1969 Topps #564 Gil Hodges
About this card
This is one of the 25 manager cards in the 1969 Topps set - one for each of the 24 clubs, with Washington twice (#294 Jim Lemon, the outgoing manager, and #650 Ted Williams, hired that February). Nine of the 25 are Hall of Famers.
About Gil Hodges
Number 564 is his last card in this run, and it arrives one season before the payoff. What it reports is 1968: 73-89 and ninth in the National League, which was nonetheless the best mark any Mets club had posted in seven years and a twelve-win jump on 1967. The year cost him more than wins: a mild heart attack during a September game in Atlanta ended his season early. The following year the same team won 100.
Gil Hodges played 18 major league seasons -- one game in 1943, then 1947 through 1963 -- and spent nearly all of them at first base for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, in a lineup with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Duke Snider. Born in Princeton, Indiana, the son of a coal miner, he left the Dodgers 11 days after his debut to join the Marines, serving as an anti-aircraft gunner at Tinian and Okinawa and earning a Bronze Star with a combat V. He returned as the outstanding first baseman of the 1950s: eight All-Star selections, 370 home runs, 1,274 runs batted in, a .273 average, four home runs in a single game against the Braves on August 31, 1950, and the first three Gold Gloves ever awarded at his position. He anchored six Dodgers pennant winners, drove in both runs in the seventh game that finally gave Brooklyn a World Series in 1955, and batted .391 when Los Angeles won the 1959 Series. Managing followed: five rebuilding years with the expansion Washington Senators, then the Mets, whom he took to 100 wins and the 1969 championship. He died of a heart attack on April 2, 1972, two days short of his 48th birthday, and entered the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame · Baseball Almanac · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 750 | 4 | 93 | 370 | 122 | 70 | 41 | 50 | 0 |
| SGC | 74 | 0 | 3 | 21 | 14 | 12 | 13 | 10 | 1 |
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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1969 Topps #564 card?
It is card #564 of the 664-card 1969 Topps Baseball set, picturing Gil Hodges of the New York Mets. This is one of the 25 manager cards in the 1969 Topps set - one for each of the 24 clubs, with Washington twice (#294 Jim Lemon, the outgoing manager, and #650 Ted Williams, hired that February). Nine of the 25 are Hall of Famers.
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.