Baseball Birthdays This Weekend

We'll start on Saturday with the late Willie McCovey, who teamed with Willie Mays to give the 1960s Giants the most feared home run duo in baseball.  Those 521 career homers (all but 46 with San Francisco) helped punch hit his ticket to Cooperstown.  The 1959 NL Rookie of the Year led the league in homers three times and RBI twice. His 44 is part of the gallery of retired numbers at Oracle Park (it was still AT&T when I visited in 2014).


(Below:) Oscar Gonzalez flashed good power when he broke in with the 2022 Guardians.  But his numbers faded the following season and he was soon back in the minors, and more recently, Japan.  I caught Gonzalez in 2024 with the Yankees AAA Scranton Wilkes-Barre farm club.
 
Sunday's duo pack speed and power.  Elly de la Cruz, the Reds dynamic infielder, led the NL with 67 stolen bases in 2024, the year he made his first All Star game.  (My image is from the spring of 2023, as he was about to "graduate" from AAA Louisville.)

J.P. Crawford comes from a prolific baseball family.  His uncle Carl starred for the Rays and Red Sox, while his cousin Justin is expected to join the Philadelphia lineup in 2026.  After breaking in with the Phillies, J.P. was traded to the Mariners in 2019; last season he helped Seattle reach the ALCS for the first time in 25 years.
 



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