You ever wonder when your favorite athletes were born? I have. I’m guessing you already know. I know when my favorite athlete was born. In case you were wondering mine is Nolan Ryan. He was born January 31st. Since we are in the month of June, though, I felt starting with the month we are in would be a good place to start.
As I was looking for a list of Athlete birthdays; I came cross an interesting fact. Find a full, good list is more difficult than you would think. When I googled “athlete birthdays” I usually found a top 10 or 15 list. That’s cool. Except, every list is practically the same. Boring. When I googled “famous birthdays,” I found more youtube and musical.ly “stars” listed than athletes.
Fortunately, for me, I was able to find a site with a pretty good list of people born on each day of the year. However, there have been a lot of athletes from born over the last 150ish years. Why should it be relegated to a top 10 or 15? I decided to start a more full list of when athletes were born. Now, FANTOM has that fuller list of athlete’s birthdays for your viewing pleasure.
Let’s begin here with a list of athletes born during the first week of June.
June 1:
- 1901 – Hap Day, Canadian ice hockey player, referee, and manager (d. 1990)
- 1966 – Greg Schiano, American football player and coach
- 1970 – Alexi Lalas, American soccer player, manager, and sportscaster
- 1973 – Derek Lowe, American baseball player
- 1979 – Santana Moss, American football player
- 1981 – Carlos Zambrano, Venezuelan-American baseball player
- 1982 – Justine Henin, Belgian tennis player
June 2:
- 1869 – Jack O’Connor, American baseball player and manager (d. 1937)
- 1881 – Walter Egan, American golfer (d. 1971)
- 1952 – Gary Bettman, American commissioner of the National Hockey League
- 1958 – Lex Luger, American wrestler and football player
- 1960 – Kyle Petty, American race car driver and sportscaster
- 1967 – Mike Stanton, American baseball player
- 1972 – Raúl Ibañez, American baseball player
- 1974 – Matt Serra, American mixed martial artist
- 1976 – Earl Boykins, American basketball player
- 1977 – A.J. Styles, American wrestler
- 1988 – Patrik Berglund, Swedish ice hockey player
June 3:
- 1879 – Vivian Woodward, English footballer and soldier (d. 1954)
- 1939 – Steve Dalkowski, American baseball player
- 1943 – Billy Cunningham, American basketball player and coach
- 1945 – Hale Irwin, American golfer and architect
- 1976 – Jamie McMurray, American race car driver
- 1986 – Al Horford, Dominican basketball player
- 1986 – Rafael Nadal, Spanish tennis player
- 1991 – Yordano Ventura, Dominican baseball player (d. 2017)
June 4:
- 1930 – Viktor Tikhonov, Russian ice hockey player and coach (d. 2014)
- 1943 – Sandra Haynie, American golfer
- 1948 – Sandra Post, Canadian golfer and sportscaster
- 1963 – Xavier McDaniel, American basketball player and coach
- 1988 – Matt Bartkowski, American ice hockey defenseman
June 5:
- 1924 – Art Donovan, American football player and radio host (d. 2013)
- 1967 – Ray Lankford, American baseball player
- 1975 – Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Lithuanian-American basketball player
- 1976 – Torry Holt, American football player and sportscaster
- 1983 – Marques Colston, American football player
- 1995 – Ross Wilson, English table tennis player
June 6:
- 1907 – Bill Dickey, American baseball player and manager (d. 1993)
- 1944 – Tommie Smith, American runner and football player
- 1990 – Anthony Rendon, American baseball player
- 1992 – DeAndre Hopkins, American football player
- 1995 – Julian Green, American footballer
June 7:
- 1863 – Bones Ely, American baseball player and manager (d. 1952)
- 1910 – Mike Sebastian, American football player and coach (d. 1989)
- 1928 – Randolph Turpin, English boxer (d. 1966)
- 1929 – Ernie Roth, American wrestling manager (d. 1983)
- 1936 – Bert Sugar. American author and Boxing historian (d. 2012)
- 1947 – Don Money, American baseball player and coach
- 1947 – Thurman Munson, American baseball player (d. 1979)
- 1965 – Mick Foley, American wrestler, actor, and author
- 1970 – Mike Modano, American ice hockey player
- 1975 – Allen Iverson, American basketball player
- 1981 – Anna Kournikova, Russian tennis player
- 1990 – T. J. Brodie, Canadian ice hockey player
