'Tis the season?
What's Christmas Day without a little baseball talk?
When you think Baseball and holidays, it’s natural to think of the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Labor Day. But if you dig deep enough, it’s possible to tie the sport to Christmas as well.
Today seems like a decent day to give it a shot.
78 major leaguers have been born on Christmas Day, including 3 Hall of Famers: Pud Galvin, Nellie Fox and Rickey Henderson. Rickey turns 65 today, and could probably steal 40 bases if he suited up in 2024.
3 former Marlins celebrate birthdays today: Rick Renteria, Alex Jackson and Garrett Cooper.
Cooper is one of 5 big leaguers who appeared in a game in 2023 who were born on Christmas Day. He joins Enyel De Los Santos of the Guardians, Zach Jackson of the Athletics, Nabil Crismatt of the Padres and D-Backs and Tanner Rainey of the Nationals.
If only former big league catcher Steve Christmas’ mom could have held out for 16 days. He was born December 9, 1957.
The man teammates called “Tree” appeared in 24 ML games for the Reds, White Sox and Cubs between 1983 and 1986.
When playing in the Florida State League in 1979, he once stepped out of the batter’s box, and a fan yelled, “We gonna wait until Christmas?”
When he was traded from the Reds to the White Sox in late November of 1983, one newspaper headline read: “Sox get Christmas before Thanksgiving.”
Also not born on Christmas Day: former Marlins Brett Carroll, Bryan Holaday and Jesus Aguilar or former big leaguers Rico Noel, Al Clauss, J.T. Snow, Jon Garland, Pedro Feliz, Ebenezer Beatin and “Frosty” Bill Duggleby.
Santa’s sleigh wouldn’t get anywhere without help from the likes of one-time major leaguers Dick Rudolph, Joe “Blitzen” Benz, Dasher Troy and Cupid Childs.
Long before the Astrodome was built, the first sanctioned indoor baseball game was played on Christmas Day 1888 at Philadelphia’s State Fairground Building. The Downtowners beat the Uptowners, 6-1, in front of 2,000 fans.
South Side Park, the original home of the Chicago White Sox from 1901-10, burned down on Christmas Day 1940. The 12,500-seat wooden ballpark, built by Charles Comiskey, hosted 3 games between the White Sox and Cubs in the 1906 World Series, won by the Sox. After Chicago’s American League ballclub moved 3 blocks away to the newly constructed Comiskey Park, South Side Park served as the home of the Negro Leagues’ Chicago American Giants from 1911 until its demise in 1940.
On this date in 1988, Fernando “El Caballero” Hernandez set a Cuban Serie Nacional record with 12 RBI in a game for Pinar del Rio.
And on Christmas Day, 2001, Hideki Matsui signed a new contract with the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, becoming the first 500 million yen player in Japan. The deal, which—at the time—was the equivalent of 4.7 million American dollars, surpassed the previous record deal in Japan, which had belong to Ichiro.
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