If Your Birthday is March 31st...

...you share it with Peter Bourjos. The defensively gifted but offensively challenged outfielder has played with five big league clubs. I caught him in action with the 2016 Phillies.

Josmil Pinto (below) appeared on track to follow 2013 New Britain Rock Cats teammates Eddie Rosario and Miguel Sano to major league stardom. He put up some nice numbers that summer: 23 doubles, 14 home runs and a .308 average, which earned him a late-season promotion to the Twins, which he hit well over .300 in limited service. But he never grabbed an every day job in Minnesota and drifted back to the minors. He was still hoping for a comeback this winter, when he batted .272 for a team in the Venezuelan winter league.
No Hall of Famers were born on the last day of March. And to be honest, no one really came close. Bill Hallman, a late 19th century outfielder, played the most games of anyone with this birthday (1507). But he was just a .272 hitter.

Chien-Ming Wang seemed on his way to stardom with the Yankees. He won 19 games in 2006 and 2007 and was on his way to his 9th on June 15th, 2008 when he severely injured his foot running the bases in an interleague game at Houston, where pitchers had to bat. He was never the same again. Whenever you hear Aaron Boone or Brian Cashman advocate for a universal DH, much of the argument is based on the expected brilliance of Wang's career -- that was never fulfilled.

Bill Denehy is mostly remembered as the answer to the trivia question: "Who did the Mets send to Washington as compensation for Gil Hodges?" A 1 & 7 pitcher on the 1967, the Connecticut native showed potential, but nothing like that of teammate Tom Seaver. The Mets were lucky that the Senators didn't demand more when they let Hodges out of his contract to return to his adopted home, where he led the Mets to their stunning 1969 title and two more winning seasons, before his untimely death.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rare Remnant of a Lost Ballpark

Will He Wear Zero in the Bronx?

Spring Training Flashbacks: Subway Series, Florida Style - 2016