Today is not the day Charles “Greek” George was born.
That would be Christmas, 1912; a time when 6,000 women in New York, fed up with all the merriment of the holiday’s gift exchange, formed the The Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving.
Nor is it the day Greek George died.
He lasted until August 15, 1999; a stretch of time incomprehensible to those of us who’ve lived merely a fraction of the eight and a half decades he spent here. In that period, he lived through the Black Sox Scandal, Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier, Roger Maris setting a single-season home run record, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa resetting it, every MLB commissioner except Rob Manfred, and died before the the Curse of the Bambino could be lifted.