BaseballBiz On Deck

When Baseball Was Still Topps

• Mark Corbett - markscorbett@gmail.com • Episode 274

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Baseball history through the lens of the 1959 Topps Baseball Card collection.

Phil Coffin, looks back at 1959 through the history of the complete 1959 baseball card collection. He revisits baseball players, managers & stories with short entertaining essays
 
Back in the Day

  • Phil Coffin, Author & New York Times Editor
  • Mark & Phil reflect on their early days at The Courier-Journal 
  • Phil’s journey from Louisville to The New York Times (1997) 

When Baseball Was Still Topps

  • One of the best baseball books of 2024 by Sports Collectors Digest 
  • Short Essays on each of the 1959 Topps baseball card set
  • Growing up in Indianapolis as a baseball fan 
  • Watching 1959 World Series between the Dodgers & White Sox with his brothers 

Baseball History

  • Comparing reports of Mickey Mantle & Derek Jeter as young prospects 
  • Ted (Klu) Kruszewski, Al Lopez, &  Sparky Anderson 
  • Beyond the stats 

The 1959 Chicago White Sox

  • Tampa Baseball Museum & Al Lopez
  • White Sox integrating baseball, Larry Doby, Minnie Miñoso, & Al Smith 
  • Al Smith beer drenching of 1959 World Series 
  • Ted (Klu) Kluszewski’s sleeveless
  • Harmon Killebrew 
  • Overlap of Negro Leagues and Major League Baseball history & Hank Aaron's journey from the Indianapolis Clowns to MLB

Building a collection

  • Started with 6-card wax packs for a nickel with gum
  • The elusive Milt Graff 
  • Childhood collection tossed out by mom 
  • Path to rebuild the collection
  • In “Jersey” you got to know, a guy to get Mickey Mantle
  • Bob Gibson rookie card 

Inside When Baseball Was Still Topps

  • Essays on all 572 cards from the 1959 Topps set, 
  • Ted Williams MIA in Topps collection due to exclusive contract with Fleer 
  • Hall of Famer Bob Gibson’s Rookie card, one of the most valuable in the set 
  • Maury Wills, debuted in 1959 but was left out of the set due to doubts about his potential 

Baseball’s History and Evolution:

  • Stories of baseball legends like Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams 
  • The evolution of baseball cards, from Topps’ dominance in the 1950s to today’s competitive memorabilia market 
  • Eddie Gaedel’s one-game fame 
  • Endurance of catchers 
  • Challenges of following modern baseball with expanded rosters and teams compared to the 16-team era of 1959 
  • Baseball fans connect with the game through history, stories, & tangible memorabilia 

Phil’s Upcoming Book:

  • A Baseball Book of Days: 31 Moments That Transformed the Game, explores pivotal dates in baseball history 
  • Stories include Babe Ruth’s sale to the Yankees, Jackie Robinson’s first game, and the dominance of Dominican players in MLB 

Where to Find Phil Coffin’s Books:

Mark is on Blue Sky at @baseballbizondeck.bsky.social  BaseballBiz On Deck is on iheart, apple, spotify, amazon music & at www.baseballbizondeck.com

Special Thanks to X-Take-R-U-X for the music Rocking Forward

Phil Coffin - When Baseball Was Still Topps

[00:00:00] Mark Corbett: Welcome to BaseballBiz On Deck. I am Mark Corbett, your host. And with me today, I have Mr. Phil Coffin. This guy's fantastic. Knew Phil back in the day. How long is back in the day? Is it, is that a real measurement Phil? 

[00:00:13] Phil Coffin: It's been a while. We each had less gray hair then. 

[00:00:18] Mark Corbett: Oh gosh, tell me about her brother.

[00:00:20] Mark Corbett: Yeah. Anyway, Phil, he's an editor with New York Times. He's an author for two baseball books that I know of. And one of those is "When Baseball Was Still Topps". And we'll talk about some of that today. And that was actually awarded and one of the best baseball books of 2024 by sports collectors digest.

[00:00:39] Mark Corbett: com. So kudos to you, Phil, on that one right there alone. Thanks. Yeah, and maybe we can talk a little bit more about your second book later on, but my gosh, Phil, back in the day, you and I, we were both at the Courier -Journal, you were a sports editor, and there I was working on the pages as a printer.

[00:00:57] Mark Corbett: You'd come out there and we'd have four editions in order to do every night. And there was a special page in the sports section of the Courier -Journal, it's called Dog 4, or section D, the fourth page, so D4. And I always loved it because you or one of the other editors would come out and the agate type from the latest games would be coming and we'd constantly be changing that page.

[00:01:20] Mark Corbett: It was like a living, breathing thing. That was an exciting time for me. 

[00:01:24] Phil Coffin: , it was an exciting time in newspapers and it was a great, it was a great experience for me too. And without those years at The Courier, I never would Had the opportunity to move ahead to the New York Times where I've been since 1997.

[00:01:39] Mark Corbett: I know I used to kid around so well, you know Phil he graduated No, brother I'll tell you what again getting back to having you here today I know you've been involved with baseball since early on and I want to talk about the book, but I'd like to hear about that yourself, about how your own involvement in the game began.

[00:02:00] Mark Corbett: It was with family, friends. What was that first spark? 

[00:02:05] Phil Coffin: I have two older brothers, and they were baseball fans, and so they just pulled me into the game, and some of my first memories of baseball are watching the 1959 World Series between the L. A. Dodgers and Chicago White Sox.

[00:02:19] Phil Coffin: I had one brother who was a Dodger fan, one brother who was a White Sox fan, so I sat between them to keep order in the household as we watched these afternoon games in the World Series. , that year was the year I really fell in love with baseball and when I really fell in love with baseball cards and I started collecting cards and ultimately I wound up collecting that set of Topps cards and it just kept from, I kept going from there.

[00:02:43] Phil Coffin: I always loved baseball. I grew up in Indianapolis and there was the triple A team there, the Indians, , but I never developed a major league team that I love because the Indians Major League affiliate kept changing every couple of years. So by the time I was 12 years old, the Indianapolis team had cycled through four Major League affiliates, the Indians, the White Sox, the Phillies and the Reds.

[00:03:08] Phil Coffin: A poor kid in Indianapolis couldn't really develop an allegiance. To a team, I developed an allegiance to baseball. 

[00:03:18] Mark Corbett: You, that was probably a healthy thing to do. I can tell you here in Tampa, I've started working that way. Cause I don't know if I'm going to have a team or not, but the seriously, though, when you have an affiliate team and that you do see them go through changes like it, and certainly with the rapidity that you had to experience I can understand your love for the game and that was at a time too, when.

[00:03:42] Mark Corbett: A lot of people had access to WGN or TBS so it wasn't amazing to see people coming up with some of the first initial broadcasting on a regular basis. You're showing either like the Cubs and White Sox or the Braves. You had, you were distilled in that environment with your two brothers.

[00:04:03] Mark Corbett: Are they still fans of Dodgers and White Sox? Not as intensely because The intensity with which you attach yourself to a team, , or even a sport, I think diminishes the teams and the sports when you first connect with them at 6, 8, 10, 12 years old, there's nothing like that. It is so powerful and so strong.

[00:04:27] Phil Coffin: And even as much as you may love the game 20, 30, 50 years later, It's never quite the same. 

[00:04:35] Mark Corbett: True. True. I was asking because I was thinking this past year, White Sox fans had a completely different experience than Dodgers. 

[00:04:45] Phil Coffin: Yes, they did. 

[00:04:47] Mark Corbett: I'm, I was glad to see that you took that love of the game and with what you did have with the cards and you're able to capture stories of all the, how many cards are there in that book again, Phil?

[00:04:57] Phil Coffin: There are 572 cards in this set. Which is a number I had totally forgotten about when I started writing the essays on each card. As a help for those who are listening, "When Baseball Was Still Topps" has an essay on each of the cards in the 1959 Topps set. And there, it could be as short as 70 words, it could be as long as 700 words.

[00:05:23] Phil Coffin: They're about the players. They're about the teams. They're about the Times. SomeTimes it's a digression into something that is not really baseball, but this player leads to that topic. , so it's quite a stew of baseball and the 50s and 60s. 

[00:05:43] Mark Corbett: You do a great job. Bringing to life each one of those players more than just the stats on a card.

[00:05:50] Mark Corbett: And part of that too, Phil, what I really like is you will find something say even like with Mickey Mantle and make a comparison with a player today, you find a way, I think of maybe connecting with people who may not understand all that history from 59, but have an understanding of something more recent.

[00:06:09] Mark Corbett: And I think as an author, I think you really brought those those Bring people together that way. 

[00:06:14] Phil Coffin: Thanks. The first Mickey Mantle essay in the book based on his card , it's easy to write about Mickey Mantle because there's so much but I thought why write about What has been written over and over again?

[00:06:29] Phil Coffin: So I stumbled across scouting reports on both Mickey Mantle and Derek Jeter who came into the Yankees organization since teenage shortstops And to be honest, they were both terrible shortstops when they came into the game. I think each of them in their first or second season had an 889 fielding percentage, which is not much better than what you and I would have if they stuck us out on a minor league diamond.

[00:06:52] Phil Coffin: and the scouting reports from the organization were really interesting to see how they assess that player and what their future was. Cause with baseball, it's all about projection with young players. And it's clearly not easy. Cause there's so many players who wash out and how many first round picks never developed into anything.

[00:07:13] Phil Coffin: So it was fascinating to see the Scouting reports. Mantle Scouting report made it pretty clear that he did not have a long term future at shortstop unless something really changed. And with Jeter, there was, , a greater thought that there was, , a realistic possibility for him to stay at shortstop, but that he had a lot of work to do.

[00:07:36] Phil Coffin: And I think that the Scouting work from Baseball America said that, , if he works and this improves and that improves, he could be like Alan Trammell. We think of Derek Jeter as Derek Jeter. And back then, even as a first round pick, he was being thought of maybe he could be Alan Trammell.

[00:07:56] Mark Corbett: That's exactly what I'm talking about. As far as you connecting the dots for a lot of us from, for the past to now with some of these players. And one of the things you do too, I thought, my gosh, if you hadn't said this, if it, if you'd written about another year, I wouldn't even know one point okay, what year did Sparky Anderson start as a player?

[00:08:17] Mark Corbett: Oh, he only started one year. He left in one year. 

[00:08:21] Phil Coffin: Sparky was the .218 hitter for the Phillies and. And he proved that he was not a major league hitter. 

[00:08:29] Mark Corbett: Had a nice full career beyond that. Yes. It always amazes me. Looking at it's players who evolve and become managers late, later on in life, 

I occasionally I get the opportunity to help out down at the Tampa baseball museum, and it's actually held in the home of Al Lopez is where it's held at, or I should say housed in.

[00:08:50] Mark Corbett: And what's neat about that is I look at that man and I see a guy who caught for 1, 918 games. And I'm just thinking. You see so much behind the plate as a catcher. I'm not surprised when I see some of those folks evolve, but I did want to come back to the Chicago White Sox because the last time I was there at the museum, I was looking at the exhibit and there's the pennant.

[00:09:15] Mark Corbett: 1959 Chicago White Sox, the Go Go White Sox, man. And Al Lopez had faced off against his old coach, your manager, Casey Stengel. And it I love that, man, that there was this vibe, this whole piece of facing off against one another, but that those are just some of the things that in the book, but as far as.

[00:09:41] Mark Corbett: I talk a little bit more about the White Sox. I was looking at some of the players that are in there, like Early Wynn he's in there one of the most interesting characters. And I forgive me, I can't say his name properly. I'm sure Ted,

[00:09:56] Phil Coffin: let's just Ted Kluszewski. Thank you, sir. Just calling Klu.

[00:10:01] Phil Coffin: That's what everybody else did. 

[00:10:04] Mark Corbett: I love this guy, you tell a little bit story about him. 

[00:10:08] Phil Coffin: , Kluszewski he was this hulking first baseman. In some ways, he was like the best of a type of player in the 1950s, early 1960s, this big, strong, slow, , plodding first baseman, , who was there to hit home runs and maybe take walks.

[00:10:27] Phil Coffin: There were lots of those guys. Most of them were not as good as Ted Kluszewski. Klu was, , unbelievably, , good for about a five year stretch when he was with the Reds. And then he hurt his back. And he was never quite the same, but he was, in many ways, he was, , this may not resonate with all your listeners, but he was like Harmon Killebrew for five years.

[00:10:53] Phil Coffin: But Harmon Killebrew then had another part of his career that was equally as good. But for five years, Kluszewski was just unbelievably strong. There's, there was a seven year period in which Kluszewski in the 50s. Average 32 home runs a game, a .306 batting average by .535 slugging percentage. , and he struck out only 33 Times a game, a season.

[00:11:22] Phil Coffin: So he was, he's an, it was an anomaly, even for the time that strikeouts were much fewer. Then Kluszewski is a power hitter striking about 33 Times a year was crazy. So Klu also. football player at Indiana University. He'd been on a championship team there. And as I learned in researching my second book, He was discovered by the Reds when they were having spring training during World War II on the Bloomington campus.

[00:11:55] Phil Coffin: They had several years during World War II in which teams could not go South for spring training. So the Reds were, we're at IU. And, , Kluszewski actually helped like with set up and, of the field and stuff while the Reds were there. But then , the IU team would practice in their, , I think it was the groundskeeper for , , the Reds kind of hung around and watched them practice.

[00:12:17] Phil Coffin: And he saw Klusiewski hitting these mammoth home runs and said we ought to take a look at this guy. It's just back in the pre draft days. And so they wound up signing him for what at the time was a lot of money. It was like 15, 000. And he was very quickly a major league star. One of the most memorable things about him for fans of the fifties was that Klu had enormous biceps, and so he wore his jersey with no sleeves, and he wore an undershirt where he had the sleeves cut off from the top of the shoulder down, there was Klu and his biceps.

[00:12:56] Mark Corbett: I loved it, man. I absolutely loved it. I thought first time I saw an image of that fella, I thought, Oh he could be in a pro wrestler ring, I guess as well. Or we could have him as one of the Avengers with but he was a powerful hitter. And in a few more decades, people probably questioned a few things About the bulk of muscle he had, but he stood, you brought up Harmon Killebrew.

[00:13:22] Mark Corbett: That's something I was curious about. And I've heard this, I don't know if it's fact or fiction and you may or may not the MLB logo. Somebody once told me that is from a profile of Harmon Killebrew. 

[00:13:33] Phil Coffin: It is. 

[00:13:34] Mark Corbett: Is it okay? 

[00:13:35] Phil Coffin: Yeah. It's funny to think that both MLB with Harmon Killebrew and the NBA with Jerry West.

[00:13:41] Phil Coffin: Their logos hark back to players who made their bones in the 1960s, and they've had an iconic form that has stood the test of time. 

[00:13:52] Mark Corbett: I love it, man. Those are the things that I enjoy about the history of the game. And people will get a lot of that out of your book. I want to make sure I mentioned that name again. It's "When Baseball Was Still Topps". It's talking about the Chicago White Sox. and Al Lopez, the team in 1959, they did win. Let's see, they put the Yankees out of pursuit of the fall classic. So they went ahead, they were the ones that would go ahead and face the Dodgers instead of the Yankees that year.

[00:14:23] Mark Corbett: And looking at you, you address the bringing of opening up MLB, bring in players from the Negro leagues. And how that's how that started obviously I think it was like 47 with Jackie Robinson, correct? And then one of the players on chicago White Sox Larry Doby, but Larry Doby actually I believe started with cleveland if I remember correctly, so Larry's on that team and i'm thinking as far as other african americans in 59 I think there was also Al Smith Harry suitcase Simpson, and there may be another gentleman.

[00:14:59] Mark Corbett: I can't think of them at the time, but that was probably more African Americans on one team than just about any other at the time, wasn't it? 

[00:15:08] Phil Coffin: There, the White Sox were in the forefront there for a while with with black and Latino players. Minnie Minoso played for years, 

[00:15:18] Mark Corbett: right? 

[00:15:18] Phil Coffin: He got traded away to the Indians, then came back to the White Sox. 

[00:15:22] Phil Coffin: But he had been, he was before 1947, he would not have had any opportunity to play in the Major Leagues. Al Smith, , as you mentioned, was a very serviceable wall player. He's well known from the 1959 World Series because he had a beer knocked on his head as he was, , at the left field wall and a fan knocks his beer down and drenches Al Smith.

[00:15:46] Phil Coffin: , but they, but there were several black, Earl Battey was a catcher , who never got much of an opportunity with White Sox because they had a very good catcher named Sherman Lawler. Battey went on to become an all star and three time gold glove winner with Minnesota Twins. Yeah, the White Sox were ahead of some of the teams.

[00:16:05] Phil Coffin: It's unsettling someTimes to go back and look and see how some teams were so resistant to integrating, in my next book, , "A Baseball Book of Days", I have a chapter on, , how the Red Sox, the last team in baseball to integrate. Took a long and tortured path to integration. 

[00:16:23] Mark Corbett: Yeah, 

[00:16:23] Phil Coffin: but they were not the only ones the phillies the tigers They were all very late to the game but even in 1959 12 years after major league baseball integrated There are at least 17 players who have cards in this Topps set who had played in the negro leagues so even 12 years after integration began in the major leagues, the Negro leagues were still having a real impact on the game.

[00:16:52] Mark Corbett: Yeah. , I continually think about, how Hank Aaron came up through with the Indianapolis clowns to go to the Braves and on the show, a lot of Times we talk about women in baseball. So I'll always mentioned about when Hank came up, Toni Stone came into the in with the clowns as the first woman of baseball and right.

[00:17:09] Mark Corbett: And now the Negro leagues and MLB are together. She's the first woman to play it at the show and we mentioned, of course, there about Al Smith and the beer. Yeah. I, when I read your book, I came across that part where you're talking about the beer being spilled and how that became I won't say all the trademark, but he said he's, he had signed over 200 plus autographs of photos with that.

[00:17:34] Phil Coffin: Yes. And I'm sure he didn't like having beer knocked on his face. He was so enamored of the photo that he had a large image of that in his home. 

[00:17:50] Mark Corbett: That's the thing. A person can enjoy the game on so many different levels and it wasn't something that was a stigma for him. It sounds like it's more of a point of to look back and of happiness or at least enjoy enjoyment of the game at that point.

[00:18:06] Mark Corbett: When you were putting your own collection of cards together, was there one card that seemed absolutely elusive to you that you wondered if you're ever going to get? 

[00:18:16] Phil Coffin: Oh, yes, absolutely. Back then most of the time you got you got cards in a pack of six. They cost a nickel and you got six cards in a wax pack.

[00:18:29] Phil Coffin: So you didn't know what was in the pack. And you got a piece of gum that tasted like sugar coated brick. And you just kept going until you if you were crazy like me, you would keep collecting and every nickel that you could scrounge up you, you spent on cards. , and of course there's always one card you can't get.

[00:18:51] Phil Coffin: And my card was a guy named Milt Graff. Milt was a nondescript infielder for the Kansas City Athletics who played 61 games in his Major League career, 5'9 165 pounds from Saxonburg, Pennsylvania. Bats right, throws right. I had Mickey Mantle. I had Willie Mays. I had Henry Aaron. I had Duke Snyder. I could not get a Milt Graff, whose career average was .179.

[00:19:23] Phil Coffin: And it was killing me. And at some point, there's nothing you can do. You can go to your buddies, if they have a Milt Graff, I'll trade you my extra Duke Snyder for a Milt Graff. Nobody had Milt Graff. And then finally, after the season was over, somehow I found Milt Graff to complete my set. Oh my gosh.

[00:19:44] Mark Corbett: Oh man. The ever elusive Milt Graff. I love it. 

[00:19:48] Phil Coffin: Now that the the sort of sad story about that set of cards that I spent so much of my childhood trying to, or six year old childhood trying to acquire was, When I went to college, of course, my mother threw my cards away. My parents moved during the middle of my freshman year in college.

[00:20:07] Phil Coffin: And mom thought, what does a college kid need with baseball cards? And so she throws them all out, crushed me. So then fast forward to when I'm working on the book. I thought I love those cards. That's why I'm writing this book. I'm going to get a few of them just because it'd be fun to have them.

[00:20:29] Phil Coffin: And then I started getting a few more and a few more and a few more. And my wife would laugh because there'd be these little packages coming in the mail that were about the size of baseball cards. , before you knew it, I had a lot and I got to the point where. As I mentioned before, there are 572 cards and I was down to the last 35 cards and most of them were the stars of the game because they're the most expensive cards. I don't want to spend a fortune on all this. , but I kept, , ticking off cards here, ticking off cards there, and it got to the point where I had only 2 cards to go. And 1 of them was Mickey Mantle and Mantle cards are always the most expensive because he's such an idol. And I live in New Jersey, so I know a guy and my, I knew a guy who knew a guy.

[00:21:16] Phil Coffin: He said, , he said, he's Bob is really big into memorabilia. And he said, I think I can find a Mantle card for you. , and it won't cost you an arm or leg. It'll just cost you an arm. , so Bob does his magic and he finds a card. It's a price that I can say, all right, I can accept that. So then I had my Mickey Mantle card and now I had only one card to go.

[00:21:39] Phil Coffin: And it's. The most valuable card in the 1959 set. Would you like to hazard a guess as to who's the most valuable card in the set? 

[00:21:49] Phil Coffin: Ted Williams is not even in the set. We'll get to that later The most valuable card in the 1959 set is Bob Gibson Hall of fame pitcher because it's his rookie card and the rookie cards are always most valuable But I could not pull the trigger on the prices.

[00:22:08] Phil Coffin: I was finding for Bob Gibson cards. I just couldn't do It's A piece of cardboard that's two and a half by three and a half. I can't, I cannot do this. So I said, I will, I can live with the fact that I have all but one of the cards. And then for my birthday last year, my wife bought me the Bob Gibson 

[00:22:25] Phil Coffin: card.

[00:22:25] Phil Coffin: Oh 

[00:22:26] Mark Corbett: man, that is so sweet. That is so sweet. It's interesting to think about that collection. I know my next door neighbor gave me his collection and my interest was minimal to be quite honest with you. But, I wasn't one of those things. He's too old to be having these things. So give them to the neighbor's kid.

[00:22:48] Mark Corbett: And I had them and I was, Oh, look, here's Roger Maris and here's some other guys and Mickey Mantle and oh, my cousin might like these he, he does comic books too. Yeah oops, big time because it wasn't, but about a year later, my neighbor's come back and say, he said, you got those cars though, don't you?

[00:23:10] Mark Corbett: But there's an experience about holding that physical card in your hand. I love baseball Almanac. I love. Baseball reference. com. I go there all the time and they're just so helpful to get some basic information about what's going on in the game now and in the past, but there's something about holding it in your hands, that card and a sense of, I don't want to say necessarily ownership, but a connection.

[00:23:37] Phil Coffin: Yes, there's a tangible connection between you and the game, you and the player. That's it. 

[00:23:43] Mark Corbett: That even goes to your book, man. I loved it. I was reading it over the Christmas holidays. I took it on the plane with me. I left it on the daggone plane and I, it was, yeah, I'll tell me about it.

[00:23:55] Mark Corbett: And then I went ahead and rectified that immediately. I don't think I was out of the airport before I'd bought the digital copy and had it on the tablet because I got to continue reading this guys. I've been loving it. Anybody who gets a chance to read this book, they're going to enjoy it. I am looking forward to your new book coming out.

[00:24:14] Mark Corbett: Was it "A Baseball Book of Days, 31 moments that transformed the game". Yes. When I first heard about this, it was probably back in November and you'll have some rumblings here or there. And I was like, I thought, Oh, is it going to come out before Christmas? Can I treat it like an advent calendar? But right now you can treat it like an advent calendar for the new upcoming baseball season.

[00:24:35] Phil Coffin: Yes it is an advent calendar of baseball history. There's this date and something that. That maybe it's momentous or fascinating or, , just really interesting that you did not know, or I did not know. , and then there's this date and that date. And so there, there are 31 chapters. We have a series of dates there where there's some connection to baseball history and some of them are very serious. 

[00:25:03] Phil Coffin: There's a look at how Babe Ruth's sale to the Yankees probably would not have been allowed 50 years later. And if you think about taking away Babe Ruth from the Yankees in 1920, baseball history is radically different. , there's a chapter on Jackie Robinson's first game and the players who were in that game also. , 

[00:25:25] Phil Coffin: I tend to go down rabbit holes, and so one of his teammates in 1947 was an outfielder named Dixie Walker, and Walker was from Alabama and was Not very thrilled about being teammates with Jackie Robinson and I got to thinking this is part of baseball history, and I wonder how many players named Dixie there were in Major League Baseball, and there were a dozen of them.

[00:25:52] Phil Coffin: So I have a chapter to go along with Jackie Robinson's first game, a chapter about the players named Dixie who are in baseball. , there's a chapter on the Red Sox integration and they passed on chances. To sign Jackie Robinson, to sign Willie Mays. , you think about the team they could have had, they could have had Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and Ted Williams playing together.

[00:26:18] Phil Coffin: Good grief. 

[00:26:19] Phil Coffin: But it was a horrible organization. , I used the debut of the first Dominican ballplayer, Ozzy Virgil senior to take a look at how Dominicans came to be such an integral part of the game. First, , Dominican, , played in 1956 and there, there were players from other, , Latin American countries already in the game.

[00:26:41] Phil Coffin: So how did the Dominican Republic go from having one player in 1956 to the point where now there have been about a thousand Dominicans , in the league and there are 11% of the rosters in Major League baseball? So there's a chapter that talks about how that came to pass. There's some chapters that are.

[00:27:02] Phil Coffin: A little less serious. There's a chapter. I have Jackie Robinson's first game. I have Eddie Goodell's only game. Eddie Goodell for those who do not know was a three foot seven inch pinch hitter who got to play in one game in 19, 1951 as basically a publicity stunt. 

[00:27:18] Mark Corbett: Let me guess. Was it Bill Veeck? 

[00:27:20] Phil Coffin: Yes, it was Bill Veeck playing for the the hapless St.

[00:27:24] Phil Coffin: Louis Browns who later became the Baltimore Orioles. , and so I look at some of the principles in that game in addition to Goodell, who had a very sad life and died very young. He got beat up, , after he left a night of drinking at a bar in Chicago and woke up, no, he didn't wake up, his mother found him dead in his bed the next morning. 

[00:27:46] Phil Coffin: A very sad coda to his literal moment of Fame in baseball. , there's also a story I was, I didn't know this and I, I was really intrigued player named Don Padgett. No reason anybody would know Don Padgett, but , on the last, in the last game of the year in 1939, he singled for what would've given him a .400 batting average.

[00:28:12] Phil Coffin: , now he didn't quite qualify for the batting title. He had close to 300 plate appearances and wow. He, here, he strokes a single. For what would have been a .400 batting average umpire had called timeout. No play. And then he, and he's pinch hitting, , and so then he walks and he winds up forever stuck at .399.

[00:28:39] Phil Coffin: , amazing stories. And there's, , I discovered that in the 20th century, no catcher had caught every game of his team in a season. 

[00:28:47] Phil Coffin: And then in one of the war years, catchers from two teams caught every game that season. , Mind boggling to think, , that a catcher could catch all 154 games of a season.

[00:29:00] Phil Coffin: And back then, Mark, teams were playing, many double headers. So these guys, I think, one caught 34 double headers and the other one caught 35, if I remember correctly. They caught that many double headers in the course of the season. And catchers now, they play a night game, often they sit out a day game the next day and these guys were catching two games and then coming back and catching the next day.

[00:29:28] Phil Coffin: So it was fascinating to me to see what these guys had done. 

[00:29:34] Mark Corbett: Yeah. I can't even begin to fathom that and it's interesting because you brought up that 154 games and a lot of people today don't realize necessarily you didn't have 30 teams back then. 

[00:29:47] Phil Coffin: No, it's 16. 

[00:29:49] Mark Corbett: Yeah, it's 16, but you still had a whole lot of 154 is a whole lot of games and you can see the same faces quite often more.

[00:29:56] Mark Corbett: The games you face other teams that had to be something to as far as the baseball experience. 

[00:30:02] Phil Coffin: Yeah. 

[00:30:02] Phil Coffin: You think about it. If you had 16 teams and 25 man rosters, that's 400 major league ball players. Now you have 30 teams and 26 man rosters. You have almost 800 players on major league rosters.

[00:30:18] Phil Coffin: And because of the way they use the injured list and call up players from the minors, as a baseball fan, it is harder to follow the game, follow players, keep track of players. than it was 50, 60, 70 years ago. Just sheer numbers make it much more of a challenge. 

[00:30:39] Mark Corbett: I 

[00:30:39] Mark Corbett: cannot begin to imagine that doing all that. 

[00:30:41] Mark Corbett: I have a show focusing on the Tampa Bay Rays. With Mat Germain, and he is deep into it. That guy, he can go down all the way to, to the teams in the Dominican Republic. He's putting together the list right now for the 50 prospects, 50 top Tampa Bay Rays prospects.

[00:30:59] Mark Corbett: Yeah. He's a good deep diver. , But to be able to me seems a little bit more manageable back in 1959 to pull some of that together. Oh my gosh, Phil. Are you taking this love of the game? Is your family seeing it go to the next generation? 

[00:31:18] Phil Coffin: No, my my two step sons I took them to, to their first major league game when they were, I don't know, nine and 12.

[00:31:31] Phil Coffin: And they liked the game, but it didn't resonate for them the way it did for me. So it is skipped at least one generation there. And my grandsons are not baseball fans, so I have failed miserably. But but there's still plenty of baseball fans out there. 

[00:31:50] Mark Corbett: Oh, there are. And the thing is you connect with them with a lot through an organization.

[00:31:55] Mark Corbett: SABR is that correct? 

[00:31:57] Phil Coffin: The society for American baseball research is as its name would suggests is very involved in researching baseball history. It has a pretty hard statistical bend for much of its work, but some of it is just real solid history of baseball. It's been an organization that's been around since, I think, the 80s.

[00:32:20] Phil Coffin: It's a fascinating organization. It's website has a connection to a series of profiles of ballplayers and executives, thousands of great biographies of players. The ones you've all heard of and players that I'd never heard of. And then you're fascinating to read the bio project from SABR was in fact, a huge resource for me as I worked on "When Baseball Was Still Topps".

[00:32:52] Mark Corbett: I know if I look at your bibliography for the book, it's massive. It's, you've actually done quite a bit of research, my friend. 

[00:32:59] Phil Coffin: Yes. It's a little frightening because. I have like more than 200 baseball books of my own. So I come into this with a bit of a library, , and it never seems to shrink.

[00:33:14] Phil Coffin: , but I really can't read enough baseball. , but there, there's so much good, , literature out there. So much good writing on history of baseball that you can't go wrong. And to put in a shameless plug for my publisher McFarland. , its website is mcfarlandbooks. com, but it has a fantastic baseball, category.

[00:33:35] Phil Coffin: They they have a reservoir of hundreds and hundreds of baseball books that they have published, and it is a wonderful place to go find books about, from baseball history to baseball now so it's a great catalog of baseball. 

[00:33:50] Phil Coffin: I know even a few years back, I had author Merrie Fidler, who works with the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and she had written a book, and McFarland, I believe, was her publisher at the time, but McFarland has done a fantastic job with baseball in the past.

[00:34:05] Phil Coffin: I'm glad to see you're working with them. Can you remind us of where folks can find your books? 

[00:34:10] Phil Coffin: Sure. You can find it at the McFarland website, McFarlandbooks. com, and it's also available at Amazon. So either place is an easy way to, to order the, when baseball is still Topps or you can pre order A Baseball Book of Days", which we're hoping we'll be coming out by the end of the month.

[00:34:32] Mark Corbett: Good. Just ready for the season just 

[00:34:35] Mark Corbett: in time. 

[00:34:36] Phil Coffin: I'm telling you ready for spring training, man. 

[00:34:39] Mark Corbett: Okay. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw this one at you last year before the season began, all this news about Ohtani coming out, , all this stuff about Pete Rose, there's a Pete Rose biography coming out and the Ohtani gambling thing came out.

[00:34:54] Mark Corbett: It's like as far as timing for the author who wrote this, who wrote the book about Pete Rose, he couldn't ask for more perfect story publicity wise.

[00:35:01] Phil Coffin: It worked out well for me. And it's a the book Charlie Hustle is, it's quite a good read too. , I was not a fan of Pete Rose, , but it's a remarkable look at how Pete Rose became the person he was.

[00:35:17] Phil Coffin: Yeah. 

[00:35:18] Mark Corbett: Yeah. I have not completed it, but I have read some of it too. And it's, yeah it's a life. I keep joking around. I said one day somebody's going to land across from Cooperstown and there's going to be, A whole museum of the infamous, right? And there will be a pedestal for Pete Rose right in the center of that a monument, if you will, right there. 

[00:35:45] Phil Coffin: To be honest though, Pete Rose is in the hall of fame. There are many pieces of memorabilia from Pete Rose in the hall of fame. He just doesn't have a plaque in the hall of fame. But he is all over the hall of fame because you can't tell the story of baseball without Pete Rose, but he, because of his own actions, he doesn't have the plaque.

[00:36:13] Mark Corbett: Let me come back for a moment to the title of your book again, because when I read it, I thought, oh, okay. Yeah. "When Baseball Was Still Topps", I thought, yeah, the game was so much popular then too, but Topps is no longer the official major league baseball, card manufacturer. Is that correct? Yes. 

[00:36:30] Phil Coffin: Yes. 

[00:36:32] Mark Corbett: Yes.

[00:36:33] Mark Corbett: Go ahead. No, go ahead, Mark. I was just curious because I'm thinking, I never expect to understand all about MLB, but there's been a long tradition of working with Topps and it it was a little sad for me when I heard that they were no longer going to be working directly with MLB, that there was going to be another company involved.

[00:36:54] Phil Coffin: It came down to money. No surprise there. Baseball card industry, which is, I don't know it in great detail, but there were cards for decades and decades. Topps came along in the 1950s and it was basically a way to sell chewing gum because they were part of the bazooka chewing gum company.

[00:37:16] Phil Coffin: And I think Topps 1st year with 54 maybe, but they came along and they were, they had competition. , and I think Bowman was the big, , competitor at the time. and Topps basically ran them out of business, , was much more astute and how it dealt with contracts. It signed up just about every minor leaguer in the game, , for very small contracts, but they had this connection with the minor leaguers.

[00:37:42] Phil Coffin: When they came to the major leagues, boom, they already had the connection and baseball basically had a monopoly. , until it lost a court suit in the 1980s, and that's when Fleer and Donruss really came back into the, Fleer came back into the game and Donruss came along and suddenly there, it was a free for all it was a very competitive market, and all the companies were now hiding cards, We're spectacular looking.

[00:38:10] Phil Coffin: There's the cards that started to come out. Competition was good because it made the companies really work on presenting cards that were really nice to look at. 

[00:38:21] Mark Corbett: Yeah. Yeah. I did get a little curious when I said, Oh, there's a fiber of his uniform inside this card. Oh, good Lord, people you can be arrested for something like that.

[00:38:32] Mark Corbett: No, seriously. I do want to go back to tie this to A card that wasn't there that year in your extra innings. The part book.

[00:38:42] Phil Coffin: Yes. The 1959 set does not have a Ted Williams card. Williams was in addition to being a great player, he was really pretty savvy businessman too. , and he had played, , baseball card companies off one another.

[00:38:58] Phil Coffin: Going back to the 1940s. During the course of his career, he was connected with four baseball card companies. There was one called Play Ball before World War II, and then he was connected with Bowman in the early 50s. Then, in 1954 actually, he had cards on both Bowman and Topps. And not only did that, he, in the 54 set, he's the first and last card in the Topps set.

[00:39:31] Phil Coffin: And he sticks with Topps through 1958. But in 1959, he arranges a deal with Fleer for a Ted Williams only set of cards, 80 cards. Each one is Ted Williams. , clearly he got a lot more money from Fleer than he was getting from Topps. And so in 1959 and 1960, there were these exclusive Ted Williams sets from Fleer.

[00:39:59] Phil Coffin: And because of his contract with Fleer he was not on the Topps set for the final two years of his baseball career. Oh my gosh. Yeah. 

[00:40:10] Phil Coffin: For me as a kid in 1959, I thought where's Ted Williams ? And we didn't understand all this. The other card that's missing from 1959 is Maury Wills.

[00:40:21] Phil Coffin: , and he came up as a rookie in 1959. , came out of out of nowhere and helped lead the Dodgers to the pennant and the World Series, but he was not on a card. In part, he came up late , he was not on the set , for a while because Topps had decided he was, he had no future. And so they had not decided to make a Maury Willis card and he was reluctant to sign up with them because, , there'd been this, , He had some animosity toward them for not buying into his abilities. And as it turned out, , he became a very important player in the 1950s and 1960s. But , he was no sure bet. He almost didn't make it. There was a guy with the, in the Dodgers, another shortstop, like him, except not as fast, named Bob Lewis. And Bob Lewis had gotten the first crack at shortstop in 1959 and wasn't cutting it.

[00:41:18] Phil Coffin: And so the Dodgers who needed help, cause they were like the White Sox, they couldn't get, they brought up Maury Wills and before you know it, they were in the pennant race and then they win the playoff and then they were in the world series. 

[00:41:34] Mark Corbett: Oh my gosh, Phil, it's so great to share stories like this. I can't thank you enough, brother, for being on the show today.

[00:41:40] Mark Corbett: And to anybody who wants to read this book, they will find this is just not recounting what's on the backs of a baseball card. Phil has done is painstakingly gone through and done research on each one of these folks. And I can only imagine just taking time for each one. I'm saying I'm going to find something here.

[00:42:01] Mark Corbett: There's some folks where you're probably not going to find as much depth about something, a flash in the pan here or there. And then there's others where you're able to give a couple of pages, but I loved it because I could sit down and read your book. I could read it for 10, 15 minutes, or I could read it for two hours and it's

[00:42:18] Mark Corbett: it's one of those. Again, Phil, I want to thank you for being on the show. I want to encourage everybody again. The book is "When Baseball Was Still Topps" and that's by Phil Coffin, and you can find it on McFarland's website. You can, I prefer a hard copy. I've got the digital too, but it's they're both out there.

[00:42:37] Mark Corbett: And Phil, is there any parting words or any wisdom you wish to share with folks? 

[00:42:44] Phil Coffin: The only thing I would say is that the book is stories. And baseball is great for storytelling. It, it more so than football or basketball. There are stories about players, stories about the game, and there are all sorts of avenues to tell these fantastic stories to the game.

[00:43:07] Phil Coffin: And what I tried to do with the book was take advantage of that to tell stories that were just fun to read or gave you insight into something that I didn't have before. And that's what I did with the book. And I hope that the readers take that away as well. 

[00:43:25] Mark Corbett: You achieve that, my friend. Cause I know I was definitely enthralled while I was reading it.

[00:43:30] Mark Corbett: So thank you very much, sir. And I look forward to seeing you. So the other book, hopefully it'll be up at least around 

[00:43:36] Phil Coffin: hoping by the end of the month, I finished up everything on my end. It was just being scheduled for publication. And we're hopeful. 

[00:43:46] Mark Corbett: Alrighty. Again, let's Phil Coffin joining us here today on BaseballBiz On Deck and the author of "When Baseball Was Still Topps".

[00:43:55] Mark Corbett: Check it out. I want to thank all of y'all for coming on the show today and Phil, thank you for being here. I appreciate it, buddy. 

[00:44:00] Phil Coffin: Thanks for having me on Mark. I appreciate it. 

 You have been listening to BaseballBiz On Deck with Mark's special guest, Phil Coffin, New York Times Editor & author of When Baseball Was Still Topps.

 Just a reminder you can find Mark on Blue Sky at @baseballbizondeck.bsky.social You may also find BaseballBiz On Deck on iheart, apple, spotify, amazon music & at www.baseballbizondeck.com

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