1961 Topps #324 Hank Aguirre


About Hank Aguirre
His 1961 card reports a 1960 season spent almost entirely in the Detroit bullpen: 5-3 with a 2.85 ERA and 10 saves over 37 appearances, only six of them starts. He finished 18 games and struck out 80 in 94.2 innings, more than double any strikeout total he had posted before. Card #324 sits in the fourth series, an ordinary base number.
Hank Aguirre was a 6-foot-4 left-hander who pitched 16 major-league seasons from 1955 to 1970 for the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs - ten of those years in Detroit, acquired with catcher Jim Hegan in a February 1958 trade. Born in Azusa, California, to a father who had emigrated from Jalisco, Mexico, he was called 'Mex' for that Mexican descent. Detroit moved him from the bullpen to the rotation in 1962, and he led the major leagues with a 2.21 ERA, a third of a run better than Sandy Koufax, went 16-8 and was named to both All-Star teams that summer, the only All-Star honors of his career. He finished 75-72 with a 3.25 ERA and was helpless at the plate: a lifetime .085 average and no home runs. Aguirre later coached for the Cubs and worked in the Oakland Athletics organization, then founded Mexican Industries, a Detroit auto-parts supplier that grew from eight employees to more than a thousand. He died of prostate cancer in 1994.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2) · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 299 | 0 | 11 | 130 | 108 | 26 | 15 | 9 | 0 |
| SGC | 12 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 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: #51 Detroit Tigers Team
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- #95 Norm Cash
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- #151 Jim Donohue
- #171 Paul Foytack
- #192 Dick Brown
- #208 Larry Osborne
- #223 Bob Scheffing
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- #251 Bill Bruton
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #324 card?
It is card #324 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Hank Aguirre of the Detroit Tigers.
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.