1962 Topps #444 Ted Wills
About Ted Wills
Wills won a roster spot out of spring training but got into just one game for the Red Sox before Cincinnati bought him on May 8, moving him from a second-division club to the defending National League champions and to Fred Hutchinson, a far harder manager than any he had played for. He relieved and was pressed into spot starts, drawing praise from Hutchinson for a June 16 turn against the Phillies in which he carried a 3-0 lead into the seventh, and he finished 0-2 with three saves and a 5.31 ERA over 61 innings in 26 games for a Cincinnati club that wound up third, 3 1/2 games back. Card #444, a fifth-series number, still shows him in a Red Sox uniform.
Theodore Carl Wills Jr., a left-hander born February 9, 1934, in Fresno, California, was the premier starter at Fresno High School and an all-state pick in baseball and basketball as a senior before pitching for the Fresno State Bulldogs. A Red Sox scout signed him in 1955 while he was still in college, for a bonus he remembered as a pair of spikes and a glove. Summers in Canadian amateur ball showed off his bat: at Saskatoon he led the league in hitting at .336. After ranking among the Southern Association leaders in wins, ERA and strikeouts for Double-A Chattanooga in 1958, he debuted for Boston on May 24, 1959. Across parts of five seasons with the Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox he went 8-11 with a 5.46 ERA and five saves in 83 games, 13 of them starts, and hit .250 in 44 at-bats. He spent 1963 and 1964 at Triple-A San Diego, closed 1965 in the minors and retired, then built a 40-year career as an insurance agent near Fresno. His father served more than 30 years on the Fresno City Council, eight of them as mayor in the 1970s. Wills died in Fresno on March 7, 2025, at 91.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 252 | 1 | 16 | 137 | 70 | 20 | 6 | 2 | 0 |
| SGC | 21 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 12 | 1 | 2 | 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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Related cards
Team card: #334 Boston Red Sox Team
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- #345 Chuck Schilling
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #444 card?
It is card #444 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ted Wills of the Boston Red Sox.
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.