1961 Topps #162 Jay Hook
About Jay Hook
Card #162 in the 1961 Topps set is a print series 2 card. The Cincinnati Reds uniform and the stat back point at 1960, the best year he had: 11-18 with a 4.50 ERA and 10 complete games over 222 innings, including the only two shutouts of his career. One of those, a 9-0 two-hitter at Milwaukee on September 20, 1960, was credited with slowing the Braves' chase of the pennant Pittsburgh clinched. The 1961 season the card was sold in went sideways on him: he caught the mumps in the spring, pitched only 22 games, and watched the Reds' World Series loss to the Yankees from the dugout, never throwing a pitch but collecting a league championship ring and a postseason share.
James Wesley Hook was a right-handed pitcher, born November 18, 1936 in Waukegan, Illinois and raised in nearby Grayslake, where his parents ran the town pharmacy. A three-sport star at Grayslake High School, he went to Northwestern University on an academic scholarship and played baseball and basketball there. Cincinnati, then still called the Redlegs, signed him in August 1957 for a reported $65,000 under the bonus rule in its final season, so the 20-year-old went from campus to the big-league roster and debuted that September. He spent most of 1958 and 1959 in the minors at Nashville and Seattle, then joined the Reds' regular rotation in 1960. Taken by the expansion New York Mets in the October 1961 draft, he won the first game in that franchise's history and pitched for New York into May 1964. Casey Stengel called him Professor because he went back to Northwestern for classes every offseason; he finished an engineering degree there and a master's in thermodynamics. Eight seasons left him 29-62 with a 5.23 ERA and 394 strikeouts in 752 2/3 innings. He retired at 28 to join Chrysler, later held senior management jobs at Rockwell International and Masco, and taught industrial management at Northwestern.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 326 | 0 | 24 | 114 | 133 | 36 | 11 | 8 | 0 |
| SGC | 20 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 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 #162 card?
It is card #162 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jay Hook of the Cincinnati Reds.
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.