1961 Topps #197 Dick Hall
About Dick Hall
Kansas City sent Hall and Dick Williams to Baltimore on April 12, 1961, for Jerry Walker and Chuck Essegian, and card #197 caught him a step behind the move, still shown with the Kansas City Athletics. It sits in the set's third print series, an ordinary mid-run number. The Orioles gave him 29 appearances, 13 of them starts, and he answered with 122 1/3 innings at a 3.09 ERA while beginning the slide from rotation work toward the spot-start and relief job that would carry him another decade.
Richard Wallace Hall was born September 27, 1930, in St. Louis, grew up mostly in New Jersey and around Baltimore, and left Swarthmore College with an economics degree and eleven letters in five sports. Branch Rickey signed him as a hitter, and Hall broke in as a Pittsburgh outfielder in 1952; handed a regular outfield job in 1954, he batted .239, and in 1955 he began the move to the mound, pitching only from 1957 on. He hurt his arm on a knuckleball Rickey had suggested, and the sore arm plus a bout of hepatitis cost him most of 1957 and all of 1958, but he returned to win the 1959 Pacific Coast League MVP award. Traded to Kansas City that December and to Baltimore in April 1961, the 6-foot-6 right-hander turned into one of the game's great control artists, nicknamed Turkey for his odd pitching motion. He was an Oriole through 1966, a Phillie in 1967 and 1968, and an Oriole again from 1969 through 1971, a World Series winner in 1966, when a bad elbow kept him out of the games, and in 1970, when he saved Game Two. A working accountant and CPA, Hall joined the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame in 1989 and died in 2023 at 92.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 293 | 2 | 30 | 154 | 66 | 29 | 8 | 4 | 0 |
| SGC | 17 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 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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- #143 Russ Snyder
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #197 card?
It is card #197 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dick Hall of the Kansas City Athletics.
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.