A Humongous Birthday Whale

When it comes to this hobby, one of my favorite feelings is finally finding something I've been looking for after years and years of searching.

What I'm about to show you might at first glance look like your everyday, dime a dozen ticket stub.  But to me... it's pretty special, because it's the stub from the Oakland A's home game on the day I was born.

That night, the first place A's were kicking off a three game series against the Detroit Tigers at the Oakland Coliseum in front of a reported 7,776 fans.  Wow.  Kinda makes me appreciate the current ten to fifteen thousand loyal fans who show up to games these days.

It's also one of the reasons this ticket was so difficult to track down.  There were only a handful of people who actually attended this game... and when you consider how many of those people actually kept their ticket stubs after all of these years, you can start to understand why it took so long for me to track one down.  Plus... consider that this was just another game with no major historical significance outside of it being my special day and you have what I call... my personal white whale.

So since it's the forty-fourth anniversary of this run-of-the-mill early 70's Major League Baseball game, I figured I'd share some of the highlights from the game, along with some of the memorabilia I've been collecting to commemorate it.

#1:  Two Iconic Managers Face Off

Billy Martin is my favorite manager of all-time and I think it's pretty awesome that he was managing the Tigers right across the San Francisco Bay on the night of my birth.  In the other dugout, hall of fame manager Dick Williams was less than two months away from leading the Oakland Athletics to their first World Series title in over four decades.

#2:  Holtzman and Fingers Dominate Tigers Batters

Okay... maybe Ken Holtzman didn't actually shut down the Tigers, but he did pitch five solid innings, while only allowing six hits and one earned run.  On the other hand, Rollie relieved Holtzman in the sixth after he allowed back to back singles to open the inning.  He struck out the first batter he faced... then got Dick McAuliffe to ground into a double play to end the inning.  Fingers closed out the final four innings allowing only two hits, zero runs, while striking out six.

#3:  Hall of Famer Al Kaline Shines

The lone bright spot for the Detroit Tigers was their hall of fame right fielder who went 2 for 3 at the plate and drove in their only run.

#4:  Dal Maxvill's Perfect Day

I'll be honest, I hadn't heard of Mr. Maxvill until I started doing research for my birthday project.  But now I realize he had a pretty special day at the plate.  He went 2 for 2 and successfully laid down a sacrifice bunt that eventually led to Bert Campaneris driving in a run which was scored by Gene Tenace.

He's also my very first successful TTM.  I shipped out the request at the start of August with a letter describing this project.  He was kind enough to sign my 1973 Topps card and a 1968 Topps card that features him with the St. Louis Cardinals.

#5:  Joe Rudi Smacks a 3 Run Homer

One of my goals is to collect an autograph of every single guy who hit a home run on the day I was born.  I figured I'd start off with Joe Rudi who launched a 3 run blast off of Joe Coleman in the bottom of the 3rd inning.

There were only eight other guys who hit a home run that day, so it should be a challenging, yet realistic task.  I also want to add the signatures of the three players who collected four hits that day.  And rounding out this special collection will be the five pitchers who tossed complete game shutouts.  Not sure if I'll ever complete this project, but it should be fun trying.

Okay... your turn:

Did anything cool happen in sports on the day of your birth?

Happy Thursday and sayonara!