1962 Topps #21 Jim Kaat
Back misspells his last name as Katt.
Uncorrected error: Last name misspelled "Katt" on the back
About Jim Kaat
Card #21 carries Kaat's first full season in the rotation, and the record is not flattering: 9-17 with a 3.90 ERA over 200 2/3 innings for a seventh-place club in its first Minnesota summer. He was the youngest starter on the staff, and he opened the year with a 7 1/3-inning win at Boston that pushed the new Twins to 5-1 before a 13-game losing streak buried them. The card has a quirk worth knowing before you buy one: the back spells his last name Katt. Topps set the name correctly on the front, then got it wrong where nobody looks.
Jim Kaat pitched 25 seasons in the major leagues, 1959 through 1983, the longest career any pitcher had put together to that point, and spent the heart of it as the left-handed anchor of the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins staff before finishing with the White Sox, Phillies, Yankees and Cardinals. A 6-foot-4 southpaw nicknamed Kitty, he worked so fast between pitches that he confounded umpires and annoyed the hitters standing in against him. He won 283 games, 190 of them for the Senators and Twins, more than anyone in the Minnesota era of the franchise, and put together three 20-win seasons, with a record eight-year gap between the first two. He was a three-time All-Star and the most decorated fielding pitcher of his era, taking 16 straight Gold Gloves, still the longest run at the position, though Greg Maddux later won more in total. He waited until he was 43 to get a World Series ring, working out of the bullpen for the 1982 Cardinals. He finished with a 3.45 ERA, 2,461 strikeouts, 180 complete games and 898 appearances, then spent more than two decades as an Emmy-winning broadcaster. The writers never came close to electing him; the Golden Days Era Committee did, for the Hall of Fame class of 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 692 | 0 | 20 | 173 | 216 | 140 | 69 | 74 | 0 |
| SGC | 108 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 20 | 35 | 23 | 17 | 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
Team card: #584 Minnesota Twins Team
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- #102 Al Schroll
- #124 Bill Pleis
- #164 Hal Naragon
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- #180 Bob Allison
- #208 Billy Martin
- #222 Jerry Zimmerman
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- #298 Bill Tuttle
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- #321 Lee Stange
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #21 card?
It is card #21 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jim Kaat of the Minnesota Twins.
Does 1962 Topps #21 have an error?
Last name misspelled "Katt" on the back. It was never corrected, so there is no variation to chase - every copy of #21 reads the same way.
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.