brainwagon

I was scanning the right sidebar of my blog to see what ballplayers were born today, and uncovered what I (at first) thought must be a bug. Two players, both named “Mark Corey”, born on November 3rd. But wait, born in two different years. It turns out that the 1955 version of Mark Corey was a righthanded outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles from 1979 to 1981, and the 1974 version was a righthanded pitcher for the Mets, Colorado, Toronto, and Pittsburg. He apparently also was naughty. Remember kids: stay off drugs. Stay in school. As far as I could determine with a few minutes of work, they don’t appear to be related (or at least, I couldn’t find any indication that they were).

Addendum: The most popular name in the major leagues? John Sullivan. Five major leaguers have had that name, born on February 16, 1873, May 31, 1894, March 21, 1890, November 2nd, 1920 (yesterday!) and Jan 3, 1941. There have been four versions of Bob Allen, Harry Smith, Bob Johnson, Red Smith, Tom Hughes, Harry Taylor, Bob Smith and Bill Smith. All in all, 141 players have had the last name “Smith”.