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The best baseball players born on Sept. 16

September 16th, 2024

Who are the best players born on each day of the year? We have a list for every day on the calendar.

Here’s a subjective ranking of the top five for Sept. 16:

1) Robin Yount (1955)
A first-ballot Hall of Famer with two AL MVPs, Yount has a strong claim to being the greatest player in Brewers history. Could he really have given that up for golf at the age of 22? It seemed possible in 1978, when Yount held out at the beginning of the season for various reasons, saying he might give up the game and take a shot at the PGA Tour. That, obviously, never happened, and Yount returned to the diamond without missing a beat, restarting a career that led to his enshrinement in Cooperstown in 1999.

Yount's 3,142 career hits are good for 20th all-time, and he's the Brewers' all-time leader in games played, runs, hits, doubles, triples and RBIs. And 50 years later, he's still the last 18-year-old to hit a home run in the Major Leagues, going deep in a 3-2 win over the Orioles on April 13, 1974.

2) Tim Raines (1959)
One of the best leadoff men -- and switch-hitters -- in history, "Rock" Raines was a seven-time All-Star who used his speed and athleticism to dazzle fans in the field and on the bases on his way to Cooperstown: He was inducted in 2017, the second Hall of Famer born on Sept. 16.

It wasn't an easy path to stardom, as Raines had to overcome a cocaine addiction that nearly cost him his career. A year after being the runner-up in NL Rookie of the Year voting with the Expos, Raines entered rehab after the 1982 season. The next year he rebounded with an MLB-best 133 runs scored and an NL-leading 90 steals (the third of four straight seasons leading the league in thefts).

A fan favorite in Montreal, where he teamed with Andre Dawson and Gary Carter as part of the stellar -- if ill-fated -- Expos of the early 1980s, Raines won a batting title in 1986. He eventually claimed two rings later in his career with the juggernaut Yankees teams of the 1990s. On Oct. 4, 2001, while with the Orioles, Raines became part of just the second father-son duo to play on the same team in a game when Tim Raines Jr. started in center field, next to his father, who was in left.

Raines is fifth all time with 808 stolen bases and his 2,605 hits rank sixth all time among switch-hitters. After his playing days, he got into coaching, and he won a ring as the first-base coach for the 2005 World Series-champion White Sox club. One of the most popular players to ever play north of the border, Raines was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013.

3) Orel Hershiser (1958)
Nicknamed "Bulldog" by Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda to encourage him to be tough on the mound, Hershiser overcame plenty of early adversity -- he almost dropped out of college and later almost left baseball while in the Minors -- to become another in a long line of Dodgers aces and one of the game's most dominant pitchers of the 1980s.

He led the NL in innings pitched for three straight seasons and finished in the top five of NL Cy Young voting four times, taking home the Award in an exquisite 1988 campaign that saw him notch a league-high 23 wins and set the MLB record for consecutive scoreless innings with 59. He carried his dominance that year into the postseason, winning the NLCS and World Series MVPs while yielding just five earned runs over 32 2/3 innings -- including two complete games in the Fall Classic -- to lead the Dodgers to the title.

He was never the same after reconstructive shoulder surgery in 1990, but he recaptured that postseason dominance once more in 1995, winning the ALCS MVP while pitching Cleveland into the World Series. After his playing career, Hershiser spent some time as the Rangers' pitching coach and in the club's front office. He eventually transitioned into broadcasting, working for ESPN and later the Dodgers. He also got into poker, with some notable cashes, and he's known for giving an autographed baseball to anyone who knocks him out of a tourney.

4) Mickey Tettleton (1960)
A two-time All-Star and three-time Silver Slugger, Tettleton -- named after fellow Oklahoman Mickey Mantle -- was an extremely selective hitter who could put a charge into the ball when he connected. He led the AL in walks in 1992 and posted a .369 career on-base percentage, while hitting more than 30 homers in four of his 14 big league seasons, which included time with the A's, O's, Tigers and Rangers.

5) Brandon Moss (1983)
An infielder-outfielder who played parts of 11 seasons in the Majors, Moss found his greatest success in Oakland, where he earned an All-Star nod in 2014, a year after hitting a career-high 30 homers for the A's. The lefty slugger capped that All-Star season with a monster performance in the AL Wild Card Game, slugging two homers and driving in five in a contest Oakland ultimately dropped to the Royals.

Moss' prodigious power was on full display over the last couple years of his career. In 2016, while with the Cardinals, Moss hit what was then the longest homer in new Busch Stadium's history, a 477-foot blast that was eclipsed the next year by Keon Broxton's 489-foot shot. Undeterred, Moss made the most of his final big league season, hitting a 474-foot long ball that remains the longest homer in Royals history.

Others of note:

Larry Brown (1901)
A backstop who played in the Negro Leagues for 22 seasons -- and 31 total seasons in Black Baseball -- including as a player-manager of the Memphis Red Sox, Brown was nicknamed "Iron Man" after catching an unfathomable 234 games for the New York Lincoln Giants in 1930. Known for his defense and cannon arm, Brown played in seven All-Star Games and won a Negro World Series championship with the Chicago American Giants in 1927.

George McConnell (1877)
A two-way player who never quite found big success in the Majors, McConnell led the Federal League in wins with 25 victories for the Chicago Whales in 1915.

Michael Martinez (1982)
A light-hitting infielder who played seven seasons in the big leagues, Martinez made the final out in the 2016 Fall Classic, grounding out to Kris Bryant as the Cubs ended a 108-year World Series-championship drought.

Want to see more baseball birthdays for Sept. 16? Find the complete list on Baseball Reference.