The Topps Minor League Player of the Year Award was presented by The Topps Company in conjunction with Minor League Baseball to a minor-league player deemed to have had the most outstanding season. It was awarded annually beginning in 1960, but does not appear to have been issued since 2013. A newspaper report of the 1972 result, the first tie in the award's history, noted that winners were selected via a poll of minor league baseball writers.

John George Taylor Spink was the publisher of The Sporting News from 1914 until his death in 1962. He inherited the weekly American baseball newspaper from his father Charles Spink, younger brother of its founder Alfred H. Spink. In 1962, the Baseball Writers' Association of America established an annual J. G. Taylor Spink Award and named him the first recipient; Spink's name was removed from the award in February 2021 due to his history of supporting segregated baseball.