1968 Topps #345 Bob Hendley
About Bob Hendley
Card #345 is a fourth-series number, and Hendley's first Topps issue as a Met. Chicago traded him to New York on June 12, 1967, for Rob Gardner and a player to be named later, John Stephenson, after he had gone 2-0 with a 6.57 ERA in seven games for the Cubs. He pitched better in New York, 3-3 with a 3.44 ERA in 15 games, 13 of them starts, and threw the last two complete games of his career, one a July 23 win over Don Drysdale. The two halves gave him his only winning season at 5-3. His final big-league outing came September 3 at Wrigley Field.
Bob Hendley (born Charles Robert Hendley, April 30, 1939, in Macon, Georgia) turned down a baseball and basketball scholarship from the University of Georgia to sign with the Milwaukee Braves on August 17, 1957, out of Lanier High School, where he had thrown three no-hitters. After a 16-win, 147-strikeout 1960 season for Triple-A Louisville, that year's Junior World Series champion, the left-hander reached the majors on June 23, 1961. Over seven seasons with the Braves, Giants, Cubs and Mets he went 48-52 with a 3.97 ERA and 522 strikeouts in 216 games, 126 of them starts, battling elbow trouble that eventually required three operations. He is remembered above all for September 9, 1965, when he held the Dodgers to one hit and an unearned run while losing 1-0 to Sandy Koufax's perfect game, a contest SABR members voted the greatest ever pitched; he beat Koufax in a rematch five days later. Hendley left the game after 1969, earned a Mercer University degree in the off-seasons, coached high school baseball in Georgia across three decades, shared the 2014 Willie, Mickey and the Duke Award with Koufax and Vin Scully, and entered the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2) · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 305 | 12 | 96 | 116 | 58 | 13 | 6 | 4 | 0 |
| SGC | 16 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 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. Slabs of the yellow team-letter #49 and #66 are 1968 Milton Bradley game cards and are not counted here.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1968 Topps #345 card?
It is card #345 of the 598-card 1968 Topps Baseball set, picturing Bob Hendley of the New York Mets.
How many cards are in the 1968 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 606 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 598 without a gap and no printed number carries two different cards; eight cards - six of the seven checklists, #10 AL Pitching Leaders and #400 Mike McCormick - carry a catalogued print variation that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, Baseball Almanac, Beckett, 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.