Though to most it doesn’t trump the importance of tax day or the significance of the 62nd anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, this April 15 is special for yet another reason. Today is Jeromy Burnitz’s birthday.

Burnitz (pictured above portraying down-on-his-luck bowler Roy Munson in the 1996 movie “Kingpin”) turned 40 today. His career ended in 2006 and he hadn’t suited up as a Brewer since 2001, but he’ll always be one of my favorite players. He was one of the few bright spots to some otherwise abysmal Brewers teams of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. To those too young or too new to the bandwagon to remember Burnitz’s time in Milwaukee, here are some highlights from his 6 seasons (more like 5 full seasons, plus 23 games) as a Brewer:

• 165 homers
• 714 hits
• 525 RBI
• 4 consecutive seasons with over 30 HR
• 3 seasons with over 100 RBI
• All-star in 1999

You’d be right in saying he wasn’t exactly incredible, but for a while there, he was the best Brewer fans had to cheer for. So I think that warrants best 40th birthday wishes.

- Baseball-Reference helped (a little) with the stats.

Tags: Birthdays, Default Stars of Bad Teams, Jeromy Burnitz

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am and is filed under Former Brewers, Player Tributes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.