1964 Topps #101 Walt Alston
About this card
This is one of the twenty manager cards in the 1964 Topps set, one for each franchise. Nineteen are printed Manager; #486 Bob Kennedy is printed Head Coach because the Cubs were still running their College of Coaches.
About Walt Alston
Card #101 is a first-series number, and it is the one that says champion. The 1963 Dodgers swept the defending-champion Yankees, the first time New York had ever lost a World Series in four straight games, and Alston needed only four pitchers to do it: three starters and one reliever. Sandy Koufax struck out 23 across his two starts and took the Series MVP award. The skipper the New York papers had greeted with the headline "Walter Who?" now had his third ring.
Walter Emmons Alston got into exactly one major-league game, sent to first base for the ejected Johnny Mize by the 1936 St. Louis Cardinals and struck out by Lon Warneke in his only at-bat, then built a Hall of Fame career from the dugout instead. He spent 19 years in the minor leagues as a player, player-manager and manager, among them the 1946 Nashua Dodgers, the first US-based integrated professional team of the century, where he handled Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, and six seasons at Brooklyn's Triple-A clubs in St. Paul and Montreal. When Charlie Dressen demanded a multi-year deal, owner Walter O'Malley handed the job to Alston for 1954, on the first of 23 straight one-year contracts. Nicknamed Smokey as a schoolboy pitcher for the speed of his fastball, he was so reserved that writers called him the Quiet Man. Alston led the Dodgers to seven National League pennants and four World Series titles in 1955, 1959, 1963 and 1965, including Brooklyn's only championship, and was named National League Manager of the Year six times. He retired after 1976 with 2,040 regular-season wins in 3,658 games. The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1983; a heart attack that year kept him from the ceremony, and he died in Oxford, Ohio, in 1984.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 411 | 2 | 22 | 187 | 116 | 40 | 21 | 21 | 2 |
| SGC | 39 | 0 | 2 | 13 | 12 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 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: #531 L. A. Dodgers
More Los Angeles Dodgers cards:
- #1 1963 National League E.R.A. Leaders
- #3 1963 National League Pitching Leaders
- #5 1963 National League Strikeout Leaders
- #7 1963 National League Batting Leaders
- #14 Dodgers 1964 Rookie Stars
- #30 Ron Perranoski
- #51 Pete Richert
- #68 Willie Davis
- #88 John Roseboro
- #120 Don Drysdale
- #136 World Series Game #1 - Koufax Strikes Out 15
- #137 World Series Game #2 - Davis Sparks Rally
- #138 World Series Game #3 - L.A. Takes 3rd Straight
- #139 World Series Game #4 - Sealing Yanks' Doom
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1964 Topps #101 card?
It is card #101 of the 587-card 1964 Topps Baseball set, picturing Walt Alston of the Los Angeles Dodgers. This is one of the twenty manager cards in the 1964 Topps set, one for each franchise. Nineteen are printed Manager; #486 Bob Kennedy is printed Head Coach because the Cubs were still running their College of Coaches.
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.