Sports

JOHNNY’S ONE HALL OF A FATHER – FAMILY-MAN FRANCO WHAT GAME’S ALL ABOUT

THIS WAS not about whether John Franco would ever get another major-league save, or throw another major-league pitch, or appear on the roster of another major league team.

This was all about a father and his 10-year-old son, and the apparent end of a summer that had lasted nearly two decades.

“Is it my fault,” J.J. Franco wanted to know, “because we played catch the day before?”

Relating that conversation to reporters yesterday is what reduced John Franco, the toughest guy in a Mets uniform, to tears yesterday.

The same way John Franco in a Mets uniform is what New York is all about, the relationship between John and J.J. Franco is what baseball is all about.

As the father told the story, interrupted by what must have been a 45-second pause for the emotion to well up, spill over and subside, the son watched on a TV screen in the next room.

And as he watched, J.J. Franco cried, too.

John Franco will be able to live with having to settle for only the second-most saves in the history of baseball, 422 to Lee Smith’s 478, and he will probably be able to accept the hard fact that he will not wind up in Cooperstown, merely in Staten Island with his family.

But it will be hard to shake the memory of the sudden end of a career and a little boy who thought that perhaps, he could be the reason.

“I told him no,” John Franco said, after he had composed himself.

It was 18 seasons and 1150 innings and who knows how many hard sliders wrung out of an arm attached to a scrawny, 5-9, 175 pound body that ultimately did John Franco in.

The way Steve Phillips described it yesterday, the years of wear and tear had caused both the tendon and the ligament in John Franco’s elbow “to tear away from the bone.”

He will need surgery just to comb his hair again, and if he ever hopes to pitch in the major leagues – and knowing Franco, he certainly hasn’t given up hope – it will have to be Tommy John surgery, the most drastic operation a pitcher’s arm can endure.

No one thought to ask what would have to be done to John Franco’s arm to allow him to toss a ball with his son again.

But if there is anything to hope for in John Franco’s athletic future, it is that he and J.J. aren’t done playing catch.

“I’m happy with the way my career has gone,” Franco said. “I want to win a World Series ring with the New York Mets. That’s what I want.”

At 41 years old, facing two years of grueling rehabilitation, that is probably too much for John Franco to hope for.

But in a way, even making it to the major leagues should have been too much for John Franco to hope for.

He never was going to burn out any radar guns with his fastball or saw off any bats with his cutter or buckle anyone’s knees with his curve.

John Franco was living proof that you could make it to the major leagues if you had enough guts and determination and self-belief, and if you were able to tune out all the voices that said you couldn’t.

That is why Franco was not ready to concede yesterday that his career was likely over. “I’m going to keep all my options open,” he said.

And yet, he has known for awhile that there were a limited number of pitches left in his arm. He knew his success was based on no smoke but plenty of mirrors. He needed batters to chase the slider that always seemed to land six inches short of home plate.

If it made it on the fly, he knew he was in trouble.

Like the Brooklyn wiseguy that he was growing up, he would joke about his lack of juice.

A couple of years ago, at a father-son wiffle ball game before a game at Shea, he had tried to get his own son to chase that slider. Without success. The kid waited and waited until the old man finally came in with a fastball. J.J. whacked it over his head.

“Hey, he’s my kid,” Franco had joked. “He knows what to lay off.”

Franco had had a special relationship with his own dad, James, who was a sanitation worker, and throughout his Mets career, John Franco had worn an orange Dept. of Sanitation T-shirt under his uniform.

Some looked at that as an affectation. Those people didn’t get John Franco.

But no one could fail to get yesterday that the special relationship between John Franco and his father had been transferred to the relationship between he and his son.

As fan-unfriendly as major league baseball has become, with late starting times and ticket prices that have all but excluded family men with children from the ballpark, the only future baseball has lies in the game of catch between a father and his son.

As long as fathers and sons – and daughters, for that matter – continue to toss a ball back and forth, there will continue to be baseball fans.

Hopefully, the next pitch John Franco throws will be to J.J. And hopefully, it won’t hurt either one of them.