ROOKIE BANQUET PROGRAMS T opps began holding luncheon banquets to salute the annual selections to their Rookie All-Star Team in 1959. These were held at various New
1959 Billed as the First Annual Rookie All-Star Team Awards and all that implied, the inau- gural banquet was held on October 29th at the Hotel Manhattan. The winners had already been announced and introduced by Yankees broadcaster Mel Allen on the very same NBC- TV “World Series Special” touted on the select ballots distributed in packs of 1959 baseball cards. Thirty million ballots, with just a small amount seeded as Topps inserts, were said to have been distributed by “youth organizations, disk jockeys and publications.” Except for those that Topps printed up, these were merely generic paper ballots. The program for 1959 was sixteen tex- tured pages in length, twenty if you count the covers, and included pictures of all ten winners (left-and-righthanded pitchers were selected each year) and several dignitaries, including Jackie Robinson and Topps’ own Sy Berger, whose images both appeared in all eight of these amazing keepsakes. The players
York City hotels a few weeks after the World Series had concluded and invariably featured Joe Garagiola as the emcee. Executives from the American and National Leagues, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, scouts, newspaper and magazine publishers, TV and radio broadcasters and a host of other dignitaries hobnobbed with the winning ballplayers and Topps executives as they picked at rubber chicken and limp salad, swilled martinis and navigated vast clouds of cigarette smoke. Each winner was presented with a trophy - referred to today as the “top hat” - and received recognition on the upcoming year’s baseball cards where a miniature version of this coveted hardware would be added. The trophy was redesigned as a small cup in 1973 but still appears annually on the following season’s cards of each winner. Topps published a well- designed and highly regarded program for each of the eight years the event was held. These were limited in number and primari- ly distributed to those who attended the banquet each year. This was a major event coordinated between Topps and the baseball world and the hoopla was real; the in- augural Election Committee included none other than Jackie Robinson, who continued in that role on an an- nual basis.
510. 1959 Topps Rookie All-Star Banquet Program MINIMUM BID: $100
selected, as with every season’s crop, had careers ranging from mediocre to stellar, with Willie McCovey the Hall-of-Fame standard bearer for this crew. From prime prospect to lowly suspect, each winner received an assured welcome $125 in addi- tion to being hosted by Topps.
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