the media world attested, I asked Wilker by email if we could also say that Woody Gelman, who also worked at the Topps bubble gum and baseball firm in Brooklyn in the 1950s could be credited also as the co-creator of the modern color baseball card, since it was Gelman who actually designed the cards. None of the Sy Berger obits, and there were over a dozen of them, even a long one in the New York Times, mentioned Gelman as the co-creator and therefore co-father of the modern baseball card iconic look.

In fact, the prototype for the first Topps cards were designed at a kitchen table in Brooklyn with both Berger and Gelman working together as a creative team. So why did all the obits leave Gelman out of the picutre?

I asked a former Topps employee about this cold shoulder to Woody Gelman in the Times and in Time magazine as well.

"Newspapers always mix fiction with non," the former staffer told the San Diego Jewish world by email. "Indeed, Woody was involved, as were others. Sy Berger was a fine Topps employee, they loved him there, he was part of a team that built some American lore that might stand the test of time."

 

So I asked Mr Wilker in Chicago, who wrote the book on baseball cards, and he replied in Internet time across the seas:

"I don't really know how to size up Sy in terms of Jewish sports history, but if he ever got his own baseball card, the back would have to show him as the all-time leader in fun. He made my childhood a lot more fun, that's for sure."

And he added: "I agree with you that Woody Gelman should be known as the co-creator of the modern baseball card. In the excellent baseball card history titled 'Mint Condition,' Dave Jamieson does a great job of celebrating Gelman's contributions." 

So there you have it, baseball card fans: Woody Gelman was the co-creator of the modern card, and should also be known as "the father of the modern baseball card" along with Sy Berger. It was a team they created the card, not one person.

A friend of mine who knows a thing or two about the history of the Topps empire, amd who I know through my Yiddish language research circles,  told me this anecdoate about the cards were marketed: "The Topps people would pay ball players who got into the minors five bucks to sign a Topps card contract. Of 1500 or so players they signed each year only about 30 would make it to the big leagues, but I guess they thought in those days that signing with Topps was a huge step for ballkind. More times than one might think, a player would say to one of the Topps sales people (Sy Berger being one of them, of course, and he was tops, no pun intended), 'Hey I really wanna sign but my wallet's in the clubhouse. Can you wait until after practice is over?'"

The anecdote, if true, ends with this line: "The Topps people would have to say, 'No kid, you don't give us the five dollars, we pay it to you!"

After hearing all these Sy Berger and Wood Gelman stories,
I had a midnight brainstorm in my writers room in Taiwan: I envisioned a Hollywood movie about a jocular and colorful Jewish men who love baseball, love baseball cards, love salesmanship and marketing and the chase, and most of all, love life, all of it -- the good, the bad and the fug ugly. Jewish guys from Brooklyn whose every day humor and joi de vivre went all the way to the top, excuse the pun.

And yes, what go me to thinking "movie!" was that I was one of those those pre-teen kids in the 1950s who bought nickel packs of Topps baseball cards at the corner drugstore where my Aunt Nelly worked with those sweet pink sheets of bubble gum inside. And like most American kids, I became pretty good at flipping and trading the cards, with neighborhood friends and my older brother Art.

So this is my idea for a movie I want to call "Carboard Memories." It's about the Topps baseball trading card company in its heyday in the 1950s, and since it's a Hollywood studio film, there's a sweet love story wrapped around it, with a colorful crew of baseball stats wonks and card designers and saelsmen who go out to games and visit clubhouses and get top players to agree to have their photos taken and appear on Topps cards.

It's a movie about the American past-time baseball, America's love affair with statss and celebrity ball players -- Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams -- and about, well, Americana.

Most of all, the movie that I already have screened in my mind's eye is about the people behind the company that brought ''cardboard memories'' to millions of devoted teenage boys in a time before iPads and smart phones and Netflix.

Now all I need to do is find a good Hollywood producer. Are you reading this, Steve?

 

And then all I need to do is find a studio to greenlight it.....

KEY WORDS: Sy Berger, Wood Gelman, Len Brown, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Ebbets Field, Avenue J, Cookies, Yiddish, Sholom Aleichem, Jacob Dinezon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Curt Leviant, Yiddish Vinkl, Bazooka Joe, Brooklyn, Eatwhatever, Jacquii Rosshandler, Danny Bloom, Taiwan, Bernie Bloom (1915 - 2005), Art Ditmar, The Baltimore Orioles, the Boston Red Sox, The Green Monster, Hollywood, Field of Dreams