A man lives his childhood dream in sobriety: At Every Level, Appreciating a Veteran Voice
Baseball players everywhere should have given their caps a heartfelt tip over the weekend when they learned that Julio Franco had stepped to the plate for the last time.
While the sport was preoccupied with the young season and the continued demythologizing of Roger Clemens, Franco the elder announced his retirement from Mexico’s Quintana Roo Tigers, one year after going deep for the Mets against Randy Johnson at the sprightly age of 48.
He was already the oldest major league player to hit a home run, to pinch-hit a home run, to do many things that won’t get him into the Hall of Fame but earned him universal respect from the Americas to Asia and all the way back to Altoona, Pa.
“You could tell he loved the game, and that’s all he wanted to do,” said John Wilson, a self-described “baseball fanatic” and Franco fan from afar.
Above all, players had to know that about Franco, especially Wilson, who said he considered himself in the Franco mold for the last four years as a seasoned spare outfielder and first-base coach for the Penn State Altoona Lions.
“The way his younger teammates could look up to him, go to him if they had something they needed to talk about, I felt as if my situation was similar,” Wilson said Monday in a telephone interview, one day after his own career, at least the collegiate portion of it, happened to conclude, at 53.
The world would run out of oil before there was a shortage of baseball people happy to give Franco his due, but Wilson seemed like an interesting choice after his name popped up during an Internet search of “oldest baseball players.” You don’t have to have some gray in your hair to appreciate Franco’s 23 years of major league service, his 2,586 regular-season hits and his willingness to carry on elsewhere, wherever the game would have him, but it helps.
John Wilson’s story made a few rounds late last winter, before the start of a senior season in which he batted eight times; had three hits, including a double; and went the distance leading off and playing right field in Penn State Altoona’s doubleheader sweep of Franciscan University on Senior Day, April 27.
“For all he’s meant to us, I thought that was the way for him to go out,” Wilson’s coach, Joe Piotti, said Monday by telephone. “He made this unbelievable catch in right, and some of the kids were teasing me that he should have been out there all along. But I saw him today, a week later, and he said, ‘I’m still sore.’ ”
Wilson and Piotti, who are the same age, met several years ago playing summer league ball, but that is not the most compelling aspect of Wilson’s road traveled. He grew up in Pittsburgh, no baseball star, a high school bench player, but he loved being around the game, especially the dearly departed Forbes Field, chatting up players, Pirates or not.
Decades ago, before alcohol and drug addiction took hold of his life and before he saved himself at 32 by checking into the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Aliquippa, Pa., Wilson had a knack of developing unlikely, enduring relationships.
continue reading this NY Times article
