1961 Topps #87 Joe Amalfitano
About Joe Amalfitano
Card #87 sits in the first series of the 1961 set, a plain low number. At 27 he played 109 games for San Francisco, 95 at second base, hitting .255 with 44 walks, 23 RBI and a career-best 64 runs. On April 30 at Milwaukee he talked a queasy Willie Mays into the lineup; Mays borrowed back a bat he had given Amalfitano and hit four home runs.
John Joseph Amalfitano, born January 23, 1934 in San Pedro, California, was a right-handed infielder who played ten major league seasons between 1954 and 1967. The New York Giants signed him as a bonus baby in February 1954, and the rule of that era pinned him to the big-league bench for two years; he was sitting in the bullpen at the Polo Grounds when Willie Mays made The Catch in the 1954 World Series. Four seasons in the minors followed, and he came back to the National League in 1960 with the San Francisco Giants, later playing for the Houston Colt .45s and Chicago Cubs. Mostly a second baseman, with long stretches at third and a few games at short, he batted .244 over 643 games with 418 hits, nine home runs and 123 RBI. His last game came June 27, 1967, and he moved straight into coaching: parts of three seasons managing the Cubs from 1979 to 1981 (66-116), sixteen years as the Los Angeles Dodgers' third base coach including the 1988 World Series title, and a long closing run teaching infielders in the Giants organization before retiring in January 2021.
Sources: Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac · Retrosheet · MLB.com
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 464 | 7 | 69 | 241 | 97 | 24 | 13 | 11 | 2 |
| SGC | 13 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 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: #167 San Francisco Giants Team
More San Francisco Giants cards:
- #31 Bob Schmidt
- #55 Jim Davenport
- #72 Stu Miller
- #96 Billy O'Dell
- #114 Hobie Landrith
- #150 Willie Mays
- #161 Sherman Jones
- #188 Jim Marshall
- #203 Eddie Bressoud
- #220 Al Dark
- #237 Billy Loes
- #258 Jack Sanford
- #279 Jose Pagan
- #294 Don Blasingame
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #87 card?
It is card #87 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Joe Amalfitano 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.