Juli Betsch, a Glenside native and granddaughter of former Glenside resident and former Philadelphia Phillie Johnny Callison, was featured in an article by The Philadelphia Inquirer about a now-popular Facebook group called “Memories of the 1964 Phillies”.

According to the story, the group was created in December 2023 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Phillies. Betsch (pictured above in 1996) shared old family photos of Callison, who passed away in 2006 in Abington Township.

“When Johnny Callison died in 2006, one of his teammates said, ‘It’s time we stop focusing on the heartbreak and remember the first 150 games,’” Stephen Dicht, who created the group, told The Inquirer. “And that’s what a lot of people have chosen to do. Myself included.”

An excerpt from the article:

To his granddaughter, Callison was not a four-time All-Star right fielder with a cannon for an arm. He was ‘Pop,’ a man who spent his afternoons watching Julia Child cooking shows, and his evenings with the Phillies on, a cigarette in hand.

Callison had eight granddaughters in total, but Betsch was the most athletically inclined. She played softball throughout high school and college, and her grandfather would often give her critiques.

“He’d tell you to choke up on the bat,” Betsch, a Bishop McDevitt graduate, said, “put your glove down, get in front of the ball. If you did bad, he would tell you you did bad.”

Callison finished as the runner-up in the National League MVP voting in 1964. He played in Major League Baseball for 16 seasons and led the National League in triples twice and doubles once. He gained his greatest prominence during the 1964 season in which he was named the MVP of the All-Star Game.

After his MLB days, he went on to become a player-coach with the Philadelphia Athletics, a professional softball team that played at Veterans Stadium in the 1978 season of the American Professional Slo-Pitch League.

According to a 2013 article by The Inquirer, Callison earned $42,500 in his final MLB season and “lived in a modest Glenside home since coming to Philadelphia in 1960, and retirement was difficult.”

In October 2023, a memorial video titled “Remembering Johnny Callison” was released. For more on his life and career, you can click here. For a fan tribute, you can click here.

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Photos: Wikipedia, Society for American Baseball, Baseball Wiki, Facebook