Merry Christmas

December 25th, the birthday of the best leadoff hitter I've ever seen, stolen base king Rickey Henderson. Without a doubt, he's the greatest baseball talent ever born on Christmas Day. A superlative combination of speed and power -- and let's not overlook durability. In 25 major league seasons, he stole a record 1406 bases, added 297 homers -- including an unprecedented 81 leading off a game. The speedburner totaled 3055 hits while maintaining an on-base percentage of .401. He's a lock for Hall of Fame induction (as we learned a month later).
One other Christmas Baseball Baby deserves our attention. He was the best pitcher on the worst team of the '60s. Alvin Jackson was an Original Met, playing both Polo Grounds seasons and then the first two at Shea -- all 10th place finishes. Amazingly, on that 120-defeat team in '62, Jackson tossed four shutouts!

Curious which ballplayers share your birthday? The site, linked below, will show you who they are, as well as which famous events happened on a date of your choice:
http://www.todayinbaseballhistory.com/cgi-bin/today/today2S.pl

Comments

Anonymous said…
nice job mike--i enjoy reading your stuff--and of course your updates on the fan


regards kevin
January 3, 2009 at 8:47 AM
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