1961 Topps #294 Don Blasingame
About Don Blasingame
Card #294 lands in the 1961 set's fourth series and shows Blasingame in the San Francisco flannels he first wore after the December 1959 trade that sent Daryl Spencer and Leon Wagner to St. Louis. The back reports his 1960 line, a fifty-four point drop from his .289 the year before: .235 over 136 games with 123 hits, 12 doubles, 2 home runs and 31 RBI. Cincinnati traded for him in late April 1961, so the Giants uniform on the front was already out of date.
Don Blasingame, a native of Corinth, Mississippi, signed with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1953 and entered pro ball as a shortstop before being taught second base. His speed with the Class AA Houston Buffaloes in 1954 - a .315 season with a career-best 34 stolen bases - got him tagged "Blazing-game," soon shortened to "The Blazer." He debuted on September 20, 1955, took the second-base job in 1956, and made his only All-Star team in 1958, pinch-hitting for Warren Spahn. Trades then carried him to San Francisco, Cincinnati and Washington, and the Senators sold him to Kansas City in August 1966, where he played his last big league game. At his retirement no big leaguer had grounded into fewer double plays per at-bat, a mark Don Buford later passed. Blasingame then spent fifteen years in Japan as a player, coach and manager for the Nankai Hawks, also coaching Hiroshima and managing the Hanshin Tigers, before joining the Philadelphia Phillies in player development. He entered the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1980 and died of a heart attack in Fountain Hills, Arizona, in 2005.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 218 | 0 | 9 | 83 | 74 | 31 | 8 | 13 | 0 |
| SGC | 10 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 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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Related cards
Team card: #167 San Francisco Giants Team
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- #96 Billy O'Dell
- #114 Hobie Landrith
- #150 Willie Mays
- #161 Sherman Jones
- #188 Jim Marshall
- #203 Eddie Bressoud
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- #237 Billy Loes
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #294 card?
It is card #294 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Don Blasingame of the San Francisco Giants.
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.