1958 Topps #342 Jim Brosnan
About Jim Brosnan
Jim Brosnan's 1958 Topps card, #342, pictures him with the Chicago Cubs and comes from Series Four of the 494-card set. It sits between the Pittsburgh Pirates team card at #341 and Orlando Cepeda at #343. The year before, he went 5-5 with a 3.38 ERA in 41 games, the best mark on the Cubs, and on May 20, 1958 Chicago sent him to St. Louis for Alvin Dark.
Jim Brosnan (born October 24, 1929, in Cincinnati, Ohio) was a right-handed pitcher who worked mostly in relief across nine big-league seasons for the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago White Sox, debuting in 1954 and then sticking for good from 1956 through 1963. A 6-foot-4 fastball-and-slider reliever known as an unusual intellectual - he kept books in his locker, smoked a pipe, and wore horn-rimmed glasses on the mound - he finished 55-47 with a 3.54 ERA in 385 games, his career-low 2.36 ERA coming for Cincinnati in 1960. He is remembered as much for a new kind of sports book: his diary of the 1959 season, The Long Season, was one of the first unvarnished, self-written accounts of a big-league player's year, praised by columnist Red Smith as caustic and candid, and enough of an affront to some peers that Joe Garagiola called its author a kooky beatnik. He followed it with Pennant Race, a journal of 1961. Signed by the Cubs at 17 in 1946, he lost two years to the U.S. Army at Fort Meade before returning to the minors. He attended Xavier University, kept writing for national magazines after his playing days, worked as a Chicago-area sportscaster, and died in 2014.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball Almanac · BaseballCardPedia
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 194 | 0 | 6 | 64 | 64 | 28 | 22 | 10 | 0 |
| SGC | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-07-09. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8). PSA counts are straight-graded (the +/Q qualifier rows are excluded).
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1958 Topps Jim Brosnan card?
It is card #342 of the 1958 Topps Baseball set - Topps' sixth flagship issue: 494 cards numbered 1-495 (#145 was never issued), with die-cut player photos on solid-color backgrounds and the first team logos on Topps fronts. It pictures Jim Brosnan, Chicago Cubs.
How many graded copies of the 1958 Topps Jim Brosnan #342 are there?
PSA has graded 194 copies and SGC 6 as of the 2026-07-09 snapshot. Population is a scarcity guide, not a price - high-grade 1958s are notoriously tough because of the set's chronic centering and print-quality issues.
How many cards are in the 1958 Topps set?
494 issued cards, numbered 1-495 - #145 (Ed Bouchee) was pulled before release and never issued, leaving a permanent gap. The PSA master census counts 534 items: the 494 base cards plus 33 yellow-letter variations, 4 numerical checklist-back team cards, the 'Herrer' #433 error, and 2 unnumbered ad cards.
Sources: PSA CardFacts, Beckett, BaseballCardPedia, Baseball-Reference, PSA & SGC population reports, and hobby press-sheet research (Topps Archives, 2026). Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-09-30.