Happy Birthday–October 25

Jack Doyle (1869)
Smoky Joe Wood (1889)
Jack Kent Cooke (1912)
Lee McPhail (1917)
Russ Meyer (1923)
Bobby Thomson (1923)
Bobby Brown (1924)
Roy Hartsfield (1925)
Chuck Schilling (1937)
Al Cowens (1951)
Roy Smalley (1952)
Rowland Office (1952)
Tito Landrum (1954)
Danny Darwin (1955)
Andy McGaffigan (1956)
Steve Decker (1965)
Keith Garagozzo (1969)
Pedro Martinez (1971)
Wilkin Ramirez (1985)

Jack Kent Cooke, better known as the owner of the Washington Redskins and the Los Angeles Lakers, owned the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team in the International League from 1951-1964.  He made several unsuccessful attempts to bring major league baseball to Toronto, and is a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.

Lee MacPhail was the general manager of the Baltimore Orioles from 1958-1965 and of the New York Yankees from 1966-1973.  He was the president of the American League from 1974-1983.  He is the son of Larry MacPhail and the father of Andy MacPhail.

Second baseman Charles Thomas Schilling retired as a Twin, although he never played a game in their organization. He was born in Brooklyn, went to Manhattan College, and signed with Boston as a free agent in 1958. He advanced rapidly and justifiably so, hitting .314 with 30 doubles in AAA in 1960 at age 22. He was in the big leagues to stay the next season. He was the Red Sox’ starting second baseman from 1961-1963, leading the league in plate appearances in 1961. He hit .259 with 25 doubles in his rookie year and finished third in Rookie of the Year voting. That was as good as it would get for Schilling, however; he injured his wrist early in 1962 and it bothered him for the rest of his career. After two years hitting in the .230s he became a reserve in 1964 and 1965. On April 6, 1966, he was traded to Minnesota with Russ Nixon for Dick Stigman and a player to be named later (Jose Calero). He traveled with the team for a couple of weeks, but did not play and then decided to retire. He returned to New York, becoming a high school math teacher and baseball coach on Long Island. He played competitive softball until age 69, when he retired. At last report, he was still living in the New York area.

Infielder Roy Frederick Smalley III is the son of infielder Roy Smalley, Jr. and the nephew of Gene Mauch. He was born in Los Angeles and attended USC. Smalley was drafted by Texas with the first pick of the 1974 draft. He had been drafted four times previously: by Montreal (35th round, June 1970), Boston (4th round, January 1971), St. Louis (2nd round, June 1971), and by Boston again (5th round, January 1972). Smalley spent very little time in the minors, reaching the Rangers in 1975 and playing semi-regularly for them. He hit only .228 that year and had a similar average for the first two months of 1976, when he was traded along with Mike Cubbage, Jim Gideon, and Bill Singer to the Twins for Bert Blyleven and Danny Thompson. Other than a poor 1977, Smalley regularly posted averages in the .270s for the Twins. In 1978, he added some power, hitting 19 home runs that year and 24 the next. That next year, 1979, Smalley got off to a tremendous start, hitting over .400 on May 20 and still batting .373 at the end of June before regression to the mean caught up with him. Smalley made his only all-star team that year and finished 16th in the MVP voting. In April of 1982 the Twins sent Smalley to the Yankees for Paul Boris, Ron Davis, and Greg Gagne. He continued to play about as well as he had previously, but began to suffer from back problems. He was traded in June of 1984 to the White Sox. He finished the season with them, and in February of 1985 was traded back to the Twins for Ron Scheer and "not the" Randy Johnson. He was with the Twins for three more years as a DH/infielder. He was still producing offensively at close to the same rate he had, and probably could have played a couple more years, but retired after the Twins World Championship of 1987. As a Twin, he hit .262/.350/.401 in approximately nine seasons. Roy Smalley currently works as an analyst for FSN North. He also owns a restaurant near Target Field.

Left-hander Keith John Garagozzo made seven appearances for the Twins in 1994. He was born in Camden, New Jersey, attended the University of Delaware, and was drafted by the Yankees in the 9th round in 1991. He had a good year and a half in Class A from 1992-1993. The Twins selected him in the rule 5 draft in November of 1993, and he started the season with them, despite the fact that he had pitched in only 17 games above class A. He appeared in seven games in April of 1994, pitching 9.1 innings and posting a 9.64 ERA, and then was returned to the Yankees. Switched to the bullpen, Garagozzo pitched ineffectively for AAA Columbus and then was released. He made a brief comeback in the Marlins organization in 1996, but then was done. After leaving baseball, Keith Garagozzo returned to New Jersey, and is now a financial advisor for the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network in Princeton, New Jersey.

Outfielder Wilkin Emilio (Arias) Ramirez played thirty-five games for the Twins in 2013.  Born and raised in Bani, Peravia, Dominican Republic, he signed with Detroit as a free agent in 2003.  He had a decent but unspectacular season in rookie ball, then missed all of 2004 due to injury.  Upon his return, his minor league numbers were fairly decent but unspectacular.  He reached AAA in 2008 and made his major league debut in 2009.  He appeared in fifteen games, nine of them as a pinch-runner, and went 4-for-11 with a triple and a home run.  He was traded to Atlanta on July 31, 2010 for a player to be named later or cash, which sounds similar to "future considerations".  He was mostly in AAA in 2011 but spent about six weeks in the majors.  He appeared in twenty games, ten as a pinch-hitter and three as a pinch-runner, and went 6-for-26 with two doubles.  A free agent after the 2011 season, he signed with Minnesota for 2012.  He started at AA but spent most of the season at AAA, where he hit .276/.316/.451 in 370 at-bats.  He started 2013 with the Twins as a part-time player before getting injured in late May.  He missed nearly three months, coming back for about two weeks in August.  He didn't do badly when he did play, batting .272/.302/.370.  However, the Twins took him off the forty-man roster and sent him outright to Rochester, where he played in 2014.  He turns 29 today.  It's possible that he'll make it back to the big leagues at some point, but it's at least equally possible that he won't.