1966 Topps #157 Rene Lachemann
About Rene Lachemann
1966 Topps #157 is a plain second-series card. It caught Lachemann at a standstill. Bill Bryan had been the Athletics' number one catcher, Phil Roof arrived from Cleveland over the winter, and the organization's read was that Lachemann was slow getting throws away and could not hit big-league pitching. He went to Double-A Mobile of the Southern League for the season and surfaced in Kansas City for only seven games, going 1-for-5. At Mobile he batted .256 with 15 home runs and 65 RBIs alongside a teammate named Tony La Russa, whose path would cross his for decades.
Rene Lachemann, born May 4, 1945 in Los Angeles, was a right-handed catcher who played parts of three seasons between 1965 and 1968 for the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics, batting .210 with 9 home runs and 33 RBIs in 118 games. The son of Swiss immigrants and the youngest of three brothers who all made long careers in professional baseball, he was a Los Angeles Dodgers batboy from 1959 to 1962, an all-city player at Dorsey High School, and a University of Southern California student before signing with Kansas City in 1964 at 19. He made his major league debut the following May 4, his twentieth birthday. Only 1965 gave him steady work; he spent most of the next decade in the minors, drifting to first base and the infield as his catching chances dried up. He began managing in the Athletics farm system in 1973 and went on to run the Seattle Mariners, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Florida Marlins through their first four seasons, and the Chicago Cubs for a single game in 2002. In between he coached third base for the 1986 American League champion Boston Red Sox and worked on Tony La Russa's Oakland staff for the 1989 World Series title, part of a run in the game that stretched past fifty years.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 159 | 1 | 24 | 75 | 42 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 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. Where SGC registers no separate row for a variation state, its slabs of that card are listed under the base state.
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Related cards
Team card: #492 Kansas City Athletics
More Kansas City Athletics cards:
- #18 Roland Sheldon
- #36 Jim Hunter
- #55 Ken Harrelson
- #74 Don Mossi
- #107 Athletics 1966 Rookie Stars
- #143 Jose Tartabull
- #175 Bert Campaneris
- #201 Jim Dickson
- #236 Mike Hershberger
- #256 Lew Krausse
- #287 Jack Aker
- #309 Diego Segui
- #332 Billy Bryan
- #366 Wayne Causey
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1966 Topps #157 card?
It is card #157 of the 598-card 1966 Topps Baseball set, picturing Rene Lachemann of the Kansas City Athletics.
How many cards are in the 1966 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 613 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps and no number used twice, and 14 cards carry catalogued print variations - five checklists, the trade and sold statement backs, the three-state #43 Don Landrum, three team-card dot pairs and the #161 Jerry Lumpe white streak - that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, 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.