1969 Topps #302 Jim Pagliaroni
About Jim Pagliaroni
This third-series card looks back on the best day Pagliaroni ever had. He won Oakland's starting catching job out of spring training in 1968 and on May 8 caught Catfish Hunter's perfect game against Minnesota, the American League's first since 1922; owner Charlie Finley paid him a $1,000 bonus and Hunter gave him a gold watch inscribed on the back. A pitch from Baltimore's Eddie Watt broke his right wrist on June 7 and cost him seven weeks, and he finished at .246 with six home runs in 66 games. On May 27, 1969 he moved on to the expansion Seattle Pilots, the club immortalized in Jim Bouton's Ball Four.
James Vincent Pagliaroni was born December 8, 1937, in Dearborn, Michigan, and grew up in Long Beach, California, where he starred at Woodrow Wilson High School. The Boston Red Sox signed him in 1955 as an amateur free agent for a reported $85,000 bonus paid out over ten years, and the bonus rules of the day put him straight onto the major-league roster; he debuted at Fenway Park on August 13, 1955, at age seventeen. Army service from 1956 to 1958 and three minor-league seasons followed before he returned to Boston for good in August 1960. A right-handed hitter listed at six-foot-four and 210 pounds, Pagliaroni caught eleven big-league seasons for the Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, Oakland Athletics and Seattle Pilots, batting .252 with 90 home runs and 326 RBI in 849 games and fielding .991 behind the plate. He was on the receiving end of two celebrated games, Bill Monbouquette's 1962 no-hitter and Catfish Hunter's 1968 perfect game, and his teammates elected him players' union representative with both the Pirates and the Athletics. He died of cancer on April 3, 2010, in Grass Valley, California.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 173 | 1 | 19 | 99 | 37 | 11 | 4 | 2 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 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 Oakland Athletics cards:
- #1 American League 1968 Batting Leaders
- #23 Lew Krausse
- #44 Danny Cater
- #68 Dave Duncan
- #105 Rick Monday
- #124 Hank Bauer
- #143 Joe Nossek
- #195 John Odom
- #217 John Donaldson
- #235 Jim Hunter
- #260 Reggie Jackson
- #281 Ted Kubiak
- #334 Phil Roof
- #358 Athletics 1969 Rookie Stars
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1969 Topps #302 card?
It is card #302 of the 664-card 1969 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jim Pagliaroni of the Oakland Athletics.
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.