1962 Topps #284 Ruben Amaro
About Ruben Amaro
Card #284 lands in the 1962 set's fourth series and reports the fullest year Amaro ever had. He played a career-high 135 games as Philadelphia's every-day shortstop in 1961, collecting 98 hits, 32 RBI and a .257 average, his best offensive season by some distance. Gene Mauch said no shortstop in the league was playing better defensively.
Ruben Amaro (born Ruben Amaro Mora, January 6, 1936, in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico) was a slick-fielding shortstop over eleven big-league seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals (1958), Philadelphia Phillies (1960-1965), New York Yankees (1966-1968) and California Angels (1969). Traded to Philadelphia for outfielder Chuck Essegian in December 1958, he took over as the Phillies' regular shortstop in 1960. His defense earned the National League's Gold Glove at shortstop in 1964; his bat left him at .234 with eight home runs in 940 games. In Mexico he was called 'Cangurito' after his father Santos Amaro, the Cuban outfielder whose leaping made him 'El Canguro' in the Mexican League. Amaro scouted, coached and managed for decades afterward, taking a World Series ring as Philadelphia's first-base coach in 1980, and in 1986 he and his father became the first father-son pair in the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame. His son Ruben Amaro Jr. reached the majors and later ran the Phillies. He died on March 31, 2017.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 228 | 0 | 1 | 38 | 99 | 61 | 16 | 13 | 0 |
| SGC | 12 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 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
Team card: #294 Philadelphia Phillies Team
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- #77 Tony Taylor
- #104 Ted Savage
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- #146 Don Demeter
- #157 Wes Covington
- #181 Paul Brown
- #212 Jim Owens
- #220 Roy Sievers
- #249 Ed Keegan
- #269 Bob Oldis
- #303 Frank Torre
- #328 Ken Walters
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #284 card?
It is card #284 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ruben Amaro 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.