In the autumn of 1951, Sy Berger, a 28-year-old veteran of World War II, designed the 1952 Topps baseball card set with Woody Gelman on the kitchen table of his apartment on Alabama Avenue in Brooklyn.
Berger started what would later be known as one of the greatest baseball card manufactures in the world. Spurred on by a new retail hobby of collecting the likeness of the folk heroes of America’s pastime, he help start a trend that would become as big as the....