1963 Topps #73 Bobby Bragan
About this card
The nineteen manager cards use the same portrait layout as the players. Twenty clubs, nineteen managers: the Cubs were run by their rotating College of Coaches from 1961 to 1965 and have no manager card.
About Bobby Bragan
Number 73 is a manager card, and it caught Bragan at the start of a new job. Milwaukee hired him after the 1962 season to replace Birdie Tebbetts, making him the club's fourth manager in five years, and he arrived straight from a coaching post with the expansion Houston Colt .45s, having already been let go as skipper in Pittsburgh and in Cleveland. His first Braves club went 84-78 and finished sixth in the ten-team National League, fifteen games behind the pennant-winning Los Angeles Dodgers. The card belongs to the set's first series.
Bobby Bragan was a shortstop turned catcher who played seven big-league seasons (1940-44, 1947-48) for the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers, batting .240 with 15 home runs in 597 games. His only World Series at-bat was a good one, a pinch-hit double off Joe Page in Game 6 of the 1947 Series. He went on to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates (1956-57), Cleveland Indians (1958) and the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves (1963-66), finishing 443-478 in the majors, and he led Almendares to two Cuban League titles. A Branch Rickey protege, Bragan was one of the Dodgers who objected to Jackie Robinson in 1947 and asked to be traded; his attitude changed as that season wore on, and the two stayed friends until Robinson's death. As player-manager he won the 1948 Texas League championship at Fort Worth, he led the 1953 Hollywood Stars to a Pacific Coast League pennant, and at Spokane in 1959 he turned Maury Wills into a switch-hitter. Later president of the Texas League and of the minor leagues' governing body, he was still listed with the Texas Rangers organization in 2009, the last full year of his life. He is in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 269 | 0 | 12 | 145 | 85 | 20 | 5 | 2 | 0 |
| SGC | 18 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 6 | 0 | 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.
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Related cards
Team card: #503 Milwaukee Braves
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- #1 1962 National League Batting Leaders
- #3 1962 National League Home Run Leaders
- #5 1962 National League E.R.A. Leaders
- #46 Tommie Aaron
- #62 Bob Hendley
- #74 Denver Lemaster
- #109 Lee Maye
- #126 Bob Uecker
- #137 Mack Jones
- #156 Roy McMillan
- #179 Ron Piche
- #201 Cecil Butler
- #238 Lou Johnson
- #242 Power Plus
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1963 Topps #73 card?
It is card #73 of the 576-card 1963 Topps Baseball set, picturing Bobby Bragan of the Milwaukee Braves. The nineteen manager cards use the same portrait layout as the players. Twenty clubs, nineteen managers: the Cubs were run by their rotating College of Coaches from 1961 to 1965 and have no manager card.
How many cards are in the 1963 Topps Baseball set?
576 cards, tracked as 583 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 576 with no gaps and no number used twice, and seven cards carry a catalogued print variation - three checklists, the two Rookie Stars cards also printed with a "1962" heading, and the #341 Jack Baldschun and #454 Art Fowler print states - that the master set counts separately.
Sources: 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.