MY OWN PERSONAL BASEBALL PREVIEW

Unlike last year, when I made an impulse buy of a terrible baseball preview magazine the night of our fantasy baseball draft, this year I bought my trusty old "Sporting News" Baseball Preview well in advance. It has lots of editing errors, which always drives me nuts, and also doesn't have any baseball move made after mid-January at the latest, which has always bothered me, but I like its layout and I find it the best of the selection...especially with our fantasy draft always waaaay earlier than normal fantasy drafts.

But - I have mentioned this in the past - I take a different approach to reading a baseball preview. Usually I save the Mets until last, but since we draft only from the AL and NL East, I now read those two sections first. And I spend a lot of time looking at players' birthdays.

This year, it struck me that there are a lot of players with my birthday. And Gary Carter's birthday - those are two specific dates that jumped out at me. And there are also a lot of baseball players with some pretty cool birthday numbers that made me want to write about them. So here they are:

COOL BIRTHDAYS

(Inspired mostly by Grady Sizemore, who has an 8/2/82 birthday, which I discovered on my souvenir cup on my trip to Cleveland a couple of years ago)

Mark Reynolds, Arizona - 8/3/83

Jamie Walker, Baltimore - 7/1/71

Jacob McGee, Tampa Bay - 8/6/86

Huston Street, Colorado - 8/2/83 (hmm, now that I've typed that one it looks less cool to me)

Craig Breslow, Minnesota - 8/8/80

Mark Worrell, San Diego - 3/8/83

Travis Denker, San Diego - 8/5/85

Mark Ellis, Oakland - 6/6/77

Angel Salamone, Milwaukee - 6/8/86

And the Mets have a pretty strong contingent in this department:

Sean Green and J.J. Putz share a 2/22/77 birthday

Brian Stokes has a nice palindrome - 9/7/79 (Justin in NYC's birthday, incidentally, which is quite popular among major leaguers, I noticed)

And Jon Niese, potential number 5 starter -10/27/86 - I don't remember when he was up last year that he was born on the day the Mets won the 1986 World Series. That should grant him total immunity from ever being sent down or traded - Met for life. And it should definitely not go as unmentioned this year.

PLAYERS WHO SHARE MY BIRTHDAY (JULY 7)

John Buck, Kansas City, 1980

Alfredo Figaro, Detroit, 1984

Brandon McCarthy, Texas, 1983

Luke Montz, Washington, 1983

R.J. Swindle, Milwaukee, 1983

Leyson Septimo, Arizona, 1985

PLAYERS WHO SHARE GARY CARTER'S (and Dave in Brighton's) BIRTHDAY (APRIL 8)

I can't believe how popular this birthday is. It must be a day for athletes to be born, as well as creative types who excel at sedentary sports:

Carlos Santana, Cleveland, 1986

Jeremy Guthrie, Baltimore, 1979

Bobby Wilson, L.A. Angels, 1983

Eric Patterson, Oakland, 1983

Kason Gabbard, Texas, 1982

Eddie Kunz, N.Y. Mets, 1986

Diory Hernandez, Atlanta, 1984

Yonder Alonso (great first name - he's a first baseman - it'd be awesome if he went to make a tag and the runner beat him by jumping over the tag - "He's safe, because he jumped over Yonder!"), Cincinnati, 1987

Chris Iannetta, Colorado, 1983

Matt Antonelli, San Diego, 1985