Vintage equipment: 1961 Topps

I found some interesting (to me, anyway) equipment writing on a few 1961 cards. There were definitely a lot more visible bat knobs in this set. A lot of players had their numbers on the bat, but only Repulski had his first name. It must have been disconcerting for someone to come across a bat in the rack that was marked RIP.

 

 Tito Francona grabbed a second bat for his photo. Along with his own, he's got #10 Vic Power.

  

Norm Siebern has two bats as well (though you can only see the knob of one of them). One has his own #7, perhaps in tribute to his former Yankees teammate Mickey Mantle? The other one is marked GS. There was nobody on the KC A's with those initials. He's in Yankee Stadium, but no Yankees had those initials either. Any ideas what GS might stand for?

Finally, there's Gene Oliver. Oliver made his big league debut with the Cards in 1959, but spent all of 1960 at AAA Rochester. His mitt says "MATT". There were no catchers named Matt on the Cardinals in 1959, 1960 or 1961, nor at the Cardinals AAA teams when he played there (in 1961 they shifted to Portland). There was a Ray Katt on the Cardinals in '59 (and AAA in '60 and '61). However, that really looks like an M, not a K, to me. I wonder whose mitt it was?