Baseball Birthdays: February 26th

February 26th... a day chock full of interesting baseball birthdays. Jose Reyes, for one. The Mets lead-off man and offensive catalyst is the only player in club history to lead the National League in batting. He did that in 2011, before leaving as a free agent for the Marlins, who traded him a year later to the Blue Jays.
If you grew up watching the great Yankees teams of the early '60s, you'll remember power-hitting Johnny Blanchard. In 1961, the year of Mantle and Maris chasing the Babe, he smacked 21 homers in just 243 at-bats. He was born February 26th, 1933. Exactly two years later, the Yankees released Babe Ruth.

J.T. Snow's also on today's birthday list along with reliever Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez, Mariners infielder Dustin Ackley and William Frawley, a TV legend as Fred Mertz, Grandpa Bub of My Three Sons -- and very possibly the most avid baseball fan in show biz. How can you not love a guy who had it written into his I Love Lucy contract that he got the week off to attend the World Series if his beloved Yankees made it -- which during the 1950s, they did eight out of ten years! When he made the cover of TV Guide in August 1961 he was in a very baseball-esque scene with co-stars Fred MacMurray and Stanley Livingston. In fact, when I interviewed Stan a couple of years ago, he recalled Frawley taking him to a few Dodger games as "his unofficial grandson." 
Frawley also mixed business and pleasure, appearing in more than few baseball-themed movies, such as Safe at Home (in which Mantle and Maris appeared), The Babe Ruth Story (as Jack Dunn, who ran the minor league Baltimore Orioles, Babe's first professional team) and Kill the Umpire (as the head of the umpiring school William Bendix's lead character attendsd). He also did a couple of comedies involving the Dodgers: in It Happened in Flatbush, he played Brooklyn's general manager. And who remembers Rhubarb, in which a cat inherited the Dodgers? 
And to top it off, he even filmed a promotional spot for baseball which along with one with Humphrey Bogart, were re-run during the 1986 World Series. So, happy birthday, Fred and Bub and all those other great characters you brought to life!


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