1961 Topps #305 Mike McCormick
About Mike McCormick
Three cards, all off the best year of his first Giants run: a league-leading 2.70 ERA, 15-12, 253 innings, 154 strikeouts, and the first earned run average title by a San Francisco left-hander. Card #45 heads the League Leaders group Topps introduced here, ranking him above Ernie Broglio, Don Drysdale, Bob Friend and Stan Williams. Number 305 is his own fourth-series card, and #383, Frisco First Liners, puts him with rotation mates Billy O'Dell and Jack Sanford. His rookie card came three years earlier, in the 1958 set.
Mike McCormick was born September 29, 1938, in Pasadena, California, and signed with the New York Giants on August 31, 1956, for a $50,000 bonus out of Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra. The bonus rule kept such a signing on the big-league roster, so the left-hander debuted four days later at seventeen, having never pitched in the minors. Sixteen seasons followed: the New York and San Francisco Giants (1956-1962 and 1967-1970), the Baltimore Orioles (1963-1964), the Washington Senators (1965-1966), the New York Yankees (1970) and the Kansas City Royals (1971). He led the National League with a 2.70 earned run average in 1960 and made all four All-Star squads of 1960 and 1961, when the majors staged two games a summer. A ruined shoulder nearly finished him at twenty-four; he rebuilt himself around a screwball and went 22-10 in 1967 to win San Francisco's first Cy Young Award and The Sporting News awards for Pitcher of the Year and Comeback Player of the Year. He retired with 134 wins, 128 losses, a 3.73 ERA, 1,321 strikeouts and 23 shutouts in 484 games, sold securities and then office equipment, and died June 13, 2020, at 81 in North Carolina. He is not a National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee; the Giants honor him on their Wall of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2) · Baseball Almanac (3) · BaseballCardPedia
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 276 | 0 | 12 | 143 | 82 | 30 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
| SGC | 12 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 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
More Mike McCormick in this set: #45 League Leaders, #383 Frisco First Liners
Team card: #167 San Francisco Giants Team
More San Francisco Giants cards:
- #31 Bob Schmidt
- #55 Jim Davenport
- #72 Stu Miller
- #87 Joe Amalfitano
- #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
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #305 card?
It is card #305 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Mike McCormick 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.