1964 Topps #236 Bill Faul
About Bill Faul
Card #236 is a third-series single listing him with Detroit. It caught him on the way out of town. The Tigers cut him on April 7, 1964 and sent him to Triple-A Syracuse, where he worked as a starter for the Chiefs and put up an 11-1 record against a 4.05 ERA in 111 innings. His only big-league work all season was a single start for Detroit, five innings and six earned runs, a 10.80 ERA that is the whole of his 1964 major-league record. The Tigers sold his contract to the Cubs on March 27, 1965.
William Alvan Faul, a right-handed pitcher born April 21, 1940 in Cincinnati, Ohio, pitched Goshen High School to the 1958 Ohio Class A title, then rewrote the strikeout book at the University of Cincinnati, breaking the school single-game mark held by Sandy Koufax and fanning 24 in a game on his 21st birthday. Detroit signed him as an amateur free agent on June 20, 1962 for a $25,000 bonus, and he debuted on September 19 that year. Over six seasons with the Tigers, Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants (1962-66, 1970) he went 12-16 with a 4.72 ERA in 71 games, 33 of them starts, with 8 complete games, 3 shutouts, 2 saves and 164 strikeouts in 261 1/3 innings. Faul was better known for how he got ready: self-hypnosis before he pitched, plus karate and a divinity degree, a combination that made him a gift to sportswriters covering the second-division Cubs of the mid-1960s. He pitched in the minors as late as 1973 before retiring, and died in Cincinnati on February 21, 2002, at age 61.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 250 | 3 | 29 | 115 | 70 | 22 | 5 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 10 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-09-04. Half grades fold down for both graders (8.5→8); PSA qualified slabs (OC, ST, PD, MC and the like) are not counted.
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Related cards
Team card: #67 Detroit Tigers
More Detroit Tigers cards:
- #6 1963 American League Strikeout Leaders
- #8 1963 American League Batting Leaders
- #12 1963 American League R.B.I. Leaders
- #19 Don Wert
- #39 Hank Aguirre
- #58 Don Demeter
- #98 Bill Bruton
- #128 Mickey Lolich
- #143 Bubba Phillips
- #165 Jerry Lumpe
- #181 Dave Wickersham
- #197 Frank Lary
- #250 Al Kaline
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1964 Topps #236 card?
It is card #236 of the 587-card 1964 Topps Baseball set, picturing Bill Faul of the Detroit Tigers.
How many cards are in the 1964 Topps Baseball set?
587 cards, tracked as 589 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 587 with no gaps, and no number carries two different cards; two cards - #4, the A.L. Pitching Leaders, and #517, the seventh-series checklist - carry a catalogued back variation that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, The Topps Archives, Baseball Almanac, 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 2026-10-11.