If Your Birthday is February 17th...

...you share it with Stephen Tarpley, a lefthanded reliever who appeared in parts of the 2018 and '19 season with the Yankees and this spring will attempt to join that select circle who've played for both New York teams. He's now in spring training with the Mets in Port St. Lucie.

Roger Craig pitched for two New York teams -- among the most famous of all time. He came up with the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, where his personal highlight was being the starting pitcher in game five of the World Series, two days before Johnny Podres shut out the Yankees to nail down Brooklyn's only Worlds Championship. 

The North Carolina native returned to New York for a couple of seasons of Polo Grounds duty with Casey Stengel's original Mets, losing more than 20 games in both 1962 and '63. For once, his manager wasn't going for a laugh when he exonerated the hard luck hurler: "You've gotta be good to lose that many." Craig was then traded to the Cardinals, where he played on their 1964 Champs, before beginning a long and distinguished second career as a coach and manager -- including the pennant winning 1989 Giants.

Cody Ransom could be the poster child for a 4-A player, appearing in parts of 11 big league seasons, including the '08 and '09 Yankees. I snapped this image in May 2010 when he was a phone call away from the Phillies, as the starting 3rd baseman for their Lehigh Valley farm club. Two months later, he joined the big club and spent five weeks calling Citizens Bank Park home.

There's an even more famous minor leaguer on today's list. Of course, his fame came from another sport. During his mid-career break from the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan decided to re-explore his boyhood interest in baseball, and spent the entire 1994 season with the White Sox Double-A club in Birmingham. And though the numbers seem a paint a Tebow-like picture, Jordan's then-manager Terry Francona has often said that if Jordan, then 31, had stuck with baseball another year or so, he had the skills to make the majors. The labor mess in the beginning of 1995 brought an end to Jordan's career, so we'll never know if he could have joined Chuck Connors, Ron Reed, Dave DeBusschere and Gene Conley in that special fraternity.

Willie Kirkland was one of many power-hitting outfielders who came up through the Giants farm system in the 1950s. After three promising San Francisco seasons, he was swapped to the Indians in 1961 for Harvey Kuenn. A year later, his batting average sank to .200 and his days as a regular soon ended.

And we remember:

Wally Pipp, owner of the most famous hangover in baseball history. As Yankee fans learn as part of our Baseball 101, the veteran first baseman showed up "unwell" on June 2nd, 1925. Manager Miller Huggins then tapped "that college kid" on the bench to fill in. Lou Gehrig went 3-for-5 and never missed a day for the next 14 years. Pipp soon found himself replacing Gehrig on the bench and was never again in the Yankees starting lineup. A year later, Pipp moved onto the Reds, where he finished out his career.

History hasn't generally been kind to Wally Pipp, while the facts not only show him to be a very good player -- a lifetime .291 hitter who walked more than he stuck out -- he's also the best of the 48 major leaguers born on February 17th.