1964 Topps #361 Jay Hook
About Jay Hook
Card #361 in the 1964 Topps set is a print series 4 card. It shows Hook with the Mets, but the season it was sold in barely included him: three appearances, an 0-1 record, and a last big-league game on May 3. Five days later New York traded him, cash, and a minor leaguer to be named to the Milwaukee Braves for shortstop Roy McMillan. Milwaukee sent him to Triple-A Denver, where he threw a nine-inning no-hitter and lost it in the tenth. The Braves called him up that September but never used him, and at 28 Hook left the game for Chrysler. No Topps card followed this one.
James Wesley Hook was a right-handed pitcher, born November 18, 1936 in Waukegan, Illinois and raised in nearby Grayslake, where his parents ran the town pharmacy. A three-sport star at Grayslake High School, he went to Northwestern University on an academic scholarship and played baseball and basketball there. Cincinnati, then still called the Redlegs, signed him in August 1957 for a reported $65,000 under the bonus rule in its final season, so the 20-year-old went from campus to the big-league roster and debuted that September. He spent most of 1958 and 1959 in the minors at Nashville and Seattle, then joined the Reds' regular rotation in 1960. Taken by the expansion New York Mets in the October 1961 draft, he won the first game in that franchise's history and pitched for New York into May 1964. Casey Stengel called him Professor because he went back to Northwestern for classes every offseason; he finished an engineering degree there and a master's in thermodynamics. Eight seasons left him 29-62 with a 5.23 ERA and 394 strikeouts in 752 2/3 innings. He retired at 28 to join Chrysler, later held senior management jobs at Rockwell International and Masco, and taught industrial management at Northwestern.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 244 | 8 | 47 | 118 | 46 | 13 | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 11 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1964 Topps #361 card?
It is card #361 of the 587-card 1964 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jay Hook of the New York Mets.
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.