Cardinals news and notes: Fowler, Gagliano, and feats of strength

So, you know the day before you go on Christmas vacation from your work or from school, when everybody is just kind of biding his or her time until they can start their extended weekend (I say from a work-centric perspective—I really didn’t take enough advantage of that nearly month-long Winter Break during college, in retrospect)?

Well, at the old Viva El Birdos dot com offices (which exist as a physical building, if only in our hearts), most of the crew is gone for Christmas Eve. As such, this will be the only post for the day, unless something major happens (on Christmas Eve).

Anyway, I feel a little bit weird being responsible for the single VEB post of the day without there being something baseball-related (also, my last one of these on a Saturday included an extended breakdown of a Nickelback song that I don’t even like at all, so I owe the cosmos this). So here is a lineup of a weird thing I was thinking about the other day, with help from the Baseball Reference Play Index (which would make for a fantastic gift around the holiday season, by the way). Here are the Cardinals with the most games with zero games at another position (besides pinch hitting or pinch running, which I do not consider a position, with all due respect to Herb Washington).

Pitcher: Bob Gibson, 597 games, 1959-1975

Catcher: Del Rice, 1038 games, 1945-1960

First Base: Ray Sanders, 536 games, 1942-1945

Second Base: Fernando Vina, 488 games, 2000-2003

Third Base: Scott Rolen, 661 games, 2002-2007

Shortstop: Ozzie Smith, 1990 games, 1982-1996

Left Field: Danny Litwhiler, 226 games, 1943-1946

Center Field: Peter Bourjos, 236 games, 2014-2015

Right Field: Billy Southworth, 210 games, 1926-1929

/leans back in chair, spins around a couple times because why not, uses pens to bang out some Todd Rundren OH HEY LOOK AT THE TIME, I’m about to clock out but, well, check out these links from yesterday. Think of this as the VEB answering machine.

Expectations for Dexter Fowler

I wrote about Dexter Fowler and how he could turn out to be Jon Jay (whom I love, by the way, no matter how long he plays for the Cubs) and how this would actually be perfectly acceptable given how absurd the free agent market has become.

The feats of strength

In honor of Festivus, Lil Scooter posted about the longest home runs of 2016 for the St. Louis Cardinals. Even though she referenced “sock(ing) a few dingers”, which I’m pretty sure was an accidental cross-pollination of Seinfeld references with references to The Simpsons.

Phil Gagliano

On Thursday, Phil Gagliano passed away at the age of 74, and Josey Curtis wrote about him. While I was familiar with the name, I knew very few specifics, and it was nice to read about an overshadowed member of some great Cardinals teams.

Okay, guys, since I won’t talk to y’all again for a few days, I hope you have a great Christmas. As insincere as I can be, particularly in these posts, I am grateful for the readership we have at this website and for those who enjoy what we do. It’s humbling and awesome.