MVN - Most Valuable Network

Julio Franco Announces Retirement

Julio Franco finally announced his retirement from baseball, ending one of the longest playing careers of baseball history. With his retirement, baseball has lost its last link to an era when pitchers threw underhand and batters could call for a high ball, a low ball, or a fair ball. Franco was the last active player to see Babe Ruth pitch, and the last player to tag out Lou Brock on a stolen base. Contrary to popular belief, he was not with Abner Doubleday when the original baseball rules were drawn out in Cooperstown, New York… Actually, the whole Doubleday story was a myth, and his eyewitness account of the Alexander Cartwright game in Hoboken, New Jersey helped to debunk much of the myth…

OK, seriously… His minor league career started a mere 30 years ago, in Butte, Montana in 1978, during the Mariners’ second year of existence, and he first reached the majors as a shortstop in 1982 with the Phillies, meaning he just missed the 1981 strike that knocked out a third of the season. Looking at the Mariners’ 25-man roster, only 11 players were born before Franco’s first minor league game, with an additional six coming before he hit the bigs.

Franco had a pretty amazing career, in that he had been all but left for dead right in the middle of it. His defense was a major issue, leading him to move first to second base and then to DH. Then, after two subpar years, he left for Japan in 1995. A decent year led to him returning to Cleveland, where he had played for most of the eighties, but after one good year, he again began to struggle, and eventually returned to Japan in 1998. In 1999, he saw one at bat in professional baseball, striking out for Tampa Bay. For a 40-year old, that should have been it. Instead, he went to Korea the next year, hitting .327 and earning himself a spot on Atlanta’s roster the following year. He spent the next five years in Atlanta, then went to the Mets, then back to Atlanta, to the minors, and now to Mexico, where he finally retired at the young age of 49.

For the record, a player who seemed to be left for dead at the age of 35 wound up with 2,586 hits in the majors, just under 3,700 in his whole professional career. Now, if his normal age progression continues, he should be coaching and managing until sometime in his late nineties.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.