1951 Topps Blue Back #11 Johnny Groth
About Johnny Groth
Groth opened the 1950 season with eight straight hits in April and struck out only 27 times in 566 at-bats. Detroit held first place into mid-September and finished three games behind the Yankees, with Virgil Trucks sidelined for most of the year. Manager Red Rolfe kept pressing for more home runs from his lineup, and Groth's last of the season came on August 28 against the Athletics. The next one arrived on July 21, 1951.
Johnny Groth was a right-handed outfielder from Chicago who played 15 major league seasons between 1946 and 1960, eleven of them with Detroit. After a Navy stint at Great Lakes, where Bob Feller ran the baseball team, he signed with the Tigers and was billed as the next Joe DiMaggio. He hit .340 with 40 home runs for Buffalo in 1948, and in 1949 he hit .293 before a broken wrist ended his season in August. His best year was 1950, when he hit .306 with 12 home runs, 85 RBI, 173 hits and 95 runs, playing all 157 Tigers games. In December 1952 Detroit sent him to the Browns in the Virgil Trucks trade, and he then passed through the White Sox, Senators and Athletics before returning to Detroit in 1957. He retired with a .279 average and 60 home runs in 1,248 games, then scouted for the Braves and Cardinals until 1990. He died in Palm Beach in 2021.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 149 | 0 | 17 | 35 | 20 | 15 | 42 | 20 | 0 |
| SGC | 10 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-10-19. Half grades fold down for both graders (8.5→8); PSA qualified slabs (OC, ST, PD, MC and the like) are not counted.
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Related cards
More Detroit Tigers cards:
- Blue Back #23 Dizzy Trout
- Blue Back #40 Vic Wertz
- Blue Back #46 Gerry Priddy
- Major League All-Star Hoot Evers
- Major League All-Star George Kell
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1951 Topps Blue Back #11 card?
It is Blue Back #11 in the 135-card 1951 Topps Baseball checklist, picturing Johnny Groth of the Detroit Tigers.
How many cards are in the 1951 Topps Baseball set?
135 cards across five issues - the Red Backs and Blue Backs (52 each), nine Team cards, and eleven each of Connie Mack's All-Stars and the Major League All-Stars. With the Zernial and Holmes variations and both versions of each Team card the master set is 146. All 135 count toward the full set; Jim Konstanty, Robin Roberts and Eddie Stanky, the three rarest Major League All-Stars, are so rarely seen that collectors often count a complete set as 132 without them.
Sources: PSA, BaseballCardPedia, Trading Card Database, Baseball-Reference, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-26.