1961 Topps #227 Juan Pizarro
About Juan Pizarro
Card #227 is the first Topps issue to list Pizarro with Chicago. The White Sox landed him in a December 1960 swap: Milwaukee sent him and Joey Jay to Cincinnati for Roy McMillan, and the Reds passed him along with Cal McLish for Gene Freese. He was 24 and the youngest arm in the rotation, yet he finished 14-7 with a 3.05 ERA, twelve complete games, and club highs of 188 strikeouts and 194.2 innings.
Juan Roman Pizarro Cordova, a hard-throwing left-hander born February 7, 1937, in Santurce, Puerto Rico, signed with the Milwaukee Braves in February 1956 and reached the majors in May 1957 at twenty years old. He pitched in the World Series that fall for a Milwaukee club that beat the Yankees, but he never held a steady place on a deep Braves staff. In December 1960 Milwaukee shipped him to Cincinnati, which passed him straight along to the Chicago White Sox, and in Chicago he finally arrived: an American League All-Star in 1963 and again in 1964, and the ace of a rotation that finished one game behind New York in 1964. A torn tendon in his pitching shoulder wrecked 1965, and from 1966 on he worked mainly in relief, closing out an 18-season, eight-team career in 1974. Nicknamed Terin as a boy, after neighborhood kids decided he looked like the hero of the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, he was also one of the finest pitchers the Puerto Rican Winter League has ever had and one of the first men chosen for the Puerto Rican Baseball Hall of Fame. He died in 2021.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 268 | 0 | 33 | 130 | 69 | 25 | 6 | 5 | 0 |
| SGC | 6 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 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: #7 Chicago White Sox Team
More Chicago White Sox cards:
- #30 Nellie Fox
- #56 Russ Kemmerer
- #79 Joe Ginsberg
- #90 Jerry Staley
- #124 J.C. Martin
- #132 Al Lopez
- #152 Earl Torgeson
- #157 Cal McLish
- #170 Al Smith
- #185 Herb Score
- #205 Bill Pierce
- #247 Billy Goodman
- #271 Jim Landis
- #285 Sherm Lollar
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #227 card?
It is card #227 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Juan Pizarro of the Chicago White Sox.
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.