Top 10 June 11 Birthdays

Dishonorable Mention: June 11, 1888: Bartolomeo Vanzetti. He and Nicola Sacco were almost certainly innocent of the murder that got them executed in 1927. But they were still terrorists.

Dishonorable Mention: June 11, 1943: Henry Hill. The real guy behind the story of Goodfellas, he had no one to blame for what happened to him but himself. In the end, he chose not to "live the rest of his life like a schnook," and broke his witness-protection agreement, and went back to prison.

Dishonorable Mention: June 11, 1960: Mehmet Oz. The heart surgeon left credibility to push pseudoscience, and he is now the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, a Trump ally.

10. June 11, 1572: Ben Jonson. The author of Every Man In His Humour was regarded as the 2nd-greatest writer in the English language during the time of William Shakespeare.

9. June 11, 1880: Jeannette Rankin. The Republican from Montana served 2 terms in the U.S. Congress: 1917-18 and 1941-42. She was a suffragette and a pacifist, and the reason she lost her bid for re-election in 1918 is that she voted against America's entry into World War I. Eventually working her way back into the House in 1940, she was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against America's entry into World War II, and that vote cost her the seat as well.

8. June 11, 1930: Charles Rangel. A Congressman from Harlem from 1971 to 2017, the longest-serving in New York State's history, he was the last remaining member of Congress who served on the House Judiciary Committee that drew up the Articles of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon.

7. June 11, 1925: William Styron. He wrote The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice, taking on slavery and the Holocaust, respectively.

6. June 11, 1864: Richard Strauss. No relation to Johan Strauss, father and son, he was also a composer, known for his operas, including Don Juan.

5. June 11, 1741: Joseph Warren. A doctor in Boston, he was involved enough in the Patriot cause to be the man who hired the couriers, including Paul Revere, for the night of April 18, 1775. He was subsequently killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill 2 months later.

4. June 11, 1933: Gene Wilder. One of the greatest comedic actors ever, his films include The Producers, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Silver Streak, which started a series of comedies with Richard Pryor.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1937: Chad Everett. Starring in the ABC drama Medical Center.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1945: Adrienne Barbeau. The 1st actress to play Betty Rizzo in the musical Grease, she also played Carol Traynor, the title character's daughter, on Maude.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1959: Hugh Laurie. Part of a comedy duo with Stephen Fry, Americans best know him as the cranky, unethical, but brilliant title doctor on House, M.D.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1969: Peter Dinklage. He played Lord Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1978: Joshua Jackson. After appearing as Charlie Conway in the Mighty Ducks hockey movies, he played Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek and Peter Bishop on Fringe.

Somewhat Honorable Mention: June 11, 1986: Shia LaBeouf. The star of the Transformers movies is not well-liked by his co-stars.

3. June 11, 1910: Jacques Cousteau. He invented SCUBA: Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. This enabled him to direct and star in seafaring documentaries that vastly increased humanities knowledge of the oceans.

2. June 11, 1913: Vince Lombardi. He played guard on the Fordham University teams of the late 1930s, a line known as the Seven Blocks of Granite. Instead of playing professional football, he went into coaching. With the New York Giants of the 1950s, he was the NFL's 1st true offensive coordinator. Then he became head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers, leading them to 5 NFL Championships in 7 seasons, including the 1st 2 Super Bowls.

He is still pro football's definitive coach, remembered for saying, "Winning isn't everything, but it's the only thing." He later said he wished he'd never said it, explaining that trying to win, giving your best is the only thing.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1879: Roger Bresnahan. Considered one of the best catchers of his era, he wasn't the 1st to use shin guards, but his use of them made fans stop seeing them as unmanly and start seeing them as necessary. He helped the New York Giants win the 1905 World Series, and is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1903: Ernie Nevers. The two-way back led Stanford University to a Conference Championship in 1924. He then made 5 All-Pro teams with the Chicago Cardinals. In a 1929 game, he became the 1st of 4 NFL players to score 6 touchdowns in a game, the 1st of 2 to rush for 6 touchdowns in a game, and, kicking 4 extra points, set a record that still stands with 40 points. He was a charter inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. 

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1939: Jackie Stewart. Ordinarily, I would not include auto racers, because auto racing is not a sport. But Sir John Young Stewart singlehandedly made "Formula 1" racing popular in America, with his races being covered on ABC's Wide World of Sports. After a spectacular 1973 campaign that saw Sports Illustrated magazine name him their Sportsman of the Year, "The Flying Scot" joined ABC as their lead analyst for auto racing, including their coverage of the Indianapolis 500. He also earned fans with his commercials for Ford Motor Company, Getty gasoline and Heineken beer.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1955: Yuriy Sedykh. The greatest performer in the history of the hammer throw, the Ukrainian won the Olympic Gold Medal for the Soviet Union in 1976 in Montreal and 1980 in Moscow, and the Silver Medal in 1988 in Seoul. (He observed the Soviet boycott of 1984 in Los Angeles.) As far as we know, he was clean: No steroids.

His 1st wife, Lyudmila Kondratyeva, won the women's 100 meters at the 1980 Olympics. His 2nd wife, Natalya Venediktovna Lisovskaya, won the shot put at the 1988 Olympics.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1982: Diana Taurasi. She is on the short list for the title of the greatest woman ever to play basketball. She led the University of Connecticut to 3 National Championships, twice being named Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament, and won the Wade Trophy as America's leading female collegiate athlete in 2003. And she was just getting warmed up. 

She has played guard for the Phoenix Mercury since 2004, and led them to 3 WNBA Championships, winning the Finals MVP twice. She's a 10-time All-Star, a 5-time league scoring champion, the league's all-time scoring leader, and a member of its 15th, 20th and 25th Anniversary Teams.

And all that doesn't count her off-seasons. Because she doesn't have off-seasons: WNBA rules allow players to go abroad to play. She led Spartak Moscow of Russia to 4 EuroLeague titles, and Fenerbahçe of Turkey to 2 of them. She led Spartak to 7 league titles, Fenerbahçe to 1. She later played for Galatasaray, Fener's Istanbul arch-rivals. This rivalry, started between their soccer teams, is nasty; and yet, she remains popular with fans of both sides. And she has been a member of the U.S. Olympic team that has won the last 5 Gold Medals.

Somewhat Honorable Mention: June 11, 1983: José Reyes. Not to be confused with the late soccer star José Antonio Reyes, this Dominican shortstop was supposed to be the guy who led the New York Mets to glory, or at least past the New York Yankees. He was a 4-time All-Star, a 3-time National League stolen base champion, and in 2011 became the 1st (and remains the only) Mets player to win an NL batting title.

But he was moody and lazy, often making great plays in the field, but also sometimes botching plays in an attempt to either take it easy or make it look like he was making a great play. Although he helped the Mets get to within 1 run of a Pennant in 2006, his was one of many slumps that cost the team a Playoff berth the next season. He retired with a .283 lifetime batting average, 2,138 hits, and 517 stolen bases. He becomes eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2024, but don't expect him to ever get in.

Honorable Mention: June 11, 1989: Maya Moore. Like Taurasi, the forward starred at the University of Connecticut and in the WNBA. She won 2 National Championships and 3 Wade Trophies at UConn, and has led the Minnesota Lynx to 4 WNBA titles, winning the league's Rookie of the Year in 2011, its Finals MVP in 2013, and its regular-season MVP in 2014.

A 6-time All-Star, she's led the league in scoring in 2014 and steals in 2018. She was named to the league's 20th and 25th Anniversary Teams. And she was on the 2012 and 2016 U.S. Olympic Gold medalists. She also won a league title in Spain.

1. June 11, 1956: Joe Montana. The Greatest Quarterback Who Ever Lived. And if you say Tom Brady is, I got 3 words for you: Joe never cheated.

He led Notre Dame to a National Championship in 1977. He led the San Francisco 49ers into 4 Super Bowls, and won them all, and was named MVP in 3 of them. He won 2 of them before he had Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver ever, as a teammate. In fact, while the 1st 2 49er title teams, winning Super Bowl XVI in 1982 and Super Bowl XIX in 1985, had 2 Hall-of-Famers on defense, Fred Dean and Ronnie Lott, Montana was their only Hall-of-Famer on offense.

In 1999, The Sporting News named Montana their 3rd greatest football player of all time, behind Rice at Number 2 and Jim Brown at Number 1. In 2010, the NFL Network named him their 4th greatest player of all time, behind Rice at 1, Brown at 2, and Lawrence Taylor at 3. In each case, 1st among quarterbacks.

Still alive as of this writing: Öz, Rangel, Barbeau, Laurie, Dinklage, Jackson, LaBeouf, Stewart, Taurasi, Reyes, Moore, Montana.