1965 Topps #56 Ron Kline
About Ron Kline
Kline turns up early in the 1965 set at #56, first series, after the stingiest season he had pitched to that point. In 1964 he never started a game: 61 appearances, 52 of them finished, 81 1/3 innings, a 10-7 record, 14 saves, 21 walks and a 2.32 ERA. The Senators around him lost 100 and finished ninth in the ten-team American League. That autumn he joined a group of major leaguers on a State Department goodwill trip through Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
Ron Kline was a right-handed pitcher who worked parts of seventeen major-league seasons between 1952 and 1970, missing 1953 and 1954 for Army service during the Korean War. Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1950 out of a tryout camp at Forbes Field, the Callery, Pennsylvania, native broke in with a last-place Pittsburgh club and spent the 1950s as a hard-luck starter, twice leading the National League in losses despite earned run averages in the mid-3.00s. Passed along through St. Louis, the expansion Los Angeles Angels and Detroit, he reinvented himself in Washington, where four straight bullpen seasons from 1963 through 1966 brought 83 saves and an earned run average under 3.00 every year. Over 736 games for nine clubs he went 114-144 with a 3.75 ERA, 989 strikeouts and 108 saves, the best of it coming after he stopped starting. He bought a tavern in Callery in 1969, ran it for years as Ronnie Kline's Bullpen, and later served as the borough's mayor.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 286 | 7 | 59 | 151 | 50 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| SGC | 13 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 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. The two checklist variations, #79 and #508, are listed under the wording PSA uses for each state.
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Related cards
Team card: #267 Washington Senators
More Washington Senators cards:
- #21 Don Blasingame
- #38 Jim King
- #86 Les Narum
- #99 Gil Hodges
- #129 Bennie Daniels
- #148 Willie Kirkland
- #152 Phil Ortega
- #181 Senators 1965 Rookie Stars
- #211 Steve Ridzik
- #224 Bob Chance
- #233 Don Zimmer
- #252 Pete Richert
- #284 Nick Willhite
- #304 Dave Stenhouse
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #56 card?
It is card #56 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ron Kline of the Washington Senators.
How many cards are in the 1965 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 600 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps and no printed-number collisions, and two checklist cards - #79 and #508 - carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, 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.