Almost every sports fan wonders about it at some point: what was my team doing on the day I was born? Did they play? Did they win? Who was on the mound or under center? The answer is usually findable, and finding it is half the fun. Here is how to look it up yourself, what to look for once you find it, and how our birthday prints turn it into something to keep.
Start with three facts
You need your birth date, the team you want to check, and ideally where you were born. The team matters most. For a lot of people that is the family team they grew up with, not necessarily the one closest to where they were born. If you are looking this up for a parent or grandparent, ask which team they followed as a kid.
Figure out which sport was in season
Teams do not play every day, so your birthday decides which sports are worth checking. Big-league baseball plays nearly every day from spring into early fall, so a birthday in those months very often has a baseball game. Pro football plays mostly once a week in the fall and early winter, so a football fan's birthday may land between games; the nearest game before or after is the natural stand-in. Basketball and hockey run from fall into spring with games several times a week. A summer birthday points to baseball, a winter birthday to basketball, hockey or football.
Where people look it up
Sports Reference sites. Baseball-Reference, Pro-Football-Reference, Basketball-Reference and Hockey-Reference let you open a team's schedule for a given season and click through to the box score for a specific date. This is the quickest place to start for most pro teams.
Retrosheet. For baseball, Retrosheet is a long-running volunteer project that has collected big-league box scores and play-by-play accounts for a large share of the game's history. If you want to know what happened inning by inning, it is the place serious baseball researchers use.
Newspaper archives. The local paper is where the game was written up the way people read it at the time. Keep in mind that a game played on your birthday usually appears in the next day's paper. Public libraries often keep old papers on microfilm and many offer free access to newspaper databases with a library card. Paid newspaper archive sites are another option, and local historical societies can help with smaller-town papers.
Family. Do not skip this one. Someone may remember the game on the radio in the hospital room, or a relative who missed the birth because of it. Those stories are worth more than the box score.
What to look for once you find the game
Start with the final score and the opponent. Then look at who started and who made the big play, whether anything unusual happened, such as extra innings, a debut, a comeback or a milestone, and where the team stood in the standings that morning. Glance at the other scores from that day too. It is a small snapshot of the sports world you arrived in.
What makes a birthday game special
It does not have to be a famous game. A routine weeknight win in May belongs to you in a way no title game does, because nobody else has that exact pairing of a life and a score. A loss can be an even better story. What matters is that it was real, and that it happened on your day.
How our birthday prints work
If you would rather have the answer ready to hang, we build it from the same kinds of game records. The Day You Were Born is the box score print of your team's real game from your birthday, from $45. The Sports Page sets that game as the front of a newspaper sports section, with the headline, the story, the full box score, the standings that morning, the rest of the day's scores and the champions of the year, from $45.
For baseball fans, The Scorecard shows the birthday game scored the way it is done in the stands, every batter, every inning and every at-bat, rebuilt from Retrosheet's records, from $45. The Moment You Were Born takes your time of birth and finds the big-league play happening that very minute, from $45. Born on Your Birthday lists every major leaguer who shares your birthday, with their careers, from $45.
To widen the view, The Year You Were Born, Sports Edition covers your team's whole season game by game with your day marked, plus the champions crowned that year, from $45. And the Lifetime Birthday Book is a hardcover with your team's game on every birthday, from $69.
Our prints use our own design and type, with no team logos.
Shop this guide
The Day You Were BornFrom $24
The Sports Page From the Day You Were BornFrom $45
The ScorecardFrom $45
The Moment You Were BornFrom $45
Born on Your BirthdayFrom $45
The Year You Were Born, Sports EditionFrom $45
Lifetime BookFrom $99
Ordering
Enter the name, birth date and team on the product page, and add the time of birth for The Moment You Were Born. Every order is checked by hand before it is made, and shipping is free in the US. Allow about two weeks for delivery. For a Christmas gift, order by early December at the latest.
Browse every birthday game print in the All Prints collection.