1963 Topps #41 Charlie Lau
About Charlie Lau
Card #41 opens the 1963 set's first series and reports the best season of Lau's playing career: .294 in 81 games for Baltimore in 1962, with 58 hits, 11 doubles and career bests of six home runs and 37 runs batted in. He had rebuilt himself that spring as a contact hitter, feet spread wide and the bat held nearly parallel to the ground. The payoff included the best day he ever had at the plate: four doubles in a nine-inning, 10-3 win over Cleveland on July 13, tying the major league record.
Charles Richard Lau, listed on cards and in the record books as both Charley and Charlie, was a left-handed-hitting, right-handed-throwing catcher and pinch hitter who spent parts of eleven seasons in the majors between 1956 and 1967. He played for the Detroit Tigers, the Braves in both Milwaukee and Atlanta, the Baltimore Orioles across two separate stints, and the Kansas City Athletics, finishing with a .255 average, 298 hits, 63 doubles and 16 home runs in 527 games. His larger fame came afterward: fifteen seasons as a big league coach, most of them as a hitting instructor, with the Orioles, the Oakland Athletics, the Royals, the Yankees and the White Sox, work that made him the man widely considered the game's leading batting instructor, the coach George Brett credited with making him a hitter and the tutor Reggie Jackson leaned on in New York. His manual "The Art of Hitting .300," published in 1980, sold widely, and "The Winning Hitter" followed posthumously. Lau died of colorectal cancer on March 18, 1984, at age 50; that year Romulus Senior High School in Michigan, where he had played, renamed its field Charlie Lau Memorial Field.
Sources: Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 276 | 0 | 3 | 101 | 98 | 41 | 16 | 17 | 0 |
| SGC | 15 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 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: #377 Baltimore Orioles
More Baltimore Orioles cards:
- #4 1962 American League Home Run Leaders
- #6 1962 American League E.R.A. Leaders
- #12 Steve Barber
- #19 Pete Burnside
- #65 Jackie Brandt
- #88 Ron Hansen
- #108 Hoyt Wilhelm
- #112 Dick Brown
- #125 Robin Roberts
- #158 1963 Rookie Stars
- #205 Luis Aparicio
- #208 1963 Rookie Stars
- #209 Hobie Landrith
- #213 Billy Hitchcock
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1963 Topps #41 card?
It is card #41 of the 576-card 1963 Topps Baseball set, picturing Charlie Lau of the Baltimore Orioles.
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.