1967 Topps #231 John Bateman
About John Bateman
It is an Astros card for a season that came apart. Bateman carried a .308 average into mid-April and took Bob Gibson deep for two runs, then collected eight hits over his next 76 at-bats and bottomed out at .143. He blamed winter ball in Venezuela, where a payments investigation had swept up a dozen players. A June hot streak ended when he fractured his ankle on the basepaths on June 11; he rushed back on July 4, and back trouble finished him after September 1. He split the catching close to evenly with Ron Brand and batted .190 with two home runs in 76 games.
John Alvin Bateman was a right-handed-hitting catcher, born July 21, 1940, at Fort Sill, the Army post at Lawton, Oklahoma, and raised by his aunt Jewel and her husband, Raymond Priest. After a letter-writing campaign to big-league clubs won him a tryout, Houston signed him in March 1962 and sent him to their Class C Modesto affiliate, where he hit .280 with 21 home runs. He had shaved two years off his age to sign, and rosters listed his birth year as 1942 for the rest of his career. General manager Paul Richards compared his throwing arm to that of Hall of Famer Gabby Hartnett, and he was in Houston by 1963, but weight, injuries and a free swing kept the job moving between him, Jerry Grote and Ron Brand, with two demotions to Oklahoma City along the way. His best year was 1966: .279 with 17 home runs and 70 RBIs. Montreal took him in the 1968 expansion draft, and he caught Bill Stoneman's no-hitter in the club's first season. Traded to Philadelphia in June 1972, he caught the rest of Steve Carlton's Cy Young season; the Phillies released him in January 1973. He finished at .230 with 81 homers and 375 RBIs over ten seasons, and died in Oklahoma in 1996.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac · The Hardball Times
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 378 | 5 | 73 | 229 | 47 | 14 | 9 | 1 | 0 |
| SGC | 12 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 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. PSA registers a row for every one of the 624 states; SGC lists no separate row for the #149 white-streak state.
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Related cards
More Houston Astros cards:
- #8 Chuck Harrison
- #28 Barry Latman
- #51 Astros 1967 Rookie Stars
- #73 Rusty Staub
- #97 Mike Cuellar
- #136 Carroll Sembera
- #166 Ed Mathews
- #172 Bill Heath
- #190 Turk Farrell
- #212 Chris Zachary
- #234 National League 1966 ERA Leaders
- #274 Bob Aspromonte
- #298 Ron Davis
- #318 Dave Giusti
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1967 Topps #231 card?
It is card #231 of the 609-card 1967 Topps Baseball set, picturing John Bateman of the Houston Astros.
How many cards are in the 1967 Topps Baseball set?
609 cards, tracked as 624 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 609 without a gap - no number was skipped and none was used twice - and 15 cards carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, Baseball Almanac, BaseballCardPedia, 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 2026-10-12.