I was born August 18, 1980, which is the day after George Brett broke .400.  Since my parents were at the game (9 months pregnant in 100 degree heat if you’re scoring at home) I ended up with the middle name Brett.  That’s close enough to a mystical birth story for me.

I’ve always been kind of thankful that Brett had such a good career and is such a great guy: imagine being born a few years later in New York and ending up with Gooden as a middle name.

(When George Brett got elected to the Hall of Fame, my mother informed me that my middle name was her idea: somehow I had always pictured that as something my dad did before she woke up from the anesthetic.)

Currently I’m a physics graduate student at the University of Colorado researching theoretical atomic physics.