1962 Topps #373 Al Heist
About Al Heist
Card 373 falls in the fifth series and shows Heist with the Houston Colt.45's. Houston had taken him off the Cubs' list with its fifth pick, ninth overall, at the October 10, 1961 expansion draft. The center field job never came: Al Spangler started there on Opening Day, and when Heist took the field on April 12, 1962, he became the first man in franchise history to wear number 22 in a regular season game. An injury cost him a month on the disabled list, Carl Warwick came over from St. Louis in May and started 104 games in center, and Heist wound up with 27 games and a .222 average, the last of his major league career.
Alfred Michael Heist was born October 5, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, and signed with the St. Louis Browns organization in 1949. A product of Brooklyn's Automotive Trades High School, he became the first graduate of that school to reach the majors. He piled up 1,429 minor league games from 1949 through 1959, the long back half of them with the Pacific Coast League's Sacramento Solons, who acquired him in 1955. The Milwaukee Braves traded him to the Chicago Cubs for Earl Averill and $35,000 on July 15, 1960, and two days later he debuted at 32, starting in center field against the St. Louis Cardinals and singling in the seventh for his first big league hit. A right-handed thrower and hitter at 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds, he played 177 games for the Cubs and the expansion Houston Colt .45's, batting .255 with 126 hits, eight home runs and 46 RBI. He coached for the Houston Astros under Grady Hatton in 1966 and 1967, scouted for the Astros, Cubs, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants, and put a uniform back on as a Padres coach under Jerry Coleman in 1980. He died October 2, 2006, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, three days short of 79.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 265 | 1 | 14 | 126 | 94 | 24 | 4 | 2 | 0 |
| SGC | 18 | 0 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-09-24. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8), and PSA's qualified grades are counted separately from the straight-grade rows shown here. Slabs of the three cards printed #139 are joined by description, never by number alone. PSA registers the green tints as a separate set; a tint's population is listed under that state of the card it belongs to.
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Related cards
More Houston Colt .45's cards:
- #12 Harry Craft
- #23 Norm Larker
- #44 Don Taussig
- #74 Bob Lillis
- #126 Al Cicotte
- #156 Merritt Ranew
- #177 Bobby Shantz
- #204 Johnny Weekly
- #227 Bobby Tiefenauer
- #248 Bob Aspromonte
- #278 Ken Johnson
- #304 Dick Farrell
- #332 Don Buddin
- #354 Roman Mejias
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #373 card?
It is card #373 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Al Heist of the Houston Colt .45's.
How many cards are in the 1962 Topps Baseball set?
600 cards, tracked as 708 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps, but three different cards were printed #139 - two Hal Reniff poses, catalogued 139a and 139b, and the Babe Hits 60 Babe Ruth Special, 139c - so 598 numbers make 600 cards; 93 cards carry catalogued print variations, the series-2 green tints among them, that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Baseball Almanac, Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, 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 2026-10-03.