1966 Topps #331 Ron Herbel
About Ron Herbel
Card #331 falls in the fourth series of the 1966 set and reports the best year of Herbel's career. In 1965 he went 12-9 with a 3.85 ERA in 47 games, 21 of them starts, working 170.2 innings and striking out 106 - wins, innings and strikeouts that all stood as career highs, on a Giants club that reeled off 14 straight in September and still finished two games behind the Dodgers. The card was also printed for the Venezuelan market, a parallel of the first 370 cards of the set on darker, thinner stock that is far harder to find in high grade than the domestic version.
Ron Herbel was a right-handed pitcher who signed with the San Francisco Giants as an amateur free agent in 1958 out of the University of Northern Colorado, spent six seasons in the farm system, and debuted on September 10, 1963. He pitched seven seasons for San Francisco, took a regular turn in the rotation in 1964 and 1965, and worked almost entirely out of the bullpen from 1967 on. The Giants traded him with Bob Barton and Bobby Etheridge to the San Diego Padres on December 5, 1969, for Frank Reberger; San Diego dealt him to the New York Mets on September 1, 1970, and the Mets sent him to the Atlanta Braves that December for Bob Aspromonte. He finished 42-37 with a 3.83 ERA and 447 strikeouts in 331 games. Herbel is remembered today less for his pitching than his hitting: he batted .029, 6-for-206, the lowest career average in major-league history among players with at least 100 at-bats. He died January 20, 2000, in Tacoma, Washington, at 62.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2) · Retrosheet · BaseballCardPedia
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 163 | 0 | 16 | 77 | 53 | 11 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 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: #19 San Francisco Giants
More San Francisco Giants cards:
- #1 Willie Mays
- #39 Ken Henderson
- #61 Bob Bolin
- #78 Frank Linzy
- #94 Matty Alou
- #115 Bill Henry
- #132 Orlando Cepeda
- #156 D P Combo
- #176 Jim Davenport
- #215 National League 1965 Batting Leaders
- #217 National League 1965 Home Run Leaders
- #219 National League 1965 RBI Leaders
- #221 National League 1965 ERA Leaders
- #242 Jesus Alou
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1966 Topps #331 card?
It is card #331 of the 598-card 1966 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ron Herbel of the San Francisco Giants.
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.