If Your Birthday is July 7th...

 

...you share it with the world's most famous rock and roll drummer. Ringo Starr. While there's little info to connect him with baseball -- unlike his onetime band-mate, there aren't any pictures of him enjoying a game at Yankee Stadium (or anywhere else) -- plenty of ballplayers share his birthday. And the odds are that some of them are Beatle fans.

Tim Teufel, the Greenwich, Connecticut product broke into the majors as a Twin, but is best remembered as Wally Backman's righty platoon partner at 2nd base on the champion '86 Mets.   Statistically, his best season (when he hit .308 and drove in 61 runs) came a year later.  After his playing career ended, he returned to Flushing and served as the Mets 3rd base coach for several years.

Teufel's career began with the Twins, where he spent his first two-and-a-half seasons.  There's another onetime Minnesota player -- who also earned a ring playing in New York -- who shares Ringo's birthday: Chuck Knoblauch.  An effective leadoff hitter and base stealer when he broke in with the Twins, Knoblauch was never quite the same player as a Yankee; his defensive play worsened year by year -- forcing a move to left field in 2001.

Vinny Capra made his big league league debut, playing eight games with the 2022 Blue Jays.  He spent most of the year with their AAA club in Buffalo; I saw him in an August game at Syracuse.  Traded to the Pirates in April '23, the Florida native is now playing for their Indianapolis farm club.

Franmil Reyes has terrific power, best seen in 2019, when he hammered 37 home runs splitting time between San Diego and Cleveland.  But there's more to being an effective big leaguer than clearing the fences.  His shaky defense and lack of other skills factored into his bouncing through several organizations.  Currently, Reyes plays for the Nats Triple A club in Rochester.

Let's not overlook the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige, whose greatest work came in the Negro Leagues. Denied a chance to compete against legends such as Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, he still earned their admiration as one of the greatest ever to take the mound before his almost-too-late chance to dazzle with the Indians and Browns.

One other name deserves mention -- the first player-turned-umpire I can recall. Bill Kunkel spent three seasons in the early '60s pitching for the Athletics and Yankees and then nearly 20 years as one of the most respected umpires in the American League. He worked a pair of World Series... and five AL Championship Series. If that wasn't enough to fill "the back of his card," he also worked as an NBA referee for a couple of years. Bill (who died way too young from cancer, at age 48) is also the patriarch of a dual-generation baseball family -- his son Jeff spent parts of eight seasons as an infielder with the Rangers and Cubs.

A pretty good birthday bunch for July 7th!