[thecatspajamas]

Not necessarily Jim Rowe, as many photographers used that same standard pre-preprinted Kodak RPPC stock. Not necessarily NOT Jim Rowe either though, and very well could have been produced by him as he was one of, if not the most prolific producers of baseball-related RPPCs during his time. It does lack his usual penned notation of the subject on the back, but I don't know if he did that all the time. Being so prolific, there are probably RPPCs produced by others floating around out there that are automatically attributed to Rowe just based on the Kodak back, but any photographer could have ordered and used the same standard RPPC stock (standard RPPC back printing was applied by Kodak as part of the manufacturing process, not the photographer).

As far as I know, there is no way to know whether the RPPC was produced around the time it was shot, or later (on up to the 1980's as Tom C says). That back was first produced around 1950 and remained the standard Kodak RPPC back for the next 40 years or so, which really puts a cramp in any attempts to date these things. Sometimes the 2nd or 3rd generation images are very obvious due to the loss of clarity and contrast (fading to an almost uniform gray in the worst cases). This one doesn't look to be as clear-cut a case, but based on the scans, I would lean towards it being a 2nd generation print re-shot from a larger original (though I might change my mind if I saw it in person).

As far as re-issuing RPPCs, the practice depends on who was issuing it to start with. Many photographers, such as George Brace, Norman Paulson, J.D. McCarthy (though most of his were printed, not RPPC), and others made a living by selling primarily to the players that they photographed, the players' family, and perhaps the occasional collector or autograph hound looking for printed images of their favorite players. Prints of all sizes were produced essentially on-demand to fill orders, with organized numbered sets or annual issues being an odd occurrence rather than the norm. And the same images were often available in a variety of sizes and finishes, full-bleed (image all the way to the edges) or white-bordered, etc (for a price, some would even hand-color a black-and-white print for you). So if the photographer is working with the original negative, and using the same RPPC stock for decades, it's pretty much impossible to tell whether a print was produced in the 1960's, 1970's or 1980's.