What set sealed Bowman's fate?

[Volod]

[quote=nolemmings;1109367]And one thing more--I may have ranted about this before either here or on another board. Suppose you're a young Cleveland Indians fan in 1954, your team is about to break the Yankee stranglehold of five consecutive World Series appearances in a big way, knocking off the Bombers and winning a record 111 games. Season to remember forever, and the bubblegum cards will help you relive it for all those years.

Your pitching staff includes Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Mike Garcia (19-8) and Art Houtteman (15-8), and future HOFer Hal Newhouser is in the bullpen with Ray Narleski and Don Mossi. Stud staff--and Topps gives you cards of exactly ZERO of these hurlers. None, nada, zip. The one Cleveland pitcher shown on a '54 Topps card is the world famous Dave Hoskins, who appeared in all of 14 games for the Tribe that magical year. Are you flippin kidding me? If I'm growin up in Cleveland I'd tell Topps to pi$$ on their cards--remember, no checklists, so you keep rippin those packs and coming up with.....Dave Hoskins?

I'm not an Indians fan, but a few years ago I thought about starting a '54 set. There clearly are some iconic rookie cards, two Teddie Ballgames and some cool shots of Berra, Ford, Mathews and Spahn among others. Still, for some reason I just didn't think the set deserved my attention given the lousy player selection and spate of old men, and I spurned it almost as an homage to those kids in '54 who had to endure it. quote]

Todd - Well, after all, Topps was and is located in NY, so no huge surprise that the good folks in that company did not appreciate the Cleveland Indians trying to stop their heroes from owning every title in sight. Kind of ugly, though, to let childish rooting bias govern their publishing judgement - did they feel that the nickels of kids in the midwest were not as important to their profit picture as their institutional grudge against the infidels? I wish I could say that as a kid, I boycotted Topps for giving short shrift to the Tribe, but at the age of seven or eight, I had no clue why the great Indian hurlers were left out of the 1954 Topps set. Not that I bought much of it - had moved on to building model airplanes after '53.

[toppcat]

There were two categories of players established once the Topps and Bowman suits started being decided: exclusive players and non-exclusive. I forget the year without checking my notes (1954 I think) but at one point Bowman had hundred of exclusive players compared to a few dozen for Topps with a handful, mostly stars, having non-exclusive deals. So Topps started signing prospects and using coaches and managers to round out their sets. It was unrelated to where each company was domiciled.

I have a section on all of this in my new book: http://www.scribd.com/doc/126643197/...m-1938-to-1956

It's a free download so no worries!

[Volod]

Originally Posted by toppcat

There were two categories of players established once the Topps and Bowman suits started being decided: exclusive players and non-exclusive. I forget the year without checking my notes (1954 I think) but at one point Bowman had hundred of exclusive players compared to a few dozen for Topps with a handful, mostly stars, having non-exclusive deals. So Topps started signing prospects and using coaches and managers to round out their sets. It was unrelated to where each company was domiciled.

I have a section on all of this in my new book: http://www.scribd.com/doc/126643197/...m-1938-to-1956

It's a free download so no worries!

Thanks again Dave. According to the year-by-year account provided in your excellent history, 1953 was the year that Topps really struggled to sign players to exclusive deals: just 26 to Bowman's 388. You state that the next year, 1954, things had almost evened out, with Topps holding 124 exclusives to Bowman's 136.
I suppose that the Cleveland pitchers might have had exclusive contracts with Bowman after 1953, as all but Lemon appeared in Topps' '53 set, but none of them in the '54 or '55 sets, and all reappeared in the Topps '56 set. If it were possible, it would certainly be interesting to compare which players the two gum pushers targeted for exclusive deals in those years.

[toppcat]

Originally Posted by Volod

Thanks again Dave. According to the year-by-year account provided in your excellent history, 1953 was the year that Topps really struggled to sign players to exclusive deals: just 26 to Bowman's 388. You state that the next year, 1954, things had almost evened out, with Topps holding 124 exclusives to Bowman's 136.

I suppose that the Cleveland pitchers might have had exclusive contracts with Bowman after 1953, as all but Lemon appeared in Topps' '53 set, but none of them in the '54 or '55 sets, and all reappeared in the Topps '56 set. If it were possible, it would certainly be interesting to compare which players the two gum pushers targeted for exclusive deals in those years.

There are some lists in the court cases and there was an old SCD book years ago that collected some articles, one of which has a complete list of which player was signed where but I never managed to get a copy of it. I thought about doing up a full list myself but so far have not been able to enthuse myself enough to do so!