Happy Presidents Day 2018!

Today is February 19, 2018, the 50th day of the year.

Across our country we celebrate Presidents Day, the annual national holiday were we honor the Birthdays of our 1st American President, George Washington, and our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.


Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and Washington on February 22, 1732.


The holiday, established as Washington's Birthday, in honor of General Washington, became Presidents Day in 1971, celebrated on the 3rd Monday in February to create more 3 day weekends for Federal workers.


I've always taken time on Presidents Day to again rank my Top 5 All-Time Presidents...

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. John F. Kennedy

3. George Washington

4. Franklin D. Roosevelt

5. Thomas Jefferson

(6-10, in no particular order, Teddy Roosevelt, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Harry Truman, John Adams.)


This may be the best picture a sitting President has ever taken .

One every 7 years Presidents Day also happens to fall on my Birthday, including today, as I turn 58 years old.


I was born during the last year of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the year the City of Brooklyn demolished cherished Ebbetts Field, the year the USA Hockey team defeated Czechoslovakia to win the Gold Medal, the year Rocky Colovito became a Detroit Tiger, the year Bill Mazsroski became legend in Pittsburgh by walking off with the World Series homer against the New York Yankees.


58 years...where has all the time gone.


Every year I struggle to remember those early days of my life, a Kalamazoo kid born on Burdick Street in Downtown Kalamazoo to a young Mother named Dorothy Sharp, who would tell me of sitting on her Father's lap listening to Tigers games on the radio...Al Kaline was all the girls could talk about...regardless of how Mr. Tiger was playing.


As I finish this post I must mention my late Uncle Bob, the man who's responsible for all that baseball love that's inside of me.

He's been gone for 3 years now, and each time my Birthday comes he was one of the first calls I received, after my Mom.

My Uncle Bob always remembered that my Birthday was also Iwo Jima Day, the anniversary of the Marines landing on the small island too battle the Japanese, on February 19, 1945.

As a Navy veteran born on a famous date like that, well, it's pretty darn awesome!


Play Ball!