1964 Topps #396 Dennis Bennett
About Dennis Bennett
Card #396 belongs to the 1964 set's fifth series, which reached packs late in the summer. It reports the comeback year. Bennett spent months of 1963 in a hospital, was working out again by the end of May, and was back on a big-league mound on June 23. He went 9-5 the rest of the way with a 2.64 ERA in 23 games, 16 of them starts, across 119.1 innings, and a local award named him the most courageous athlete on the team. He spent that winter telling anyone who asked that nobody could stop him from winning 20 the next summer.
Dennis Bennett was a 6-foot-3 left-hander born in Oakland, California, on October 5, 1939, and raised in Yreka, a heavily wooded town near the Oregon line. He signed with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1958 for no bonus, spent four seasons in their farm system, and was called up from Triple-A Buffalo in May 1962. A car accident in Puerto Rico in January 1963, on the way back from a winter-league team picnic, killed the driver and threw Bennett through the windshield, breaking his left ankle, his pelvis and his left shoulder blade. He was back in the Phillies rotation by late June, but the shoulder never healed properly and steadily drained the fastball that had made him a prospect. Philadelphia traded him to the Boston Red Sox in November 1964, and he later pitched briefly for the New York Mets and the California Angels, making his last big-league appearance on September 29, 1968. Over seven major league seasons he went 43-47 with a 3.69 ERA and 572 strikeouts in 182 games, with 28 complete games and six shutouts across 863 innings. He pitched five more Pacific Coast League seasons, then settled in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he ran bars and a restaurant until his death in 2012. He was not elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 241 | 1 | 51 | 117 | 41 | 23 | 6 | 2 | 0 |
| SGC | 9 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 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: #293 Philadelphia Phillies
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- #243 Phillies 1964 Rookie Stars
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1964 Topps #396 card?
It is card #396 of the 587-card 1964 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dennis Bennett of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Why is #396 harder to find?
It is a series 5-6 card. Cards from the fifth and sixth print series (#371-522) are a step tougher to find than #1-370; availability in 1964 runs in three tiers, not a cliff.
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.