1962 Topps #453 Cal McLish
About Cal McLish
McLish reached Philadelphia on March 24, 1962, completing a deal the White Sox and Phillies had struck the previous December: Andy Carey, the infielder Chicago sent first, refused to report and ended up with the Dodgers instead. The switch put McLish back alongside Gene Mauch, by then the Phillies' manager but once a fellow rookie on the wartime 1944 Dodgers and a fellow passenger in the five-player trade that sent them both to Pittsburgh in 1947. Mauch chose his spots carefully, and it showed: McLish went 11-5, but six of those wins came against the expansion Houston Colt .45s and New York Mets. Card 453 sits in the sixth series, the first of his three Topps cards as a Phillie.
Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, on December 1, 1925, the seventh of eight children, named by a father who had not been allowed to name the first six. Signed out of Oklahoma City's Central High School by Brooklyn scout Tom Greenwade, he reached the Dodgers in May 1944 at 18 with almost no pitching experience, then reported for Army duty that August and served in Europe with the 3rd Infantry Division, missing all of 1945. Most of the early 1950s went by in the Pacific Coast League until a Cleveland farm club bought him in 1955. He finally held a big-league rotation spot at 32, going 16-8 in 1958 and 19-8 in 1959, clearing 200 innings both years and saving the second of that summer's two All-Star Games for the American League. Cincinnati, the White Sox and the Phillies followed in three straight winters, and he retired in 1964 at 92-92 with 713 strikeouts. He coached big-league pitchers from 1965 to 1982, for Gene Mauch in Philadelphia and Montreal and then in Milwaukee, where Rollie Fingers and Pete Vuckovich won Cy Young Awards. The Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame inducted him in 2009.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 164 | 0 | 11 | 58 | 59 | 25 | 9 | 2 | 0 |
| SGC | 9 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #453 card?
It is card #453 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Cal McLish of the Philadelphia Phillies.
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.