Julio Franco, Won’t You Come Back?
`
Julio Franco, Won’t You Come Back?
Jerome Klein
I think about dying a lot. Someday I intend to do it.
But until the day that big blue umpire in the sky tosses me for arguing balls and strikes, I’m still here, still vertical.
Let’s not kid ourselves though, it’s late in the game. Maybe not last-of-the-ninth late or extra innings late, but I’m at the point when fans are heading to the exits to beat the traffic and the beer vendors have long ago packed it up for the night.
This morbid and frankly useless fascination with mortality isn’t a consequence of age. I was this way when I was 7. Even then, I knew which of my friend’s grandfathers was the oldest and most apt, in my eyes, to be circling the drain. At home, I kept a doleful watch on Snoopy, my hamster, fearful the little rat was fated to survive no longer than the parade of goldfish I’d managed to kill before him. When Snoopy escaped his cage and disappeared down a hole in the floor near the toilet, I consoled myself that he was frolicking in some field of alfalfa, wearing a festive little hamster hat. I gave up on that notion when it occurred to me that Snoopy would now be eligible for Medicare.
It goes without saying that I was a morose kid. Nevertheless, I understood early the relationship between death and time – the former being what happens when you run out of the latter.
But you don’t have to die to run out of time. At some point, it’s too late for a lot of things. If I plant an acorn now, some other guy gets to sit under the tree. If I were going to be a child prodigy, I should have started, oh I don’t know, when I was a child.
Too late to be an astronaut or a cowboy. Definitely too late to make my major league debut.
When you’re a kid, every major leaguer is older than you. And it stays that way for a long time.
Back then, I liked the players that everyone liked, Mantle, Mays, Aaron. I liked Vada Pinson, mostly because I’d never heard the name Vada and I could walk around saying Vada, Vada, Vada, until my mother threw something at my head to make me stop. I liked Roberto Clemente, Harmon Killebrew, Koufax, Gibson. My favorite pitcher was Whitey Ford, first because he was a Yankee, second because Whitey was an even better name than Vada. When my father told me that Whitey wasn’t his actual name – “But it’s on his baseball card!”-I refused to believe it.
Those players were nearing the end. Some retired, some were mere relics of the players they’d been. If life is fleeting, athletic success is more so and perpetual success is a lost cause. Joe DiMaggio might have been the Yankee Clipper, but when I became aware of him, he was shilling Mr. Coffee on TV and pining away for Marilyn Monroe. Nothing lasts forever.
Of course, new players emerged and took their places. Johnny Bench, Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt. Drysdale’s fastball fades; Nolan Ryan’s heats up.
Yet I found myself fascinated by the hangers-on, the older players.
Take Hoyt Wilhelm. The eventual hall-of-fame reliever was pitching 7 years before I was born and he was still at it when I was 13. He was the oldest major leaguer in 1966 and remained so through 1972. It seemed as if he’d pitch forever, that fluttering knuckleball the antidote to all things mortal.
When he finally walked away, I was sad, but I immediately shifted my attention to Don McMahon, another reliever, who for the next two seasons took on the mantle of oldest player.
Somewhere in this tangle of dead grandfathers and AWOL hamsters and Hoyt Wilhelms, somewhere in my fixation with time and endings, I came up with this theory – so long as there was at least one major league ballplayer older than me, my window hadn’t closed.
As theories go, this one is nonsense. How can you close a window that has never been open?
This is as good a time as any to mention that I wasn’t passionate about playing baseball, nor was I especially good at it. Sure, I piddled around – little league, pick-up games after school with my friends, stickball.
But I played other sports, and baseball wasn’t my best or even my favorite.
Could I dream of being a baseball player without seriously playing baseball or having any talent for it? Why not? As far as idle dreams go, it was a pleasant one. I kept it in my back pocket, along with my fantasy of eloping with Farrah Fawcett or of waking up one day to find that my nose was no longer the size of a banana. Besides, maybe I was a late bloomer. Maybe a scout would sign me after driving past my yard and observing my swing during a particularly inspiring wiffleball at-bat. Stranger things have happened.
Actually, they haven’t.
Regardless, the chasm between the theoretical (I’m still young enough to play pro ball) and the reality (I suck), was wide enough for dreams to survive.
In case you’re worried, my stupid theory about old ballplayers wasn’t keeping me up at night. With 30 teams and a roster of 25 players, 650 guys were older than me. I had plenty of time to let this get under my skin.
Then in 1977, Brian Greer got a lone at-bat for the Padres. He was 3 months younger than me. I was in high school, staring at a poster of Farrah Fawcett on my ceiling (don’t ask) and this ass-hat was hanging out with Dave Winfield. The fact that he struck out changed nothing.
It gave me pause, but one younger Greer still left 649 older non-Greers to cushion the blow.
But the clock started ticking.
I was in my early twenties. Late twenties. Early thirties.
Ballplayers kept retiring. The oldest in any given season was still comfortably older than me – Willie McCovey, Gaylord Perry, Jim Kaat. For a time, Phil Niekro held sway, echoes of Hoyt Wilhelm’s knuckler and the lack of strain it put on your arm. Then Nolan Ryan’s fastball turned that theory upside down. Back to the knuckler with Charlie Hough. Dennis Martinez and Rick Honeycutt each took a turn, then Tom Candiotti, yet another knuckler. These knuckleballers were a lifeline.
But there weren’t enough of them. The window was closing.
By the 2000 season, only Orel Hershiser, Jesse Orosco, Gary Gaetti, Ricky Henderson and Doug Jones were older than me. Everyone else was Brian Greer, or might as well have been.
There was nothing I could do about it. I guess I could have burned incense and mumbled some incantations to Ulna, the God of Elbows, but I was a Presbyterian and didn’t know any. It was out of my hands.
Jones, Hershiser, and Gaetti didn’t answer the bell in 2001. I would have sent them performance enhancing drugs to lengthen their careers, but I didn’t want to pay the shipping costs.
I was down to two players.
Then, like the cavalry, Julio Franco charged onto the scene.
I knew who he was. Good, not great. He could hit for average and power and he was fast. He also seemed determined to play ball, so determined that when the 1994-1995 baseball strike happened, Franco bolted for Japan and the Chiba Lotte Marines.
He returned to the majors 1996 through 1997, before heading back to Japan in 1998, following with a season in Mexico, then Korea, then back to Mexico. The guy got around.
But foreign leagues don’t count in my longevity watch, so Franco was off my radar.
He sprang back on it in 2001 with the Braves, joining Henderson and Orosco as my elders.
Henderson lasted through 2003, when his legs finally ran out of steam. Orosco exited that year as well.
Julio Franco was the last man standing.
In 2004, at 45, he batted .309 in 320 at-bats and became the oldest major leaguer to hit a grand slam. In 2005, he batted .275.
In 2006, he played sparingly for the Mets, yet held his own in 165 at-bats. Seen another way, that’s 165 more at-bats than I had.
Father Time seemed to catch him in 2007; with only 50 at-bats, the Mets dumped him. Yet he dodged inevitability once again, re-signing with the Braves.
A mirage; Atlanta designated him for assignment 13 days later.
I held my breath. They recalled him September 1st.
And then the season ended.
In 2008, now a free agent, Franco signed with the Tigres de Quintana Roo. For the uninitiated, Quintana Roo isn’t the major leagues.
He announced his retirement after that season, the last major leaguer born in the 1950’s. The announcement came on May 2, the anniversary of the end of Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games streak.
If you were listening carefully, you might have heard my window close.
I kept an eye on Franco after that, some sense of nostalgia, I guess. He managed for a time. I read that he actually played for the Fort Worth Cats of the United Baseball League in 2014, going 6 for 27. In 2015, he played in 10 games for the Ishikawa Million Stars, an independent Japanese team. It doesn’t count, but it does make me smile.
I still occasionally look to see who the oldest current player is, but it doesn’t carry the weight it once did. A few hold my interest for a while. Jamie Moyer, Tim Wakefield (ah, the knuckleball), Bartolo Colon, Ichiro, Jesse Chavez, pitching for his millionth team.
As of this moment, Justin Verlander is senior, at 42. I’m impressed by this until it occurs to me that I was married before Verlander was born and frankly, I have a handkerchief older than him.
Brian Greer went 0 for 4 in his career. That’s a .000 average folks, same as mine.
You think you have all the time in the world. Good luck with that.
My dreams were pedestrian. Enter a room with Farrah Fawcett on my arm, soft-toss a knuckleball past an overeager Brian Greer, remain young
Not much to ask. Yet hope remains if you choose to see it. After all, Julio Franco is a slippery son-of-a-gun, and maybe he’ll come back.
Jerome Klein lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania. He is reasonably confident he could hold his own in the batter’s box against Cy Young’s skeleton.
Mark Mosley is a public school 7th grade math teacher. He draws baseball cards when he is not driving his son to baseball or his daughter to gymnastics. His cards can be seen on Twitter @mosley_mark, on Instagram @idrawbaseballcards, and can be purchased at https://idrawbaseballcards.bigcartel.com/
The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.