1961 Topps #136 Walt Alston
About this card
Cards #131-139 and #219-226 are the manager subset: seventeen skippers in the same portrait layout as the players.
About Walt Alston
Card #136 is a second-series manager card, and the season behind it is 1960, when the Dodgers slipped to fourth in the National League at 82-72. Handed the National League All-Star team that summer, Alston drew fire for leaving Milwaukee's Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette off his roster, an omission an Associated Press report read as a snub aimed at Braves skipper Charlie Dressen, the man Alston had replaced in Brooklyn before the 1954 season.
Walter Emmons Alston got into exactly one major-league game, sent to first base for the ejected Johnny Mize by the 1936 St. Louis Cardinals and struck out by Lon Warneke in his only at-bat, then built a Hall of Fame career from the dugout instead. He spent 19 years in the minor leagues as a player, player-manager and manager, among them the 1946 Nashua Dodgers, the first US-based integrated professional team of the century, where he handled Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, and six seasons at Brooklyn's Triple-A clubs in St. Paul and Montreal. When Charlie Dressen demanded a multi-year deal, owner Walter O'Malley handed the job to Alston for 1954, on the first of 23 straight one-year contracts. Nicknamed Smokey as a schoolboy pitcher for the speed of his fastball, he was so reserved that writers called him the Quiet Man. Alston led the Dodgers to seven National League pennants and four World Series titles in 1955, 1959, 1963 and 1965, including Brooklyn's only championship, and was named National League Manager of the Year six times. He retired after 1976 with 2,040 regular-season wins in 3,658 games. The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1983; a heart attack that year kept him from the ceremony, and he died in Oxford, Ohio, in 1984.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 485 | 1 | 9 | 149 | 170 | 89 | 39 | 28 | 0 |
| SGC | 43 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 16 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #136 card?
It is card #136 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Walt Alston of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 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.