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Checklists › 1962 Topps Baseball › #307 Jim Grant

1962 Topps #307 Jim Grant

also known as Mudcat Grant
Cleveland Indians · Pitcher · American League · Base set · Series 4 · Card #307 of 600
Position shown is where he played most in 1961, from that season's fielding records - not read off the card.
1962 Topps #307 Jim Grant, Cleveland Indians
1962 Topps #307 Jim Grant card back
The back of #307 Jim Grant.

About Jim Grant

Series four carried Grant's #307, and the year behind it was the best of his Cleveland time. Jimmy Dykes stopped shuttling him between rotation and bullpen, so all 35 of his 1961 appearances were starts. He led the Indians in wins (15 against 9 losses), complete games (11), innings (244 and two-thirds) and shutouts (3), and finished second on the staff in strikeouts with 146, posting a 3.86 ERA and winning six starts in a row from May 15 to June 7. Joe Gordon, who had managed him in Cleveland and was running Kansas City by then, said Grant had finally grown up and had become an entirely different pitcher.

James Timothy Grant came out of the lumber town of Lacoochee, Florida, one of seven children, and lost his father when he was two. A football and baseball scholarship took him to Florida A&M, but he left in his sophomore year because the family needed the money, went to work as a carpenter's helper, and was signed for Cleveland in 1954 by bird-dog scout Fred Merkle. At the Indians' minor-league camp a man who took him for a Mississippian tagged him Mudcat, and the name stuck for life. Grant debuted on April 17, 1958 with a complete-game win over Kansas City and pitched 14 seasons for the Indians, Twins, Dodgers, Expos, Cardinals, Athletics and Pirates, finishing 145-119 with a 3.63 ERA, 53 saves and two All-Star selections. His 21-7 season for the 1965 Twins made him the first Black pitcher to win 20 games in the American League; that October he took two of three World Series starts from the Dodgers and homered in Game Six before Minnesota lost Game Seven to Sandy Koufax. He later broadcast for Cleveland and Oakland, co-wrote The Black Aces on the Black pitchers who reached 20 wins, and entered the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in 2012. He died in 2021 at 85.

Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame

Graded population (PSA & SGC)

GraderTotal10987651-4Auth
PSA188176969231342
SGC1500642210

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 #307 card?

It is card #307 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jim Grant of the Cleveland Indians.

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.