Here in Part III of this multi-installment article, we will continue the work of identifying the long-forgotten cartoonists who drew all the little pictures on the backs of Topps baseball cards decades ago.
Readers should check out Part I, which introduced Jack Davis and four other cartoonists whose work on Topps baseball cards was previously documented but largely unknown: Murray Olderman, Jack Kirby, Irwin Hasen, and Bhob Stewart. Likewise, see Part II, which identified the work of three more cartoonists who were known to have associations with other departments at Topps, but turn out to have worked on baseball cards as well: Wesley Morse, Bob Powell, and Tom Sutton. Part IV, forthcoming, will put a name to the Topps baseball cartoons of 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, and 1982, and perhaps a few others, depending on how confident I’m feeling about them.
Here in Part III, we will identify the last of the three contributors to the 1960 set. My identification will be based entirely on stylistic comparisons, as I do not have any external corroboration that the artist I will name ever worked in any capacity for Topps. Here the work of identification becomes a little more difficult, and tentative, and it requires more pictures and detailed descriptions. As always, differences of opinion are welcome, while evidence that contradicts my assertions is even more welcome.
* * * * * * * *
Back in Part I of this article, I promised to identify the creator of this 1960 Topps #262 cartoon of Joe Nuxhall:
As I noted there, Jack Davis drew the great majority of the 1960 cartoons, while Jack Kirby contributed 60 others. A third artist participated in the 1960 set, producing 76 cartoons, including that of Nuxhall, exclusively within the third series: cards #199, 201-207, 209-229, 231-241, 243-246, 248-259, 262-263, 265-267, 269-273, 276-279, and 281-286. The drawing style is quick and informal, the proportions are a bit squat, the players look somewhat lumpy in their baggy uniforms, and the bats tend to have a dimple in the fat end:
These cartoons reminded me of the work of the popular sports cartoonist ‘Amadee’, that is, Amadee Wohlschlaeger (1911–2014), illustrator for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1932 to 1981 and longtime contributor to The Sporting News. Amadee’s style, in the mold of the great Willard Mullin (1902–1978), the “Sports Cartoonist of the Century”, utilized a formula that was ubiquitous in the sports pages of newspapers throughout the Fifties and Sixties – realistic player portraits combined with borders filled with smaller cartoons of players performing athletic feats, enacting sight gags, or providing pithy comments:
But the closer I looked at Amadee’s signed works, the more I sensed something wasn’t quite right (namely, me). As I was compiling pictures for this series of articles, I eventually realized that my evidence for Amadee wasn’t convincing, and the style of the Topps cartoons in question was much closer to that of another noted sports cartoonist of that era, who likewise combined realistic Mullinesque portraits with smaller ballplayers in the margins, but whose approach was considerably sketchier, and a bit funnier, with dumpier little figures.
Eventually I became convinced that the cartoonist of the 1960 Topps Joe Nuxhall (#282) and 75 other cards in the third series was Lou Darvas (1913–1987), who began drawing covers for The Sporting News shortly after World War II, and who became a mainstay of the sports scene in his hometown Cleveland. Here he is in 1964, sharing one of his cartoons with a local football celebrity:
Below is a typical example of Darvas’ work for The Sporting News, from early 1954:
I knew that the 1960 Topps cartoons in question were close kin of Darvas’ marginal figures, but perhaps not an exact match, being smaller and even more quickly drawn. But the script of the captions sure looked right, nothing like Amadee’s. Then I found a smoking, er… rosin bag.
Bear with me here. I thought it was rather odd that in two of the 1960 Topps cartoons, even the most bare-bones sketches of a pitcher’s mound included a rosin bag on the far slope (illustrated above). Now, any cartoonist, including Amadee, might include a rosin bag once in a while – no big deal, right? But Darvas kept putting them in his cartoons, almost like it was his “thing”. Here are five examples from his cartoons in The Sporting News and other venues during the 1950s and early 60s:
Then I noticed that in the cartoon for 1960 Topps card #202 of Fred Kipp, the artist actually bothered to label the rosin bag “rosin”. Who does that???
Well, Lou Darvas did exactly that in an illustration he made for The Sporting News in 1966 (below), announcing the newspaper’s selection of its honorary post-season All-Star Team. Look behind the mound, just to the left of Sandy Koufax:
Sure enough, it’s another rosin bag, helpfully labeled “resin”.
Rosin or resin? On the baseball diamonds of yore it was the same thing, and before you tell me it wasn’t, please read this New York Times headline carefully:
Okay, let’s think about the 1966 cartoon for a moment: the artist’s assignment was to draw ten convincing caricatures of the N.L. All-Stars, all arrayed around a diamond with a grumpy umpire, and yet he took the time to draw the rosin bag – and to label it! That’s a signature quirk if I ever saw one.
Still not convinced that Darvas is our cartoonist? Here’s another smoking, er… sportswriter.
In the cartoon for Casey Stengel’s card #227 – one of the sixteen manager cards that are perhaps the most noteworthy of Darvas’ works in the 1960 set – the evocative managerial caricature shows Casey making much too much sense as he speaks with a sportswriter. This middle-aged reporter, smoking a cigarette while wearing thick glasses and a jaunty trilby, was sort of a stock character for Darvas.
He appears again in a signed Darvas cartoon of 1965 called “Spring Fever,” in which the reporter, now wearing a floral print shirt, has just heard from each American League manager that his club will contend for the pennant. He also appears in a cartoon for The Sporting News (March 16, 1960) that brings Shakespearean verse to baseball situations, and yet again (I think) on Gene Green’s 1960 card #269, wearing the same floral print shirt during a trip to California:
Ultimately, this character’s sartorial selection is an homage to Willard Mullin’s popular “Brooklyn Bum”, who famously donned a floral shirt when he transplanted himself to the West Coast:
Thus, as it stands, the first Topps set for which we seem to know the artists for the entire run of cartoons is that of 1960, where Jack Davis, Jack Kirby, and Lou Darvas appear to have done them all.
Darvas was also responsible for one of the truly beloved funnies of the early Topps era, on card #262 in the 1960 set, which recounts Hank Bauer’s World Series exploits: as the former Yankee crushes another clutch hit, the dejected catcher, presumably a home-grown Brooklyn Dodger, looks straight out at us, wide-eyed, and mutters “He’s moider”.
Will card collectors centuries from now even recognize a Brooklyn accent?
* * * * * * * *
Next time, another Topps cartoonist unveiled!
Continue to Part IV.
Eric White can be contacted at ewhite1455@gmail.com
