Born This Day

As you know, here at JoeBlogs we try to provide you with information you can use. OK, wait, let’s try that again — as you know, here at JoeBlogs we absolutely DO NOT try to provide you with information you can use, but sometimes a silly idea emerges and I think, “Hey, this might be information people can use.”

Today is one of those days … we’re going to try a little experiment.

I came across this thought because today, April 27, is an interesting day in baseball history. Two Hall of Famers — Rogers Hornsby and Enos Slaughter — along with a collection of pretty darned good players such as Chris Carpenter, Willie Upshaw and Corey Seager, were all born on this day.

Now look, I’m not saying that if you had known this earlier, you would have planned a big Hornsby-Slaughter soiree at your house where, I don’t know, you belittle people in honor of the Rajah and complain endlessly about not being in the Hall of Fame in honor of Enos. But I don’t know. Maybe you WOULD have thrown such a party, and maybe I prevented it from happening by not giving you any advance warning.

So here are the best athletes born on the days in the week ahead, with a thought or two. Let me know in the comments if you like the idea.*

*If you don’t like the idea, you probably don’t need to say so … I’ll get the point from your silence.

Also: Start your party planning now.

April 28: Barry Larkin

Who, as a manager, would you rather have had: Barry Larkin or Derek Jeter? I’d say they were roughly equivalent as hitters and baserunners. I’d say Larkin had a considerable advantage defensively. But Jeter had that one inexpressible quality that might vault him ahead: No, not his clutchness or magical instincts or Jeterosity. No, it was that he was basically indestructible: He played 150 games in a season 13 times. Larkin did it four. But it’s a fun argument.

I want to make special mention of two golfers born on this day — John Daly and Hal Sutton. I mention Daly because he remains utterly fascinating to me. The guy won two major championships even though his life was openly a horror show. We will never, ever, ever have another athlete who wins The Open at St. Andrews and gets served divorce papers at Augusta National.

Hal Sutton I only mention in honor of my dear, departed friend Ken Burger, a marvelous sportswriter who was married five times. I mention the married part because Sutton was married and divorced four times and Kenny asked him how he managed to maintain his focus with all that drama in his life.

“You don’t know anything about it,” Sutton said angrily.

“Au contraire,” Ken said.

Would you take Larkin over Jeter? (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)

April 29: Dale Earnhardt

One of my favorite interviews in recent years was with Jeff Gordon; we met at my daughter’s school because his daughter goes to the same school. At one point, I asked him if it was fun to race against Dale Earnhardt. “Fun?” he said with a look of shock on his face. “I hated it. I hated every minute of it.” It was a pretty dumb question.

Special mention for Andre Agassi. Almost 30 years ago (ugh), I was coming out of the Montgomery Inn restaurant in Cincinnati. And I just about bumped into Andre Agassi coming in. This was Andre in his big hair days, and after he went in, I said to the people with me, “Wow, that was Andre Agassi.”

And they looked at me like I was nuts. “Didn’t you see who he was with?” they asked.

Yeah. He was with Brooke Shields. Didn’t see her.

That was a big miss.

Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!

April 30: Isiah Thomas

Between his calamitous post-basketball career as an executive and coach and his never-ending (and one-sided) feud with Michael Jordan, it’s easy to forget just what an unstoppable force Isiah Thomas was on the basketball court. He was a particularly good outside shooter, he was often the smallest guy on the floor, but when it mattered, man, he could take over a game.

May 1: Steve Cauthen

I didn’t appreciate the extraordinary talents of jockeys until reading Frank Deford’s classic 1977 Sportsperson of the Year story on Steve Cauthen called “When All the World is Young.”

“But if Cauthen was a comet in the insatiable Famous People Industry — in the 1977 parade, videotape highlights will show him marching somewhere between Anita Bryant and R2-D2 — he threw a monkey wrench into the machinery of racing wherever he rode.”

Yes, Steve was a prodigy, an unexplainable genius of riding. Years, later, I came to know Steve a little bit and I asked him what made him simply know what a horse had left and what it could give and when to make a move and all the rest. “There are no words,” he said.

May 2: Eddie Collins

You could also go with David Beckham, but I’ll stick with Cocky Collins, maybe the best percentage player in baseball history.

What is a percentage player? Well, I like to think about it this way: A percentage player does all sorts of little things that add up to big things. So, feeding off Bill James’ “percentage player index,” I’d say that a percentage player:

1. Plays great defense

2. Is a great baserunner

3. Doesn’t waste at-bats

Eddie Collins was a brilliant defensive second baseman. He led the league in stolen bases four times. He walked four times as often as he struck out. And contemporary reports have him being the best bunter, the best hit-and-run-man, the best at taking an extra base, etc.

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Joe

May 3: Sugar Ray Robinson

He was before my time — you probably have to be in your mid-70s, at the very youngest, to have seen an in his-prime Sugar Ray fight live — but those who have will generally tell you that he was the greatest pound-for-pound fighter who ever lived.

May 4: Rory McIlroy

Rory McIlroy has been trying to complete golf’s career grand slam since 2015. All he has to do is win the Masters. In the nine chances he’s had to do that, he has finished second, fourth, fifth twice and seventh. He’s still only 33, so you have to believe it’s going to happen, but here’s the hard truth: It might not. Arnold Palmer finished runner-up three times at the PGA Championship but never won one. Tom Watson came so close a few times also, but never won a PGA Championship. Phil Mickelson has come so close but has never won a U.S. Open. Lee Trevino really disliked playing at the Masters — didn’t suit his game at all — and never was in real contention there.

Anyway, every year, I root for Rory to join that elite group of career grand slam winners. But I will say that based on my observations of Rory’s attitude about life, he’ll be fine even if he doesn’t win it.

Special mention here for Ken Oberkfell, who was the best big-league ballplayer born on this date. It’s a good reminder: You probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Ken Oberkfell. He never made an All-Star team. He never won an award; not even a Player of the Week. But he was still a darned good player — solid defender, could play pretty much any position, would work a walk, rarely struck out. He wasn’t going to carry a team or hit monster homers or light up the crowd. But you like having a guy like that on your team, and he did play a role on two World Series teams.