Padres manager search: What's the deal with this Andy Green guy?

Before his name started surfacing as a candidate for the Padres' managerial opening, all I knew about Andy Green was his birthday. That's quite a thing to know about somebody who you know nothing else about, but there's a logical explanation for that.

Most days I check Baseball Reference to see which players were born that day, more specifically which Padres were born on that day. A couple years ago I realized that day's date was 7/7, so I wondered if anyone was born on 7/7/77. I think you see where this is going. I dug out a baseball card of Green from the Diamondbacks section of one of my "I don't care about these cards" boxes and wrote a quick post about him at my old, since shuttered, cardblog.

Recently I've been seeing his name crop up a lot, and since I knew only one thing about him, that's the tangent I went off on. It got me wondering which other players throughout history have also had a date-of-birth that is a string of the same digit. Utilizing the same B-Ref finder yet again, I searched each eligible day of the year (1/1, 1/11, 2/2, so on...) and then scrolled down to check for a corresponding year. Including Green, there have been ten such players.

That's probably interesting to precisely zero people other than me, but there you have it. While I was B-Reffing around, I did manage to learn a bit more about Green. While I knew he played a few years for the Diamondbacks, and a few games for the Mets, hitting poorly across the board, I was unaware he hit very well in AAA for several years. Most notably, he was named the Pacific Coast League MVP in 2005 when he slashed .343/.422/.587(1.009) with 78 extra-base hits. Like Brandon Wood, that never translated to the majors, and Green's career stalled out in 2010. He began managing the next year and moved his way up to AA before getting the job as Arizona's third base coach before this past season. He had an exceptional W-L record in each of the three full seasons he skippered, for what that's worth.

As I've said before, I have no qualms with the Padres hiring a first-timer to manage the team. Of course you know I'm going to follow that up by saying that I'd prefer that Joey Cora was that first-timer, but if he isn't -- which he nearly certainly won't be -- Andy Green seems like just as good of a choice as any. I'd rather it be him than some Dusty Baker or Ron Gardenhire type. I know quite a few Cubs and Reds fans, as well as internet-"know" some Twins fans, and every single one is glad they don't have either of those two guys helming their team anymore. But that's a post for another day. Or maybe later this day if I have nothing better to do.