If Your Birthday is September 5th...

...you celebrate it with Bill Mazeroski, the first player to end the World Series with a walk-off home run. Leading off the last of the 9th inning, he crushed Ralph Terry's second pitch over the left field wall, giving Pittsburgh perhaps its greatest baseball moment.
A gifted defensive player with more modest offensive skills, Maz remains one of the more controversial inductees of the Hall of Fame. A statue, depicting his joyful scamper around the bases following that 1960 home run, is one of several outside PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

Our other September 5th baseball birthdays:


  • Napoleon Lajoie, the sweet-swinging star of the 1890s and 1900s, who compiled a .338 lifetime average with several teams, most notably the Indians. 
  • Ernie White, who pitched for the Cardinals and Braves during the 1940s, who was the Mets pitching coach in 1963, their final season in the Polo Grounds.
  • Gil Patterson, another pitching coach with a New York connection. After appearing in 10 games with the 1977 Yankees, his career went downhill with an arm injury. Patterson made his mark as a minor league pitching coordinator with the Yankees, Diamondbacks and, currently, the A's organization.
  • Zach Walters (right) looked like he was on track for big things when I saw him with 2013 Syracuse Chiefs, where he had his career year, smacking 29 home runs. But he was nothing more than a bench player in the majors, playing parts of four seasons with the Nationals, Indians and Dodgers.
  • Chris Young showed early promise when he hit 32 home runs for the 2007 Diamondbacks. It proved to be the pinnacle of his career, which later brought him to the A's, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Dodgers. His big league career ended in 2018 with 191 home runs, but just a .235 batting average.
  • Rod Barajas caught for 14 years in the majors with seven different teams. These days, he's a coach with San Diego Padres.
     

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