1961 Topps #231 Dick Drott
About Dick Drott
By 1961 arm trouble had made Drott a swingman rather than a starter, four years past his rookie splash. He pitched 35 games, started only eight, finished twelve others, and came out 1-4 with a 4.22 ERA over 98 innings. It was his last season in a Cubs uniform: on October 10, 1961 the expansion Houston Colt .45s took him seventh overall in the regular phase, at the $75,000 price. This card, number 231 in the 1961 Topps set, sits in the third series, and pictures him with the Chicago Cubs.
Richard Fred Drott, the right-hander they called Hummer, came out of Western Hills High School in Cincinnati and signed with the Cubs in June 1954 at seventeen. He worked through Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Burlington, led the Pacific Coast League with 184 strikeouts for the Los Angeles Angels in 1956, and reached Wrigley Field the next April. The rookie year was a jolt: 15-11, 3.58, 229 innings, 170 strikeouts, third in Rookie of the Year voting, and fifteen strikeouts against the Milwaukee Braves on May 26, 1957, a Cubs single-game record that stood until Kerry Wood fanned twenty in 1998. Control was the catch; his 129 walks led the majors. Rogers Hornsby called him one of the finest pitching prospects to come up in the National League in years. Arm trouble answered. Drott fell to 7-11 in 1958, an inflamed tendon and a demotion to Fort Worth wrecked 1959, and he went 0-6 in 1960 and 1-4 in 1961. Houston took him seventh overall in the October 1961 expansion draft; he was 2-12 for the Colt .45s in 1963 and never pitched in the majors again. He finished 27-46 with a 4.78 ERA, then spent his last twenty years running youth baseball for the Chicago Park District. He died of stomach cancer in 1985 at forty-nine.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 327 | 1 | 28 | 182 | 75 | 29 | 5 | 7 | 0 |
| SGC | 9 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #231 card?
It is card #231 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dick Drott of the Chicago Cubs.
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.