1961 Topps #8 Dick Williams
About Dick Williams
Card #8 puts Williams at the front of the 1961 set's first series, and the back sums up a genuinely useful 1960 with the Kansas City Athletics: a .288 average, 121 hits, 31 doubles, 12 home runs and 65 RBI in 127 games, worked mostly at third base with long stretches at first base and in the outfield. It was his second full season in Kansas City and the last time he would clear 400 at-bats. Just as the new season opened, on April 12, 1961, the Athletics shipped him to Baltimore along with pitcher Dick Hall in exchange for Chuck Essegian and Jerry Walker.
Richard Hirschfeld Williams played parts of 13 major-league seasons between 1951 and 1964, a well-traveled utility man for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics and Boston Red Sox. He finished with a .260 average, 768 hits, 70 home runs and 331 RBI in 1,023 games, appearing 257 times at third base, 188 at first and most of the rest in the outfield. A shoulder separation suffered on a diving catch in August 1952 permanently weakened his throwing arm and pushed him toward the versatile, alert-minded game that defined him in the dugout. Boston released him in October 1964. He took over the Red Sox' Triple-A Toronto Maple Leafs and won Governors' Cup titles in 1965 and 1966, then inherited a big-league club that had finished ninth in the ten-team American League and drove it to the 1967 'Impossible Dream' pennant, a race settled on the final weekend and a seven-game World Series loss to St. Louis. Across 21 seasons he managed six franchises, winning back-to-back World Series with the Oakland Athletics in 1972 and 1973 and a National League pennant with the 1984 San Diego Padres, finishing with 1,571 managerial wins. The Veterans Committee elected him to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in December 2007; he was inducted in 2008.
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 | 343 | 2 | 27 | 155 | 85 | 40 | 15 | 17 | 2 |
| SGC | 32 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 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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Related cards
Team card: #297 Kansas City Athletics Team
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- #94 Johnny Kucks
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- #119 A's Big Armor
- #143 Russ Snyder
- #177 Don Larsen
- #197 Dick Hall
- #199 Bob Boyd
- #212 Haywood Sullivan
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #8 card?
It is card #8 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dick Williams 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.