St. Patrick’s Day is always interesting for names. Lots of babies born on this day end up being given the first or middle name of Patrick. Among the 41 MLB players born today, eight (Pat Seery, Pete Reiser, Dan Masteller, John Smiley, Larry Murphy, Pat Gomez, Rick Lisi, & Bill Gannon) have the first or middle given name of Patrick.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg for unusual names among MLB players with a birthday today. Click through for the really unusual stuff.
First off, there’s Fred Pfeffer. This guy’s got a couple of really cool nicknames:
His mustache kind of looks like a dandelion, right?
Ok, now how about Paddy Mayes?
I suppose his nickname of Paddy was due to him being born on St. Patrick’s Day. But check out his actual given name. He’s the only MLB player in history with the first name Adair, although 3 other guys had it as their middle or last name, notably including Jerry Adair. But how about that middle name? Suffice it to say Paddy Mayes is the only Bushyhead in MLB history.
And then there’s the curious case of Bunny Pearce.
Apparently, folks couldn’t decide if William was a Bunny or a Ducky. Apparently B-R.com used to list him as Ducky, and even shows that he carried the nickname of Ducky.
It seems like this might be a more appropriate picture for this guy:
Moving on, we have Rynie Wolters.
I presume his Dutch heritage explains his unusual name (unusual by American standards, that is.) It’s hard not to glance at his given first name of “Reinder” and not think of “reindeer”. There are a few MLB players with the first, middle, or last name of Reinhard or Reinhardt, but nobody else named Reinder or anything close. He’s also the only Albertus and the only Wolters.
And how about Daff Gammons?
It’s hard not to wonder if he’s related to Peter Gammons, especially since they’re both from Massachusetts. Daff is the only Daff in MLB history, excepting Paul Dean and Ken Sanders, who both had the nickname Daffy.
Also born on March 17th, we have Clarence Edwin Gaston with the unusual nickname of Cito and Harold Patrick Reiser, who was known as Pete.
Baseball is filled with interesting names, but it’s quite rare to find so many all on the same day.
Great stuff Andy! BTW, the Indians had a minor leaguer named Tony Wolters. They released him earlier this year and he was claimed by the Rockies so who knows? And while Wolters wasn’t born on St. Patricks day, he did make the rare middle infield to catcher transition in the minors.
http://www.purplerow.com/2016/2/19/11058446/colorado-rockies-tony-wolters-cleveland-indians-player-profile-spring-training-mlb-news
No players born in Ireland have today as a birthday.
Some other odd names from among today’s birthday boys.
– Ed Klepfer
– George Hogriever
– Whitey Ock
– Lyman Lamb
Ock had a very odd career. He played in only one major league game. And from what I can tell he never played a single game in the minors. Wonder what the backstory on that was? I did a bit of digging but came up empty.
The one game was for the Dodgers at home in the last game of the 1935 season (it was the second game of a D-H and ended tied after 8 innings). Brooklyn and its opponent (the Phillies) were long since out of the pennant chase. Ock was a Brooklyn native, so could it possibly have been a promotion to give a local amateur a one day shot at being a big leaguer? I have no idea, but it does seem odd that Ock never played another professional game. Ock did alright; he fanned twice but drew a walk and caught the whole game, handling three fielding chances successfully (two were caught third strikes) with nary a passed ball, wild pitch or stolen base.
Interesting Doug. Ock also went to the Lehigh University which is only 60 miles from Philadelphia. So that may have factored in as well. Plus, the two teams played a doubleheader that day so an extra catcher may have been needed.
I couldn’t find a mention of Ock in game stories, but he is mentioned a few times in the New York Times.
He hit a home run for Lehigh vs Rutgers on 4-24-35.
He apparently was a very good football player. On 12-18-33, it refers to him as a “star halfback”, and that the next season he will be the quarterback. A quote from the article: “The new football captain was regular catcher on the nine last Spring and is a member of the basketball squad at present. He is president of his class.”
On 10-13-37, he played quarterback for the Brooklyn Eagles vs the Bushwicks in an American Football Association game. His team won 10-0.
I just love stuff like this. I’ll have to come back & give some of these guys a closer look.
And I love the new site BTW.
I couldn’t help but notice our boy, Rynie Wolters, was born in 1842. This begs the question, who has the most ancient of dates of birth in “The Book”?. I came up with PA native and Philadelphia-buried Nate Berkenstock (1831). Any idea if this is actually, correct?
Wikipedia agrees with your conclusion. Berkenstock’s one ML game was at age 40, playing for the NA champion Philadelphia Athletics in the last game of the 1871 season. The Athletics played 28 games that year, starting in late May, and usually playing two games a week through the beginning of September. The end of the schedule (if that’s the right term) was more stretched out with just 5 games played from Sep 9 to a very late finale on Oct 30.
Wikipedia shows Berkenstock’s stats with the “National Association of Base Ball Players” operating from 1857-1870, and reproduced here.
“Hands lost” is outs made, both at bat and on the bases. Looks like Berkenstock was a pretty sold player, scoring 4 and 5 runs a game his last two seasons, and with more runs scored than outs made for his career.
“. . . more runs scored than outs made for his career.”
Nothing unusual about that, except instead of “base-ball” we usually call that “tee-ball.”
epm:
It wasn’t just the tee-ball that helped. Obviously it was the sandals, too.
I would venture a guess that more players were conceived in drunken shenanigans on St. Patrick’s day than were born on St. Patrick’s day. And there does seem to be a bit of a spike in births of players starting around December 19 and going through the end of the month, which seems about right (except for the 25th).