August 13

Fielder Jones (1871)
George Susce (1907)
Lou Finney (1910)
Sid Gordon (1917)
Jerry Neudecker (1930)
Vinegar Bend Mizell (1930)
Mudcat Grant (1935)
Tony Cloninger (1940)
Fred Stanley (1947)
Jerry Crawford (1947)
Andre Thornton (1949)
Tom Niedenfuer (1959)
Jim Reboulet (1961)
Jay Buhner (1964)
Tom Prince (1964)
Mark Lemke (1965)
Alex Fernandez (1969)
Jarrod Washburn (1974)
Will Ohman (1977)
Corey Patterson (1979)
Dallas Braden (1983)
Boone Logan (1984)
Hansel Robles (1990)
Randal Grichuk (1991)
Taijuan Walker (1992)

Jerry Neudecker was an American League umpire from 1966-1985.  He was the last major league umpire to use an outside chest protector.

Jerry Crawford was a major league umpire from 1976-2010.  He is tied with Bruce Froemming for the most postseason games umpired, 111.

Jim Reboulet is the brother of ex-Twin Jeff Reboulet. He was in the minors for six years, reaching AAA. He had three seasons with sixty or more stolen bases.

Right-hander James Timothy “Mudcat” Grant pitched for the Twins from 1964-1967.  He was born in Lacoochee, Florida, went to high school in Dade City, Florida, and was signed as a free agent by Cleveland in 1954. He pitched quite well in the minors, going 70-28 with an ERA under 3.20 and averaging over 200 innings per season.   He made the Indians out of spring training in 1958. Grant was a solid member of the Cleveland rotation for six years, making the all-star team in 1963.  He also did some singing as part of a nightclub act.  When he got off to a poor start in 1964, he was traded to Minnesota for George Banks and Lee Stange. Something clicked for him when he came to the Twins, as he had his best years in Minnesota: for the rest of 1964, he was 11-9 with a 2.82 ERA, in 1965 he went 21-7 with a 3.30 ERA and finished sixth in the MVP voting, and he went 13-13 in 1966 with a 3.25 ERA. Four consecutive years of pitching between 228 and 270 innings appeared to take its toll, however; 1966 was Grant’s last good year as a starter, and after the 1967 season, he was traded to the Dodgers with Zoilo Versalles for Bob Miller, Ron Perranoski, and Johnny Roseboro. He then had a relatively successful career as a relief pitcher, saving 24 games for Oakland in 1970 and leading major league baseball in appearances with 80. The last year of his 14-year major league career was split between Oakland and Pittsburgh; he also pitched for Iowa in the Oakland organization in 1972. Grant pitched in 129 games as a Twin, 111 of them starts, and went 50-35 with a 3.35 ERA. There are various stories about who gave him the nickname “Mudcat”, with the most popular being that he was given it by Cleveland teammate Larry Doby or a minor-league teammate named LeRoy Irby.  He has served on the board of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Baseball Assistance Team, and the Major League Baseball Alumni Association. In recent years, Grant has been promoting education about the history of blacks in baseball. His book, “The Black Aces”, profiles African-American pitchers who have won twenty games in the majors, along with Negro League pitchers who might have done so had they had they opportunity.   He is the uncle of Domonic Brown, an outfielder for Philadalphia from 2010-15.  Mudcat Grant passed away on June 11, 2021 in Los Angeles at the age of eighty-five.
Catcher Thomas Albert Prince played for the Twins from 2001-2003. He was born in Kankakee, Illinois, and was drafted by Pittsburgh in 1984 in the 4th round of the secondary phase of the January draft. Prince did not hit particularly well in the low minors, but showed moderate power and got a reputation as a good defensive player.  He surprisingly hit .307 at AA Harrisburg in 1987, nearly fifty points higher than he had ever hit in the minors.  That was good enough for him to make his debut in Pittsburgh as a September call-up that season. He spent parts of the next seven seasons with the Pirates, sticking for the whole year only in 1993, which was the only year he got more than 100 at-bats for Pittsburgh.  He never hit for them, posting batting averages of over .200 only twice in those seven years.  Let go by the Pirates after that season, Prince spent parts of the next four years with the Dodgers, again only getting 100 at-bats once, in 1997, although he did hit .200 or above every year.  He spent 1999-2000 with the Phillies, and was signed as a free agent by the Twins after the 2000 campaign. With the Twins, Prince was who they thought he was: a reserve catcher who was good defensively and couldn’t hit. In 2 1/2 years in Minnesota, he got 361 at-bats and hit .219/.300/.374 with 13 homers and 44 RBIs. Released by the Twins in July of 2003, he signed with the Royals, spending most of the rest of the year in Omaha. He retired after that year at the age of 38.  Tom Prince managed to play in parts of seventeen major league seasons and get 1,190 major league at-bats with a lifetime batting average of .208.  He was affiliated with the Pittsburgh Pirates for several years, mostly as a minor league manager.  From 2017-2019 he was the bench coach for Pittsburgh.  He left the Pirates organization after 2019, however, and managed the Toledo Mud Hens in the Detroit organization in 2021.  He was let go after the season and does not seem to have gotten another baseball job.  Thus, no information about what Tom Prince is doing now was readily available.

Right-hander Hansel Manuel Robles was with the Twins for four months in 2021.  Born and raised in Bonao in the Dominican Republic, he signed with the Mets as a free agent in 2008.  He pitched very well in the low minors but was brought along very slowly.  He was mostly a starter at that point, but began a conversion to relief in AA in 2014.  He made five AAA appearances in 2015 and then reached the majors, having a fine season out of the bullpen for the Mets.  He did well again in 2016 but struggled some in 2017, resulting in a two-month stint in AAA.  He got off to a poor start in 2018 and was waived by the Mets in late June.  He was claimed by the Angels and turned his season around, pitching very well for them for the last three months of the season.  He had another fine season in 2019 but 2020 was a different story.  When he was on he was really on, but when he was off he was awful, so his numbers do not look good at all.  The Twins signed him as a free agent for 2021.  He pitched well for them at times, but was not consistent enough for the Twins to rely on him.  In forty-five games (forty-four innings), he went 3-4, 4.91, 1.39 WHIP with ten saves.  The Twins traded him to Boston at the July deadline for Alex Scherff.  He did fairly well for them in 2021, but pitched poorly in 2022 and was released in early July.  He signed with the Dodgers a couple of weeks later and pitched poorly the rest of the season in AAA.  He turns thirty-three today and hasn't had a good year since 2019.  He pitched well in winter ball, though, and is having an excellent season in the Mexican League in 2023.  It seems very unlikely that we'll ever see him in the majors again, but you never know.  Maybe he developed a new pitch or something.  As we've said before, as long as you're still playing somewhere, you still have a chance.