Every weekday throughout the offseason, CSN White Sox Talk will pass along three completely trivial (but hopefully interesting) tidbits from White Sox history. Most of these notes come from Baseball-Reference's Play Index, which dates back to 1919. Today, we look at birthday home runs.
29: The number of times a White Sox player has homered on his birthday since 1920, with the most recent birthday blast coming as a walk-off home run off the bat of Andruw Jones on April 23, 2010, his 33rd birthday. Jones' game-ending tater off Seattle's Mark Lowe gave him two in the game, making him just the second player in White Sox history to hit a pair of home runs on his birthday. The other was Mount Olive, Ill. native Mike Kreevich, who hit two homers against Boston on June 10, 1938, his 30th birthday.
4: The number of players who have hit a home run on two different birthdays. Tony Bernazard homered on his 25th and 26th birthdays, marking the only time a White Sox player has gone deep on consecutive birthdays. Frank Thomas, naturally, is on the list, hitting home runs on his 26th and 34th birthdays. Sherm Lollar homered on three birthdays in the 1950s and Zeke Bonura homered on his 26th and 28th birthdays in 1930s to round out the list.
Other notables: Shoeless Joe Jackson is the first name on this post-deadball list, going deep on his July 16 birthday in 1920. He would only hit eight more home runs in his career. One of Robin Ventura's 12 home runs in July of 1991 came on his birthday (714), while Carlos Lee (June 20, 2001), Thomas (May 27, 2002), Juan Uribe (July 22, 2005), Gordon Beckham (Sept. 16, 2009) and Jones (April 23, 2010) are the only Sox players to homer on their birthday since the turn of the millennium.