The best baseball players born on July 8

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 July 8:

1) Terry Puhl (1956)
Puhl was a left-handed-hitting outfielder for the Astros who played 14 seasons for Houston before spending the final year of his career with the Royals in 1991. He was a National League All-Star in 1978. The Saskatchewan native compiled 1,361 career hits, and he was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995. After retiring as a player, Puhl coached Team Canada at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 before becoming the head coach at University of Houston–Victoria, where 2022 will mark his 15th season.

2) Hector Lopez (1929)
Lopez was a two-time World Series champ who played 12 seasons in the Majors with the Kansas City Athletics and the Yankees. He won the Fall Classic with New York in 1961 and ’62 and he compiled 1,251 career hits. The Panama native was the second player from the country to play in the Major Leagues when he made his debut in 1955, and Lopez went on to break the color barrier for managers at the Triple-A level when he took the helm as skipper of the Buffalo Bisons in 1969.

3) Josh Harrison (1987)
A two-time All-Star with the Pirates, Harrison compiled a .274 average with a .719 OPS over his first 11 seasons in the Majors with Pittsburgh, Detroit, Washington and Oakland. His uncle is former Major Leaguer and two-time World Series champion John Shelby.

4) Hank O'Day (1859)
With a career spanning more than 40 years, O’Day was a player, manager, umpire and scout, and he is the only person to have held all those positions in the National League. He made his MLB debut in 1884 as a pitcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings, and he compiled 73 wins over his seven-year playing career, also pitching for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, Washington Nationals and New York Giants. After his playing career, O'Day spent more than 30 years as an umpire and an umpire scout, and he managed the Reds in 1912 and the Cubs in ’14 during stints on hiatus from umpiring. O’Day was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013.

5) Jaime García (1986)
García was a stalwart in the Cardinals’ rotation for years, and he helped St. Louis win the World Series in 2011. The left-hander joined Fernando Valenzuela as the only Mexican-born pitchers to start a game in the Fall Classic. García won 62 games with the Cards from 2008-16, and he played for five more teams in 2017 and ’18 before retiring with 70 career wins in 10 seasons.

Others of note:
Jerome Walton (1965)
Walton was the 1989 NL Rookie of the Year for the Cubs. During his rookie campaign, the outfielder had a 30-game hitting streak, and he finished the year with a .293 average in 116 games. He played three more seasons for Chicago, and then he played for the Angels, Reds, Braves, Orioles and Devil Rays before his 10-year Major League career wrapped up in 1998.

Alan Ashby (1951)
The switch-hitting catcher compiled 1,010 hits over a 17-year Major League career with Cleveland, Toronto and Houston. He caught three ho-hitters with the Astros. After hanging up his spikes following the 1989 season, Ashby went on to manage the independent Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings in ’94 and ’95, and he also became a broadcaster.

Ken Sanders (1941)
Sanders was a righty reliever who led the Majors in saves in 1971 for the Brewers. The journeyman made 409 appearances for eight teams over 10 seasons in the bigs.

Want to see more baseball birthdays for July 8? Find the complete list on Baseball Reference.