Sy Berger

Topps Berger's first day at Topps was also the first day that Topps began to produce Bazooka Gum. In the autumn of 1951, Berger, then aged 28, designed the 1952 Topps baseball card set with Woody Gelman on the kitchen table of his apartment on Alabama Avenue in Brooklyn. The card design included a player's name, photo, facsimile autograph, team name and logo on the front; and the player's height, weight, bats, throws, birthplace, birthday, stats and a short biography on the back.

In an interview, Berger noted that the cards did not contain a reference to the particular year, because, he recalls thinking, "maybe if this thing is a dud, how are we going to get rid of the cards?" The basic design is still in use today. Berger would work for Topps for 50 years (1947–97), achieve the position of vice-president of sports & licensing, and paid in merchandise, like refrigerators and carpeting. Evidence has subsequently revealed what is almost certainly the true whereabouts of these 1952 Topps high-series cards and casts great doubt that Berger's story was entirely truthful, particularly the part about dumping the cards into the ocean. In the mid-1980's, once it was discovered that Topps had given license and supplied the original printing plates for the printing of largely parallel sets of Topps baseball cards in Venezuela between 1959-1968, a group of sports card dealers went to Caracas multiple times to buy up the newly discovered 'Venezuela Topps' cards. They ran ads in the local newspaper and had people lined up to sell their cards, and many showed up with 1952 Topps high-series cards. The cards that allegedly were dumped were almost certainly the same cards that were shipped to Venezuela and sold there. Perhaps this happened around 1960 if we are to believe that date from Berger’s highly suspect story. To this day, those 1952 Topps high-series cards still occasionally turn up in Venezuela.

At 81, Berger was still busy in various activities, including advising Topps, representing his old friend Willie Mays, playing with his grandchildren and an occasional round of golf.

In 1988, he was honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame.