The best baseball players born on March 29

Who are the best players born on each day of the year? We have a list for every day on the calendar.

Here’s a subjective ranking of the top five for March 29.

1) Cy Young (1867)
The award given to each league's best pitchers is named after him, and we could probably stop there. It's all but certain that his all-time records for wins (511), starts (815), complete games (749) and innings pitched (7,356) will ever be matched, and he won the American League's first Triple Crown in 1901 (33-10, 1.62 ERA, 158 K). But his place in baseball history is even more interesting than that. Young started the first ever World Series game in 1903 and pitched the first perfect game in American League history in 1904 at the age of 37. Just for fun, although Johnny Vander Meer is famous for being the only pitcher to throw two consecutive no-hitters, the record for consecutive hitless innings actually belongs to Young, who threw 24 to Vander Meer's 22.

2) Tommy Holmes (1917)
A two-time All-Star outfielder, Holmes was unable to serve in WWII and spent the wartime period owning baseball while so many players were overseas. He finished second in 1945 NL MVP voting after leading all of baseball in hits (224), doubles (47) and home runs (28), and even put together a 37-game hitting streak in 1945 which stood as the NL record until Pete Rose's 44-game streak in 1978. All that said, even in his prime, Holmes was best known for his rapport with the fans in the right-field bleachers at Braves Field in Boston, whose support of him was legendary.

3) Brian Jordan (1967)
Only a handful of people can say they've appeared in games in both MLB and the NFL -- in fact, only seven have managed to do so since 1970. Jordan did a lot more than "appear" in both leagues. Jordan played 36 games with the Atlanta Falcons between 1989 and 1991 before transitioning to baseball, where he tallied 1,456 games played at the Major League level, more than any two-way player to date. Stories of Deion Sanders attempting to play two sports in one day may be a bit more riveting, but Jordan's dual playing career was no less interesting.

4) Ferris Fain (1921)
Fain broke into the big leagues at 26 and played just nine seasons due to a series of injuries, but in that time made five straight All-Star teams from 1950-54 and won two consecutive AL batting titles (1951-52). Apropos of nothing, Fain's father, Oscar, was a jockey, and placed second in the 1912 Kentucky Derby.

5) Denny McLain (1944)
For a moment in the late 1960s, McLain was the best pitcher in baseball. In fact, if you ask the baseball writers of 1968, he was the best player, full stop, as he won both the AL Cy Young and MVP after posting a 31-6 record with a 1.96 ERA over 336 innings -- not to mention his 28 complete games. McLain is still the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season, and had been the first to accomplish the feat since 1934. On a personal note, McLain's late wife, Sharyn, was the daughter of Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau.

Others of note:

Matt Olson (1994)
The Braves' iron man first baseman had one of the best offensive seasons in franchise history in 2023, setting new Modern Era records in home runs (54) and RBIs (139).

Want to see more baseball birthdays for March 29? Find the complete list on Baseball Reference.