In honor of my birthday today...

...let's take a look at some of the athletes (pretty awesome athletes, I might add) who are lucky enough to call August 24th their birthday, too:
Inge de Bruijn (1973) - Dutch swimmer and four time Olympic champion. She made her debut at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and retired from competitive swimming in 2007.

Reggie Miller (1965) - spent his 18 year NBA career with the Indiana Pacers, and a player who played a key role in the Knicks-Pacers Eastern Conference playoff rivalry of the 1990s, back when I was a Knicks fan. I loved to hate Reggie Miller in those years.

Cal Ripken Jr. (1960) - spent his entire MLB career (1981-2001) with the Baltimore Orioles, was a 19 time All-Star, is a Hall of Famer and considered one of the best shortstops to ever play the game. He played in a record 2,632 straight games spanning 16 seasons (which seems like an almost impossible feat, considering how easy it is to get injured and how even a minor injury can sideline a player for one day, which would be enough to break that streak).

Vince McMahon (1945) - since we haven't decided whether or not the WWE qualifies as a sport, we're just gonna go ahead and include McMahon on this list. Chairman of the WWE and one of the campiest villains that people (my boyfriend included) love to hate. Wrestling may be more soap opera than sport, but the physicality of it is real and so McMahon will manage to squeak by onto this list.

In side notes: today was the closing ceremony of the Olympics and last night, the Redeem Team beat Spain for the gold medal. I didn't watch it, but my dad did, and he said the Americans, these professional Americans who get paid millions of dollars whether they win or lose, were jumping up and down and as excited as any Olympians have ever been to win gold, which just goes to show that even athletes who have sold out and who are in it for the money started out because they love the game, and that deep down, that love of the game is still inside them.