1961 Topps #39 Leo Posada
About Leo Posada
Posada came out of a shortened spring in 1961 with Kansas City's right field job, beating out veteran Hank Bauer for a place in Joe Gordon's Opening Day lineup. A .190 start sent him back to Shreveport for a stretch in May, but he returned and played 116 games, more of them in left field than any other Athletic, hitting .253 with seven home runs and 53 RBIs in 344 at-bats. It was the only year he was anything like a regular. Card 39 in the 1961 Topps set is a first-series card, and it is his recognized rookie card; the back sums up his ten-game 1960 cameo with the line "Everyone was delighted at the fine hitting he did."
Leopoldo Jesus Posada Hernandez was born in Havana on April 1, 1934, and came to baseball by way of a bicycle. A national champion cyclist, he rode for Cuba at the 1951 Pan American Games and the 1954 Central American and Caribbean Games, and he took pride in being the only Cuban who was both an international cycling star and a big leaguer; teammates back home called him the ciclista pelotero. The Milwaukee Braves signed him in 1954, Kansas City picked him up in the December 1956 minor-league draft, and seven minor-league summers later a .314, 18-homer, 122-RBI year at Shreveport in 1960 finally brought the call. He was 26 when he debuted that September, and he never played a full big-league season, batting .256 with 8 home runs and 58 RBIs across 155 games for the Athletics from 1960 through 1962. He kept playing in the minors through 1969, was named the Texas League's Most Valuable Player at Amarillo in 1965 on a league-leading 26 homers, 107 RBIs and 266 total bases, then spent decades as a manager and hitting instructor for Houston, a season in the Yankees chain and sixteen years with the Dodgers, plus winters in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Inducted into the Cuban Hall of Fame in Exile in 2010, he ran a bicycle shop in Miami and died there in 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 524 | 4 | 85 | 253 | 119 | 35 | 16 | 12 | 0 |
| SGC | 37 | 0 | 2 | 13 | 14 | 3 | 2 | 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
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- #197 Dick Hall
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- #212 Haywood Sullivan
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #39 card?
It is card #39 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Leo Posada of the Kansas City Athletics.
Is 1961 Topps #39 a rookie card?
Yes - #39 is the 1961 Topps rookie card of Leo Posada.
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.