January 25

Danny Richardson (1863)

Les Nunamaker (1889)

Kenichi Zenimura (1900)
Ernie Harwell (1918)
Bill Lucas (1936)
Jake O’Donnell (1939)
Wally Bunker (1945)
Vern Ruhle (1951)
Kerry Taylor (1971)
Dan Serafini (1974)

Better known as an NBA referee, Jake O’Donnell was an American League umpire from 1969-1972.  He is the only person to have officiated both an NBA all-star game and a major league baseball all-star game.

Kenichi Zenimura was a long-time player and manager in Japan as well as an ambassador of the game of baseball.  He helped organize Babe Ruth's tour of Japan in 1934 and is known as the Father of Japanese Baseball.

Ernie Harwell was a major league baseball broadcaster from 1948-1991 and 1993-2002, mostly for the Detroit Tigers.

Bill Lucas was the first African-American general manager, holding the position for the Atlanta Braves from 1976-1979.

Right-hander Kerry Thomas Taylor did not play for Minnesota, but he was in their organization at the beginning of his career.  He was born in Bemidji, Minnesota and went to high school in Roseau, Minnesota.  The Twins signed him as a free agent in 1989.  He pitched two years in rookie ball and two years in Class A, and did not do too badly.  The Twins did not place him on the forty-man roster, however, and he was selected by San Diego.  The Padres kept him in the majors all of 1993, giving him seven starts and 29 relief appearances, and he did about as well as you'd expect a 22-year-old who'd never pitched above Class A to do, which is to say not very well.  He went down to AAA in 1994, making one emergency start for San Diego, and did not do very well there, either.  He was doing better in 1995, but was hurt in his eighth start, missing the rest of that season and all of 1996 with Tommy John surgery.  He tried to come back, pitching at AAA for the Padres in 1997 and Detroit in 1998, in independent ball in 1999, and at AAA for the Blue Jays in 2000.  He actually had a pretty good year at Syracuse in 2000, but by then he was 29 years old and was no longer considered a prospect, so his career ended.  It appears that he then went back to school, attending North Dakota State, and at least report he was living in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Left-hander Daniel Joseph Serafini pitched for Minnesota from 1996-1998.  Born in San Francisco, he attended high school in San Mateo, California, and was drafted by the Twins in the first round in 1992.  He was a starter in his minor league career.  Serafini pitched well in the low minors, but struggled upon his promotion to AAA, not posting an ERA under 4.90 there until 1998, when he pitched well for two months.  Despite that, he made brief appearances in Minnesota in 1996 (one emergency start) and 1997 (six games, in which he actually did fairly well).  The pitching-poor Twins called him up in early June of 1998.  Serafini was mostly used in the bullpen, although he was in the starting rotation for about a month.  He was not terribly effective in either role, and at the end of spring training of 1999 he was sold to the Cubs.  As a Twin, Dan Serafini was 9-6, 5.88 in 105.2 innings.  He did no better as a Cub, and was traded after the 1999 season to San Diego.  In June of 2000 the Padres traded him to Pittsburgh, where he pitched well in AAA but no better in the majors.  2001 was quite a year:  Serafini was released by Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and the Mets, finishing the year at AAA with Milwaukee.  He signed with Anaheim in November, but was released again before the 2002 season started.  Serafini was out of baseball in 2002, but signed with St. Louis in November.  He certainly hung in there--released by the Cardinals in April of 2003, he went to Mexico, and then signed with Cincinnati in August, getting a little over a month in the majors.  Serafini was a free agent after the 2003 season, but he kept plugging away, going to Japan and helping his team win a championship in 2005.  He came back to the United States in 2007 and signed with Colorado, appearing in three more major league games for the Rockies.  After that season, Serafini was found to have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, and was suspended for fifty games.  He has been pitching in Mexico since then, but appeared in only four games early in the season in 2013.  Whether he stopped due to injury or ineffectiveness is not clear, but he's forty years old today, so it he is not at the end of his playing career he's certainly close.  In addition to pitching, Serafini is the owner of the Throw Like A Pro Baseball Academy in Sparks, Nevada.