1961 Topps #138 Danny Murtaugh
About this card
Cards #131-139 and #219-226 are the manager subset: seventeen skippers in the same portrait layout as the players.
About Danny Murtaugh
Topps gave Murtaugh two cards in 1961. Number 138 is his managers-subset card, a second-series issue and the easy one to find. Number 567 is the prize: a high number out of the seventh series that places him in the set's Sporting News All-Star subset as a manager rather than a player. Both cards trade on Pittsburgh's 1960 championship, but the season they were sold in did not cooperate. The Pirates went 75-79 and finished sixth in the National League, and Murtaugh spent the summer watching a title club come back down to earth.
Danny Murtaugh spent 29 years with the Pittsburgh Pirates as a player, coach, manager, and front-office man. A native of Chester, Pennsylvania, he broke in as a second baseman with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1941, leading the National League in stolen bases as a rookie. He joined the Army in August 1943 and served in the infantry in Europe. After a 1947 season spent mostly in the minors in the Boston Braves organization, the Braves traded him to Pittsburgh that November, and he played for the Pirates through 1951, his best year coming in 1948 when he hit .290 with 71 runs batted in. He managed New Orleans in the Pirates' farm system, returned to Pittsburgh as a coach, and took over as manager in August 1957 with the club 36-67. He held the job across four separate terms through 1976, winning World Series titles in 1960 and 1971 and two Sporting News Manager of the Year awards. Heart trouble pushed him out of the dugout more than once, but the Pirates kept bringing him back. He suffered a stroke and died in December 1976, about two months after his final retirement; the Pirates retired his number 40 in 1977 and put him in the team's own Hall of Fame in 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · MLB.com
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 402 | 0 | 4 | 113 | 169 | 74 | 26 | 16 | 0 |
| SGC | 22 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 11 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-09-04. PSA counts are straight grades only; PSA half grades (PSA 1.5 among them) and qualified slabs are not included. SGC half grades fold down (8.5→8). Slabs of the two cards printed #463 are joined by description, never by number alone.
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Related cards
More Danny Murtaugh in this set: #567 Sporting News All-Stars
Team card: #554 Pittsburgh Pirates Team
More Pittsburgh Pirates cards:
- #1 Dick Groat
- #22 Clem Labine
- #54 Earl Francis
- #70 Bill Virdon
- #82 Joe Christopher
- #100 Harvey Haddix
- #126 Dick Stuart
- #149 Bob Oldis
- #165 Gino Cimoli
- #181 Fred Green
- #204 Bob Skinner
- #230 Don Hoak
- #242 Hal W. Smith
- #250 Buc Hill Aces
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #138 card?
It is card #138 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Danny Murtaugh of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Cards #131-139 and #219-226 are the manager subset: seventeen skippers in the same portrait layout as the players.
How many cards are in the 1961 Topps Baseball set?
587 cards, tracked as 596 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 589, but #426, #587 and #588 were never issued and two different cards were printed #463 - Jack Fisher and the Milwaukee Braves Team card, catalogued 463b - and eight cards carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, The Topps Archives, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-05.