Who Are The Birthday Boys?
 

How many people have to be in a room before the odds of two or more of them having the same birthday is greater than 50%. The answer is 23. How many players are on a major league team? 25

So more than half of major league rosters should contain two players with the same birthday (not year). I selected 20 winning teams, most of whom played in the World Series. I used the 30 players from each team which improve my odds of winning. What do you think happened?

Below is a grid of the Birthday Boy results. If you have a name, year and team that matches what I found, I will add it to the grid. If you add a pair not on my list and it meets the criteria described, I will add it to the grid as well. Given the premise above there are no doubt hundreds of birthday boys and my answers only cover twenty teams each in a specific year.

One team had three players with the same birthday

Team Yr_Brooklyn 1953_ : Loes & Erskine & Shuba December 13th

One team had six players with three pairs of birthdays that matched

Team Yr __New York AL 1927_ : Koenig_&_Meusel Jul 19th : Collins_&_Reuther Sep 13th :Paschal_&_Gazella Oct 17th

One team had two players who were born on the same day, month and year

Team Yr _New York AL 1953_ : _Rizzuto_ & __Sain_ Sep 25, 1917

Another team also had two players born on the same day and two other players with the same birthday

Team Yr _Kansas City 1980_: __Porter_ & __LaCock_ Jan 17, 1952

and another matching pair: _Chalk_ & _Martin_ Aug 30th

And seven other teams had one pair each of matching birthdays

Team Yr _Chicago AL 1917_: _Risberg_ & _McMullen__ Oct 13th

Team Yr _Boston AL 1946_: _Moses__ & _Metkovich_ Oct 8th

Team Yr _Baltimore 1969_: _Salmon_ & __Dalrymple_ Dec 3rd

Team Yr _NY Mets 1986__: _HoJo (Johnson)_ & _?Anderson_ Nov 29th

Team Yr _San Fran 1993__: _Burkett__ & _Williams_ Nov 28th WOW

Team Yr _Cleveland 1995__: _Mesa__ & __Tavarez___ May 22nd

Team Yr _Seattle 2001__: _Halama_ & __Sasaki__ Feb 22nd

If you add a pair not on my list and it meets the criteria described, I will add it to the grid as well.

So it works for this small sample with a total of 14 pairs of players on 20 teams with matching birthdays or 70%.

I used only 25 players instead of 23.

Over half the teams with 25 man rosters should have a pair of birthday boys. This is only a small, but representative sample. There are hundreds of birthday boys defined this way on Major League rosters.

I think the correct answer will surprise most people. So the next time you are in a bar or at a party with 25 people, place your bet and see how many takers you get. Most of the time you will win. Good luck. ;)

I'll even give you a hint to get you started

Two of the teams in my grid faced each other in the 1953 World Series.