WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 30: The 95th annual National Christmas Tree Lighting is held by the National Park Service at the White House Ellipse in Washington, D.C., November 30, 2017. The Beach Boys, Wynonna, The Texas Tenors, Craig Campbell were among the artists who provided the entertainment. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 30: The 95th annual National Christmas Tree Lighting is held by the National Park Service at the White House Ellipse in Washington, D.C., November 30, 2017. The Beach Boys, Wynonna, The Texas Tenors, Craig Campbell were among the artists who provided the entertainment. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images) /
In MLB history, Christmas Day is one of the most prestigious days to celebrate one’s birthday. Whos is the best player of all-time to have the birthday?
While Christmas is supposed to celebrate the birthday of some non-baseball playing fellow, the players in MLB history that have been born on the day is a pretty extensive list.
Overall impressive list
Many days on the calendar have multiple excellent players on their list, but few have the list of players as good as Christmas Day. We’ll explore the top 5 players from the day in just a second, but here are some interesting facts on players born on Christmas Day:
Three Hall of Famers were born on this day
Ten played at least 10 seasons in the major leagues
Eight made at least one All-Star game (three played in 5 or more)
Four hit more than 50 home runs
Four stole more than 100 bases in their career
Six won more than 50 games as a pitcher
Five had more than 500 career strikeouts as a pitcher
Now, let’s start with the list, beginning with a tightly contested spot at #5.
Garver gets the nod here over Jo-Jo Moore, who was a left fielder who could hit for good average and played on a very good New York Giants team in the 1930s through the early 1940s, playing in 3 World Series and making 6 All-Star teams.
Garver pitched for 14 seasons in the major leagues, pitching for some rough teams in his career, including the St. Louis Browns, the early 1950s Detroit Tigers, and the late 1950s Kansas City Athletics. That led to a losing career record, going 129-157 over his career.
Garver was a workhorse, however, leading the league in both 1950 and 1951 with 22 and 24 complete games, respectively. Of course, as many of the pitchers in that era, he wasn’t built for that kind of arm abuse, and he had multiple seasons where he was unable to give a full season worth of innings.
Garver would finish with an even 881 walks and strikeouts, which isn’t exactly a dominant starter, but his ability to come back multiple times to the mound from injury that cost him a significant part of a season is what earned him this spot on this list, with a career bWAR of 43.2.
After hitting .316/.371/.474 in his rookie season at 21 years old, it was obvious that Ben Chapman could hit. If it weren’t for injuries, that could be the thing that he would be most known for now rather than the infamy he now carries.
Chapman was cut from the cloth of Ty Cobb, a guy who hit the ball all over the field, ran with tremendous speed, and had a fire of competitiveness to him that was nearly unmatched.
He began his career with the Yankees after their magical run as one of the elite teams in all the league in the 1920s, playing in just one World Series in his 7 seasons as a Yankee, in 1932, when he hit .294 over the 4 game sweep of the Cubs.
Chapman led the league in stolen bases four times in his career and made the All-Star team four times as well. His best season was his second year in the league, 1931, when he hit .315/.396/.483 with 28 doubles, 11 triples, 17 home runs, and stole 61 bases.
Chapman’s intense competitiveness led to numerous disputes on the field as a player, including a number of fights. He ended up with a collection of injuries, and once he left the Yankees, he struggled to stick with a team.
Over his career, he hit .302/.383/.440 with 90 home runs and 287 stolen bases.
What Chapman has become more known for is how he heckled and treated Jackie Robinson when Robinson broke into the league. Chapman was then the manager for the Philadelphia Phillies. Some of Chapman’s background has been skewed, but his behavior in this case was not skewed, and it’s led to a very poor stain on his overall career record.
It was over 30 years afterward, but for many in Chicago, the stain of the Black Sox was not yet off of the franchise when Nellie Fox was traded to the White Sox after the 1949 season. The franchise had just a scattering of .500 or better seasons in those 30 years and no pennants.
Fox may not have hit for big home run numbers or stolen a ton of bases or even won a collection of batting titles. Instead, he was the catalyst for the White Sox in the 1950s as the club went from an also-ran to a perennial contender, playing excellent defense at second base, and leading the league in hits 4 times in the 1950s.
Fox was an “iron man”, rarely missing a game, playing every game from 1953-1959. He tallied over 2,600 career hits with excellent contact skills, walking 719 times and only striking out 216 times in over 10,000 career plate appearances.
Fox’s career line was .288/.348/.363. He won the Gold Glove 3 times. He was also selected as an All Star 15 times (there were multiple All-Star games at times during his career). Fox posted 49 career bWAR, and he didn’t put up numbers that blow away players. He was selected the American League MVP in 1959.
Fox was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1997 by the Veteran’s Committee and his wife gave his induction speech as he had passed away in 1975 at just 47 years old.
Galvin was really pro baseball’s first workhorse starter, not a true ace that dominated the opposition, but a guy who went out game after game and kept his team in the game. Of course, he played from 1875-1892 (with some missed time along the way), so the era was very different, meaning a workhorse starter threw 40+ complete games and hurled 400+ innings.
Galvin was the first 300-game winner in baseball’s history, coming heavily on the weight of two dominant seasons in 1883 and 1884, when he went a combined 92-52 over 148 games, completing a remarkable 143 of those games. He hurled 1,292 2/3 innings over those two seasons with a 2.36 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, and a 113/648 BB/K ratio.
While Galvin was a tremendous pitcher, early on in his career, he also played some time in the outfield. While he led the league in statistics in really only those two top seasons as a pitcher, he had the most strikeouts as a hitter in the league four different times, and that doesn’t include his highest amount of strikeouts in his career. He hit just .201/.212/.261 over his career with a horrid 38/631 BB/K.
Galvin has an intriguing heritage at this time of the year as well as he is widely considered to be the first baseball player to utilize a performance enhancing drug. As the Hall of Fame debate rages over the use of PEDs and how to weigh them on the Hall of Fame ballot, Galvin’s early attempt at using PEDs reminds us that they have been part of the game since before the 20th century, let alone the 21st century!
Galvin finished with 365 wins and over 6,000 (6,003 1/3) innings in his career with a 2.85 ERA, and a 1.19 WHIP. His career wins rank him 5th overall among all pitchers. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1965.
By a long ways, the best player born on Christmas Day was Rickey Henderson. In his first full season in the league in 1980, Henderson stole 100 bases and was selected to the All-Star game.
That simply launched an incredible career of the best leadoff hitter in the history of the game, a player who revolutionized the position with the ability to get on base, provide power, and also inject incredible speed to the top of a lineup.
Henderson’s 130 stolen bases in 1982 set a single-season mark that has not really been threatened, and his career marks of 2,295 runs scored and 1,406 stolen bases are the top marks in the history of the game.
Rickey played in the game for a quarter century, opening his career in 1979, and retiring after 2003. His career line was .279/.401/.419 with 297 career home runs.
Henderson was selected as an All-Star ten times in his career, won a Gold Glove, won the Silver Slugger three times, and won the 1990 MVP award.
Henderson was also electric in the postseason, having a definite flair for the dramatic. He hit .284/.389/.441 in the postseason with 5 home runs and 33 stolen bases in just 60 games. He was selected to the Hall of Fame in 2009.
This was one of the most impressive days I could find on record, but it’s hard to exactly track which day had the best overall track record of players. Hopefully you enjoyed!
