The Birthday Extravangaza!

May is a very busy birthday month in my life. First of all, I'd like to wish my beautiful grandmother the happiest of birthdays. Brandon Inge and I are next week, and a few other notable folks born on this particular date include Lou Whitaker and Yogi Berra.

Whitaker, a career Tiger, played from the young age of 20 in 1977 to age 38 in 1995. He was always a durable second baseman, averaging 138 games played from '78 to '93. He was also known for incredibly slick defense, winning three consecutive Gold Gloves in 1983, World Series winning 1984, and 1985. Whitaker is one of 19 second basemen of all time to win 3 or more Gold Gloves - he's no Alomar (10) or Mazeroski (9) but he was always dependable, finishing his career with a .984 fielding percentage, good for 50th all-time. In fact, Bleacher Report named Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker the best double play combination in history. Matt Snyder, author for CBS Sports, declares that though the stats wouldn't rank them at the top, Tram and Whitaker were organizational strongholds for more than a decade and both churned out defensive durability on the regular. 

The greatest double play combination of all time. 

Whitaker was never an offensive weapon, but he was dependable. Finishing his career with a .276 average and 2,342 hits in his career, Lou spent most of his time as either the leadoff (4,268 plate appearances) or second hitter (3,461 plate appearances), where he hit .283 for his career, so when he shifted down, things went south. Also very interesting, he hit .313 in Tigers' wins and only .235 in Tigers' losses, which goes to show how important he was to the Tigers' wellbeing. 

Is Whitaker a Hall of Famer? Defensively and intangibly, I think so. He was an amazing leader and great leadoff hitter (career .363 on-base percentage), and a top-of-the-line defender. He only received 2.9% of the vote in his first year on the ballot for the Hall, which means that he had to be removed from the ballot, and now his only hope is the Era Based Committee. If I had a vote, I don't think I'd give it to him, unfortunately. Great player, but not one of the top 1% of all time. 

I'm just realizing how bad of a birthday present that is. Sorry Lou. 

Yogi can eat his birthday cake in the Hall of Fame for all he cares, but only if he can get his hardware out of the way. Yogi may be the most decorated player of all time, with 10 World Series rings (yes, TEN), 3 MVPs, and All-Star selections from 1947 to 1962.

Yogi Berra and his hardware.

I don't really think anything I say will do justice to his illustrious career, but to have played for the Bronx Bombers for so long and still be so successful I think is absolutely incredible. What an amazing career, and remember, if there's a fork in the road, take it (words from Yogi himself). 

Happy birthday one and all and thank you for reading.