Christmas Day

Merry Christmas. Wish everyone a wonderful holiday. It means that this year is coming to an end soon. There’s no baseball on Christmas Day, however, there’s still something interesting about baseball on Christmas Day.

I went to visit the baseball reference website and found three Hall of Famers who were born on Christmas Day. They are Pud Galvin, Nellie Fox and Rickey Henderson.

Pud Galvin played 15 years in the majors. From 1875 to 1892, he earned 365 wins, 5th most of all-time. In his career, he threw 6003.1 innings, only behind Cy Young’s 7356 innings. Also, there were two seasons in which he tossed more than 600 innings. In addition, there were only four seasons in which he pitched fewer than 300 innings. He did not throw many strikeouts, in total, he only threw 1807 strikeouts in his career. Galvin didn’t allow many walks, either. His career BB/9 was 1.17, 15th lowest of all-time. Another unbelievable record is that he threw 646 complete games, only behind Cy Young’s 749 complete games. In 1883 and 1884, he each tossed more than 70 complete games in these two seasons. It’s impossible to see these numbers again in modern baseball.

Nellie Fox played 19 years in the big league. In his career, he was hitting .288/.348/.363. He collected 2663 hits, but he was not a home run hitter with only 35 homers in 15 years. He won the 1959 AL MVP award, defeating Luis Aparicio and Early Wynn, both were his White Sox teammates and Hall of Famers. He was also a 15-time All-Star and 3-time Gold Glove winner. Nonetheless, one thing worth watching was that his career OPS was .710. His OPS went above .800 only once, which was in 1957.

Neither Pud Galvin nor Nellie Fox won the World Series. That’s always a pity in their great careers. But Rickey Henderson almost got everything in his legendary career. He won the World Series twice. The first time was with the Oakland Athletics in 1989 and the second time was the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993. He won the AL MVP in the 1990 season that he slashed .325/.439/.577. Besides, he’s a Gold Glove winner, three-time Silver Slugger and 10-time All-Star. He collected more than 3000 hits. Of course, we are all amazed by his speed. He’s the only player who had more than 1000 stolen bases. In 1980, 1982 and 1983, he successfully stole bases more than 100 times in each of these three seasons. His record of 1406 stolen bases will probably be an unbreakable record since there are fewer players who attempt to steal bases. Rickey Henderson scored 2295 runs and he’s also the career leader of runs scored. He played for 9 teams in his career. Mostly, he spent 14 seasons with the Oakland Athletics.

Christmas Day is surely a good day. In total, there are 71 MLB players born on this day. 8 of them were selected to the All-Star games. Well, the MLB All-Star game began in 1933, hence Pud Galvin never played in the midsummer classic. However, Nellie Fox played two All-Star games in 1959 and 1960 each due to the double All-Star games from 1959 to 1962.