16 February 2011

A post on Baseball-Reference.com's website about Hall of Famers and All Stars sharing birthdays, and gave some expected averages for how many you'd find for a given day (for me, no Hall of Famers and six All Stars appearing in 17 games, which is above average). But the question that framed the post - the formation of a team of players all born on Valentine's Day - got me to thinking who would be on the team of players born on my birthday?

The lineup:

Catcher - Ron Karkovice

First Base - Jocko Milligan

Second Base - Cupid Childs

Third Base - Mike Ivie

Shortstop - Cecil Travis

Outfield - Al Woods, Jose Cruz, Frank Howard

Starting Pitcher - Toad Ramsey

Relief Pitcher - Ken Raffensberger

Ivie at third is a bit of a cheat - he played fewer than 100 games at third over an 11 year career - but my next best option was a guy named Vern Morgan, who put together 17 games at third over two seasons with the Cubs in the 1950s (the highlight of a career that saw him play in the minors for 15 seasons, mostly at the A and AA level).

I wound up employing a similar cheat for relief pitcher. Raffensberger is actually the winningest pitcher on my list, six ahead of Ramsey. But he also has the third-most saves with 16 (the leader has a whopping 29), and his ERA and WHIP are much better than the two guys with more saves. So I'm going with him.

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