Happy Birthday…

… to former Blue Jays reliever Mark Eichhorn! (not to be confused with Einhorn, er Finkel – Einhorn is Finkel, Finkel is Einhorn, Einhorn is a man!), a natural NotGraphs favorite due to his swingin’ sidearm and even swingier mustache.

We gonna party like it’s my birthday.

His story is pretty cool – after damaging his arm during his first brief stint in the majors in ’82 he lost all his velocity and was forced to try out the uber-quirky submarine style.  It took him four years to master it, but when he got his next shot in ’86 he made the most of it, posting an outrageous 5.3 WAR campaign as a reliever – and he was only five innings away from qualifying for the ERA title with a 1.72 in 157 innings.  He bounced around to a few more teams before coming back to Toronto just in time to win two World Series Rings.

And with that: Happy 51st Birthday, Mark Eichhorn from all of NotGraphs!

(Other November 21st birthdays include Stan “The Man” Musial and Ken Griffey, Jr. aka “The Kid”, but who cares about them*)

*this is actually a funny coincidence because ‘”The Man” and “The Kid'” are the main characters of The Cincinnati Kid where Steve McQueen plays Eric “The Kid” Stoner and Edward G. Robinson plays Lancey “The Man” Howard.  Griffey is, essentially, the real-life Cincinnati Kid, and Stan Musial and Ann-Margret (who’s in The Cincinnati Kid!) both appeared in the same episode of CBS This Morning on October 21st, 1991.  Spooky, huh?