Happy Birthday to Ol' Diz

Jay "Dizzy" Dean's career was brilliant, colorful, and brief. Dean was known for his blazing fastball, his practical jokes, his down-home Southern nature and his incessant boasting, which he famously claimed "ain't braggin' if ya can back it up."

He backed it up in a big way for the Cardinals. Dean led the NL in strikeouts for four consecutive seasons from 1932-35 and won an NL MVP in '34. That was also the year St. Louis' rough-and-tumble "Gashouse Gang" team (which also featured brother Paul "Daffy" Dean, Charles "Dazzy" Vance and Joe "Ducky" Medwick) captured America's attention by beating their more glamorous NL rivals, the Giants, to reach the World Series.

It was during that Series that one of Dizzy's most famous incidents occurred, and it had nothing to do with pitching. Dean entered Game 4 against the Tigers as a pinch-runner, and the next batter hit a double-play grounder. Trying to break it up, Dean positioned himself in front of the throw from second to first, which hit him in the head and knocked him out cold. He was brought to a hospital, and the sequence of events inspired one of the most perfect (though possibly apocryphal) headlines a sports page could ever have written: "X-ray of Dean's head reveals nothing." He bounced back to pitch in Game 5 and Game 7, which the Cardinals won to take the Series crown.

After breaking his foot in the 1937 All-Star Game, Dean's pitching prowess diminished quickly, though his homespun wit never did. He utilized it in a long and successful broadcasting career, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1953.

-- Dan Wohl / MLB.com