1961 Topps #224 Joe Gordon
About this card
Cards #131-139 and #219-226 are the manager subset: seventeen skippers in the same portrait layout as the players.
About Joe Gordon
Number 224 belongs to the 1961 managers subset, a third-series portrait of Gordon in his first and only year running the Kansas City Athletics. He reached the job by an odd road: midway through 1960 Cleveland traded him to Detroit for Tigers skipper Jimmy Dykes, the only straight manager-for-manager swap in big-league history, and he left the Tigers that winter for Kansas City. The tenure was short. With Charlie Finley owning the club and old Cleveland antagonist Frank Lane installed as general manager, Gordon was fired on June 19, 1961 at 26-33 and replaced by player-manager Hank Bauer. The card freezes a manager who was gone by midsummer.
Joe Gordon, nicknamed "Flash" for the comic-book hero who shared his surname, was the outstanding second baseman of the 1940s across an eleven-year career with the New York Yankees (1938-1943, 1946) and Cleveland Indians (1947-1950). A University of Oregon man who also competed there in gymnastics, he turned that training into famously acrobatic work around the bag. His 25 home runs as a 1938 rookie broke Charlie Gehringer's American League record for second basemen, and Gordon kept raising his own mark, to 32 in 1948, a standard that held until Bret Boone hit 36 in 2001. He was a nine-time All-Star, won the 1942 American League Most Valuable Player award over Triple Crown winner Ted Williams while batting .322, and played on five World Series champions: four in New York and one in Cleveland, where he led the 1948 title club in home runs and runs batted in. Two years in the Army Air Force cost him the 1944 and 1945 seasons. He retired with 253 home runs, 975 runs batted in and a .268 average, then managed four big-league clubs. Gordon was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2009, thirty-one years after his death.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 391 | 0 | 43 | 194 | 95 | 38 | 15 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 30 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 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
More Kansas City Athletics cards:
- #8 Dick Williams
- #24 Ken Johnson
- #39 Leo Posada
- #57 Marv Throneberry
- #94 Johnny Kucks
- #106 Whitey Herzog
- #119 A's Big Armor
- #143 Russ Snyder
- #177 Don Larsen
- #197 Dick Hall
- #199 Bob Boyd
- #212 Haywood Sullivan
- #248 Ed Keegan
- #267 Norm Siebern
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #224 card?
It is card #224 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Joe Gordon of the Kansas City Athletics. Cards #131-139 and #219-226 are the manager subset: seventeen skippers in the same portrait layout as the players.
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.