Things I'm Reading Today

Johnny Callison died on Thursday, but I failed to notice in all of the Lidle hubbub. Phillies alumni and others remember him. If you don't know who Callison was, and didn't grow up in Philly, it's understandable. He came to the Phillies in 1960 when they were abysmal and was one of the big reasons they had their almost-miracle-until-the-collapse 1964 season; he should have been NL MVP that year, but missed it by a thread just like the rest of the team did. Both of my parents always spoke highly of him; my mom because she went to a lot of Phillies games in the 60's, and my dad because he got to meet a whole bunch of the Phillies at an awards dinner when he was 17, including Callison.

If you did know who he was, this is entirely unrelated, but you might enjoy reading Mike Berquist's series he's doing on the 1950 Phillies in his blog: intro part 1 part 2 part 3

The other thing I'm reading today is Jason Churchill's Mariners roster breakdown with the lookahead to 2007. Quite frankly, I'm totally not into roster speculation because I know I personally have no influence on what the organization does, but Jason's is worth reading because it's funny. For example, his comment on Jon Huber: "Would marry slider if Bush made it legal. Putz’s split is the ring bearer." Or Emiliano Fruto: "Good stuff needs better location. How about Cincinnati?"

In what may be a funny role reversal, Andy Green wants to play in Japan, and rumors link him to the Nippon Ham Fighters. I'm kind of concerned about his 2006 stats, but maybe that was a result of bench rot. He'd probably be an upgrade over Jose Macias at third base, if he could pound the ball in Japan like he did in the PCL in 2004-2005. Plus, his middle name is Mulligan and he was born on 7/7/77. How cool is that?

Also, as an aside, I'm going to probably start trimming my blogroll in a few weeks of baseball blogs that aren't updating in the offseason, as well as adding a few (notably, The Griddle since he's another Fighters fan, and the Baseball Book Review because, hey, baseball books, and Patrick does a book segment on Mariners Radio, too). I also decided to start collecting a page of Player Blogs rather than trying to keep a separate sidebar for them, especially since some are only for the postseason, some are defunct, some are in Japanese, etc.