Rest In Peace Bill Campbell

The hits just keep on coming, but this time, it's a play I watched play a lot in his day. Solid relief pitcher Bill Campbell passed away today. Campbell was solid for many teams for more than a decade and he will be missed.

It's unfortunate that my biggest memory of him was the poor trades both to the Phillies and away from the Phillies. Coming off an average season for the 1983 Cubs, the Phillies gave up three players, Gary "Sarge" Matthews, reliever Porfi Altamirano, and one of my favorites, Bob "White Lightning" Dernier. I was a big fan of Bobby D's since his rookie year. Three players for a guy with a 4.49 ERA the year before? Looking back, I'm thinking they wanted to move on from Matthews, Porfi really had no value, so they had to throw in Dernier to make it happen.

Campbell put together a solid season for the 1984 Phillies. Most of his numbers were better than his career norms so it was kind of odd when they packaged him with Ivan DeJesus to acquire Dave Rucker. So in effect, they traded Matthews, Dernier, Altamirano, Sandberg and Bowa for Dave Rucker.

Now Rucker was coming off a solid season from the ERA standpoint, but his WHIP (which of course no one used in 1984) was higher. Rucker had two mediocre seasons in Philly and he was gone.

Anyway, Campbell would have two decent seasons after leaving Philly, one in St Louis and one in Detroit before hanging it up after a brief stop north of the border with the Expos.

Rest In Peace Bill Campbell, I will always remember your solid MLB career (and horrible trade to and from the Phillies) with a smile on my face. Say hi to Nate Colbert If you happen to run into him up there...