Another solid Birthday Team today, though the pitching staff is a bit thin.

C: Lou Criger (10.7 WAR)
1B: Lucas Duda (5.86 WAR)
2B: Rougned Odor (2.67 WAR)
3B: Joe Stripp (14.02 WAR)
SS/Manager: Dick Tracewski (3.07 WAR)
LF: Skip Schumaker (1.44 WAR)
CF: Fred Lynn (49.95 WAR)
RF: Bake McBride (22.55 WAR)

SP: Slim Sallee (32.55 WAR)
SP: Joe Coleman (23.71 WAR)
SP: Harry Byrd (3.89 WAR)
SP: Buck Ross (1.4 WAR)
SP: Don Kaiser (0.74 WAR)
RP: Joe Klink (0.69 WAR)

Fun name: Chicken Hawks, Live Oak Taylor
GM: Larry MacPhail
Not that one: Mike Wallace, Terry Bradshaw

The Robins were given a "coat of whitewash" by "Pop" Haines in St. Louis on 3 August 1927. Haines scattered eight hits and beat Brooklyn 4-0. The Cardinals' batting star was Roscoe Holm, who went 2-for-3 with a double and a triple. Twenty-one years later, Holm, "depressed and deranged," as the newspapers had it, would kill his wife and himself in a murder-suicide, injuring their teenage daughter in the process.

A different Cardinal featured in Thomas Holmes' sidebar story in the Daily Eagle, shortstop Heinie Schuble. "The big leagues are pulling for Schubel [sic] to make good. The fans like his name. … There is nothing more German than the name of Heinie Schubel. It will bring back cherished memories to some of the old-timers." Some of this sportswriting is really not very good.

Front-page news: the death sentence for Sacco and Vanzetti (many years after their initial conviction). From Ruth Snyder to Lindbergh to Coolidge to Sacco & Vanzetti, the summer of '27 was full of news stories that would resonate for a long time.

Baseball star Pete Rose has been alive exactly as long as Halley's Comet last trip took (27,689 days).

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is exactly as old as Bill Veeck was the day his foot was amputated (11,953 days).

Anyone who wants to can look up how old they are here.

That Newark player sounds an awful lot like Jack Keefe...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is exactly as old as Bill Veeck was the day his foot was amputated (11,953 days).

Sadly, Veeck was just getting started.

I’d have had difficulty keeping a straight face.

This reminds me of the time when I was a kid and had done something really stupid (yeah, there were many times when I'd done something really stupid, but this was particularly egregious) and my grandfather, whom I dearly, dearly loved, said to me "You're so smart. You wouldn't know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions was written on the heel." He was absolutely right, I knew at the time he was absolutely right, but my gawd it was so hard to keep from cracking up. Fortunately, I managed to keep a straight face. And I cherish that memory.