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Baseball’s connections to Christmas run deep
- Updated: December 25, 2016
Christmas is upon us, and while it’s one of the most beloved days on the calendar, filled with gifts and family, it’s not a holiday traditionally associated with baseball.
That said, baseball still shares more connections to Christmas than it first appears. From the births of some of the game’s greatest players to the staging of some unorthodox games, baseball and Christmas have been intertwined through history — no matter how frightful the weather is outside.
Stars are born The list of Hall of Famers in Cooperstown is now up to 314, and nearly every day on the calendar features at least one Hall of Famer’s birthday. Christmas Day, however, has the distinction of having three Hall of Fame birthdays, with each player defining the popular style of play from his era.
We may primarily associate figgy pudding as the pudding of choice for Christmas, but James Francis “Pud” Galvin, born on Christmas Day 1856 in St. Louis, deserves to be on equal footing. Galvin earned his memorable nickname for the way he turned hitters into pudding, and the 5-foot-8 right-hander did so with regularity in the late 1800s. In a time when two-man rotations were commonplace, Galvin’s durability (6,003 career innings, second-most in history behind Cy Young) still stood out. Galvin was baseball’s first 300-game winner, and he tossed a combined 143 complete games — 60 more than were thrown across the Majors in 2016 — in the span of just two seasons (1883-84).
Christmas Day 1927 saw the birth of one of the best second basemen in American League history in Jacob Nelson “Nellie” Fox. Standing just 5-foot-10 and 160 pounds, Fox became the embodiment of the hard-charging, small-ball “Go Go” White Sox when he was traded from Philadelphia to Chicago after the 1949 season. Beginning in 1951, Fox was selected to 11 straight All-Star Games, captured three Gold Glove Awards (though he surely would have garnered more if the award had been given out prior to 1957) and the AL MVP in 1959, when he helped lead Chicago to the AL pennant. Part of Fox’s legacy is that he was one of the toughest outs in history, striking …
