1962 Topps #216 Ron Kline
About Ron Kline
The 1962 card, #216 in the third series, shows Kline as a Tiger after a 1961 season split between two American League clubs. He opened the year with the brand-new Los Angeles Angels, who played that one season at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, and went 3-6 with a 4.90 ERA in 26 games, twelve of them starts. Detroit bought him in a straight cash deal on August 10 and got the best six weeks he had shown in years: 5-3, a 2.72 ERA and a shutout in his second start for a Tigers club that won 101 games and still finished eight behind the Yankees.
Ron Kline was a right-handed pitcher who worked parts of seventeen major-league seasons between 1952 and 1970, missing 1953 and 1954 for Army service during the Korean War. Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1950 out of a tryout camp at Forbes Field, the Callery, Pennsylvania, native broke in with a last-place Pittsburgh club and spent the 1950s as a hard-luck starter, twice leading the National League in losses despite earned run averages in the mid-3.00s. Passed along through St. Louis, the expansion Los Angeles Angels and Detroit, he reinvented himself in Washington, where four straight bullpen seasons from 1963 through 1966 brought 83 saves and an earned run average under 3.00 every year. Over 736 games for nine clubs he went 114-144 with a 3.75 ERA, 989 strikeouts and 108 saves, the best of it coming after he stopped starting. He bought a tavern in Callery in 1969, ran it for years as Ronnie Kline's Bullpen, and later served as the borough's mayor.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 180 | 0 | 9 | 80 | 65 | 16 | 6 | 4 | 0 |
| SGC | 15 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
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 #216 card?
It is card #216 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ron Kline of the Detroit Tigers.
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.