cardboard godsYes, it all begins to come together every year during spring training time in the baseball world. And the best part of spring training for teens and adults — boys, mostly, of course, and their fathers — is getting up close and personal with players and coaches and getting autographs and selfies, and watching them practice baseball basics. It’s a boy thing.

I recently read a very good book about collecting baseball cards, “Cardboard Gods,” written by Chicago card fanatic writer Josh Wilker.

I found the book in December when I was reading an obituary of the so-called “father of the modern baseball card” Seymour “Sy” Berger in Time magazine, written by a kid from Vermont who grew up to become an adult baseball card star-gazer, yes, the very same Josh Wilker.

Berger passed away at age 91 last year after a long, colorful life. Wilker was comissioned Time editors to write the obit because his 2010 book came with the subtitle: “An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards.” “Cardboard Gods” is still popular in paperback and on Kindle.

Ted Anthony of the Associated Pess praised 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.”

I recently asked Wilker by email if one could also say that Woody Gelman, who also worked at the
Topps bubble gum firm in Brooklyn in the 1950s alongside Sy Berger, could be credited as the ”co-creator” of the modern color baseball card, since it was Gelman who actually designed the prototype for the very first card.

For some odd reason, none of the Sy Berger obits, and there were over a 50 of them, even a long Richard Goldstein piece in the New York Times, mentioned Gelman as the co-father of the
iconic card.

So why did all the obits leave Gelman out of the picture?

I asked a baseball card fan that I know from way back, and he told TeleRead by email

“Well, neither of them is around now to fill in the pieces for the Berger obit writers. Gelman died in 1978; Solomon years later.”

“Newspapers always mix fiction with non,” he said. “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.”

I asked Wilker about this and the card maven replied: “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.”

After hearing all these Sy Berger and Woody Gelman stories, I had an idea: a Hollywood feature movie about four colorful Brooklyn guys, sons of a Jewish immigrant from Russia, whose every day humor and joi de vivre went all the way to the top, and shepherded the modern-day baseball card into American culture.

I want to call my bubble gum movie “Carboard Memories.”

As I see it, it’s about a ”Mad Men” candy company in the 1950s, and since it’s a Hollywood film, there’s a sweet love story wrapped around it, with a colorful crew of baseball stat wonks and card designers and salesmen who go out to games and visit clubhouses and get top players to agree to have their photos taken and appear on the company’s cards.

Most of all, it’s a romantic love letter 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.

Could a movie like “Cardboard Memories” hit a home run with the public?

1 COMMENT

  1. Re this:

    “After hearing all these Sy Berger and Woody Gelman stories, I had an idea: a Hollywood feature movie about four colorful Brooklyn guys, sons of a Jewish immigrant from Russia, whose every day humor and joi de vivre went all the way to the top, and shepherded the modern-day baseball card into American culture.

    “I want to call my bubble gum movie ‘Carboard Memories.'”

    Sounds like a natural screenplay for Michael Chabon.

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