1969 Topps #179 Don Pavletich
About Don Pavletich
His one season in Chicago started late: Pavletich had a raise in hand but held out into spring training while the players' union fought over the pension plan, and he did not sign until he reached Florida. He backed up Ed Herrmann, broke his left hand playing first base on May 10 and lost a month, then finished with 78 games, 51 of them behind the plate, a .245 average and 33 RBIs. On December 13 the White Sox packaged him with Gary Peters in a five-player trade to Boston, where the manager was Eddie Kasko, his Cincinnati teammate in 1962 and 1963. Card #179 shows him in a White Sox uniform, comes from the second series.
Donald Stephen Pavletich was born in Milwaukee on July 13, 1938, and grew up in the suburb of West Allis. He was of Croatian descent, all four grandparents having come over from Croatia. He hit .405 across four years at Nathan Hale High School and starred in American Legion and semipro ball before the Reds signed him in August 1956 for a reported $35,000 bonus. The bonus rule kept him on the big-league roster, and he debuted at 18 on April 20, 1957, pinch-hitting at Milwaukee's County Stadium. Weeks later he enlisted in the Army, serving as a medic in Heilbronn, Germany, until February 1959. He rebuilt his career at Topeka and Indianapolis, was voted a Triple-A All-Star in 1961, and finally collected his first big-league hit on April 29, 1962, five years after his debut. He spent most of the 1960s in Cincinnati behind Johnny Edwards and then Johnny Bench, went to the White Sox after 1968 and to Boston after 1969, and closed out at .254 with 46 home runs and 193 RBIs in 536 games over twelve seasons. Released by the Brewers in the spring of 1972, he sold investment real estate and later worked as a Milwaukee loan officer. He died in 2020 at 81.
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 | 4 | 62 | 166 | 37 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| SGC | 9 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 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.
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Related cards
More Chicago White Sox cards:
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- #54 Cisco Carlos
- #75 Luis Aparicio
- #97 Buddy Bradford
- #123 Wilbur Wood
- #155 Pete Ward
- #173 White Sox 1969 Rookie Stars
- #222 Duane Josephson
- #248 Bob Priddy
- #283 Sandy Alomar
- #309 Walt Williams
- #328 Joe Horlen
- #363 Russ Nixon
- #388 Tom McCraw
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1969 Topps #179 card?
It is card #179 of the 664-card 1969 Topps Baseball set, picturing Don Pavletich of the Chicago White Sox.
How many cards are in the 1969 Topps Baseball set?
664 cards, tracked as 696 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 664 with none skipped and no printed number shared by two cards; 32 cards carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately, 23 of them the yellow- and white-letter name pairs of #440-511.
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 2026-10-12.