If Your Birthday is February 2nd...

...you share it with the late Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst.  An icon to both St. Louis and Milwaukee fans, the switch-hitter played alongside Stan Musial on the Cardinals' 1946 World Series champs (after spending his rookie year in '45 as Stan's fill-in in left field) and into the mid-'50s.  Sent to the Giants in one of many ill-conceived trades by GM Frank Lane, Red moved onto the Braves early in 1957, and quickly became the final piece in that club's championship puzzle.  After tuberculosis cost him the 1959 season and part of 1960, he returned to St. Louis as a player-coach. Again, he was Stan's teammate -- while hitting .300 hitter coming off the bench in 1961 and '62.  But that wasn't the end of his story: Red succeeded Johnny Keane as Cardinals manager and was the skipper on the 1967 World Champs and '68 NL pennant winners.  He had two brief, later stints as their manager, 1980 and '90 -- serving between the departure of Whitey Herzog and the arrival of Joe Torre.  Red was a familiar presence at Spring Training games in Florida.  I got to chat with him several times during my time in St. Louis and always found him cordial, wise and deeply passionate about the game.

While Red is the lone Hall of Famer with a birthday on Groundhog Day, there are several other familiar names on today's cake and candles list:

  • Josh Lowe, the Rays rightfielder who belted 20 homers and stole 23 bases in 2023, his first season as a regular.
  • Melvin Mora, who hit 20 or more homers three times during his decade (2000-'09) with the Orioles.
  • Scott Erickson was Mora's Baltimore teammate in 2000 and '02.  But his best MLB season came with the World Champion '91 Twins, where he won 20 games and was the runner up for the AL Cy Young Award.
  • Pat Tabler spent six seasons playing for Cleveland then, after 22 seasons as a member of the Blue Jays TV team, became a Guardians broadcaster in 2023.
  • Max Alvis also has Cleveland baseball roots; he smacked 20 or more home runs three times as the club's regular 3rd baseman during the '60s.

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