Births on July 4

José Oquendo, Puerto Rican-American baseball player and coach

José Manuel Roberto Guillermo Oquendo Contreras (born July 4, 1963), nicknamed The Secret Weapon, is a Puerto Rican former infielder and current coach in Major League Baseball (MLB). He currently serves as Minor League Infield Coordinator of the St. Louis Cardinals, an organization with whom he has been affiliated since 1985. He managed the Puerto Rico national team in the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics. During his playing career, Oquendo proved highly versatile defensively: he played primarily second base and shortstop, but also frequently in the outfield, and made at least one appearance at every position during his MLB playing career. Oquendo has the second-highest career fielding percentage for second basemen at .9919 (99.19%), behind only Plácido Polanco's career mark of .9927 (99.27%).From Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, the New York Mets signed Oquendo as an amateur free agent in 1979 at age 15. He made his MLB debut with the Mets in 1983 and was traded to the Cardinals in 1985. In 1988, he made his catching debut, giving him an appearance at every position. From 1989 to 1991, he was the Cardinals' regular second baseman alongside shortstop Ozzie Smith. Oquendo's best season offensively came in 1989, when he batted .291, 28 doubles, .747 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) and a major-league leading 163 games played. In 1990, he produced his best season defensively, recording the fewest errors (three) for a second baseman in a season with at least 150 games played.

Following his playing career, Oquendo coached and managed in the Cardinals' Minor League Baseball system in 1997 and 1998, and became their bench coach at the major league level the following year. In 2000, he became the Cardinals' third base coach, remaining in that role until 2015, while helping lead the club to 11 playoff appearances, including World Series championships in 2006 and 2011 and four National League pennants. He missed the 2016 season after sustaining a knee injury that required surgery and rehabilitation; at the time, he was the longest-tenured coach in MLB. In 2017, he began serving as a special assistant to Cardinals general manager Mike Girsch, instructing at the Cardinals training facility in Jupiter, Florida. For the 2018 season, he returned to the Cardinals major league team to serve as third base coach. In 2019, he became the Cardinals' Minor League Infield Coordinator.