Dodgers Could Use Tough Little Lefty in Their Bullpen Now

Jim Franco had to forgive the Dodgers twice.

He had to forgive them in 1958--two years before his son, John, was born--for uprooting themselves from his backyard ballyard in Brooklyn and vanning cross-country to the palms and springs of Los Angeles.

And he had to forgive them a quarter of a century later, in 1983--two years after they had drafted his son, John, out of his namesake university, St. John’s--for uprooting the boy from the Dodger organization and sacrificing him to one of the Dodgers’ evil rivals, Cincinnati.

They actually did the kid a major favor. Given the chance, John Anthony Franco has blossomed into one of the most reliable relief pitchers in the National League and, boy, could the Dodgers use him now.

Not only could they have had the left-handed reliever they have been looking for since Steve Howe took a powder . . .

. . . they could have had a genuine Brooklyn Dodger.

How that would have pleased the old man. Jim Franco always loved baseball--still does. When he knocks off work at the New York sanitation department, he can be found catching a game, sure as not. Because he has always had a hard time tearing himself away from a good ball game.

“My grandfather had to yank him off the field on his wedding day,” John said Monday, telling a favorite Franco family story. “He was supposed to be marrying my mom at 3 o’clock and he was still out there playing at 2:30, in some unlimited-age American Legion game or something.”

Good thing Frank Franco got his son off that diamond, or he might never have had a grandson.

John still gets back to Brooklyn from time to time, to visit his family and to play stickball with his buddies in the streets and playgrounds, around Bay 46th and Stillwell, just as he did growing up. “You can buy a stickball bat in the stores now,” he said. “But sometimes we still use a mop stick.”

As he and the Reds were arriving for a three-game series at Dodger Stadium, two months into the season, Franco found himself with more saves, nine, than the Dodgers had as a team, seven.

In his last 11 appearances, he had picked up seven saves. For a last-place team. And the only reason he missed a save Sunday is that the Reds scored three times in the ninth inning at San Francisco, padding a 4-3 lead to 7-3 after Franco had gotten sufficiently warmed up to pitch. He came in anyway and snuffed the Giants 1-2-3, striking out two of them.

His earned-run average, in the process, dropped to 2.08.

The epitome of the “tough little lefty” that old-timers like to reminisce about, Franco stands 5-10, or a far cry from the Lee Smith-Mike Witt-Mike Smithson modern prototype who rise to heights 8 to 10 inches higher.

His build nearly kept him out of baseball, in fact.

“When I was in high school, there were a couple of area scouts, one from the Mets, another guy from the Atlanta Braves, who kind of knocked me with the baseball people. They said I was too little to ever make it in the majors. So nobody drafted me.

“I kept asking everybody: ‘What’s the difference between somebody 5-foot-10 throwing 90 m.p.h. and somebody 6-foot-4 throwing 90 m.p.h.?’ Ron Guidry’s not exactly a giant.”

In the long run, Franco said, he was glad to have gone to college, where he was “35-4, or something like that” and caught the eye of the Dodgers. He signed with them in midsummer 1981, worked in 13 games in Class A Vero Beach, then hopped straight to Triple A Albuquerque.

He started going back and forth like a Slinky. Franco was assigned to Albuquerque because Ricky Wright hurt his arm. The Dukes used him as a starter. Five appearances later, he went to Double A San Antonio. There, he also started. Back to Albuquerque in 1983, for 11 games, and Del Crandall tried him in the bullpen.

“Then they traded me”--in May 1983, along with pitcher Brett Wise for infielder Rafael Landestoy--”and Cincinnati made me spot man in their rotation,” Franco said. “And before long I was relieving again.”

Franco had no hard feelings toward anyone. When you are young and trying to make the big leagues, you go where you are told and do what you are told. He practically would have been willing to move to his old position in the infield, where, for some of his first 15 years in Brooklyn, he was Bensonhurst’s best left-handed shortstop.

He understood the Dodgers trading him. “They had Steve Howe. They looked like they were set for a left-handed reliever for a long time,” Franco said.

But things change, and the Dodgers nowadays could use any sort of relief, right-handed, left-handed, anything other than comic.

“You have to look at it right now that the way to beat the Dodgers is to get to their bullpen,” Franco said. “Their starters, well, they’re all pretty phenomenal. Three or four good ones, at least. But I saw where the other day the Dodgers got 17 hits and still lost. That’s a pretty good indication their relief pitchers are struggling.”

If only they had hung onto the kid from Brooklyn, their troubles might be over. Because the way John Franco has been pitching of late, the men who step into the batter’s box against him all appear to be using mop sticks for bats.