THE TRUE KING
JOHN FRANCO From SJU to Mets’
Thir t y-four yea r s ago, Frank Viola went to the first day of fall baseball practice as a freshman at St. John’s, anxious to finally meet John Franco, a fellow New Yorker he knew only by what he’d read and heard.
Both had been star pitchers in high school, Franco f rom Brook ly n, Viola from Long Island, but their paths had never crossed.
“I’d heard all about how good he was,” Viola says. “So that first day I’m looking around for some guy who’s 6-4, 6-5, blowing cheese by the hitters. And here’s Johnny,
about 5-9, walking around with that swagger of his.
“And I remember thinking, ‘This is the guy everybody is talking about?’ ”
All these years later, as Franco is about to be inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame on Sunday night at Citi Field, Viola laughs at the memory. The two of them became great friends, teammates not only at St. John’s but later with the Mets as well, and Viola came to understand just how driven Franco was to overcome that same first impression a lot of people had of him.
“Johnny pitched with a chip on his shoulder ever since I knew him,” Viola says. “If you ask me what I remember most about playing with John Franco, it’s what a tough SOB he was.”
That toughness, not to mention his famously disappearing change-up — which he delighted i n calling a screwball — translated to a memorable career as a relief pitcher. With 424 career saves, 276 of them as a Met, Franco has the fourthhighest total — the highest of any lefthander — in major-league history, behind only Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman and Lee Smith.
Impressive as those numbers are, howev
er, it’s Franco’s story that makes Sunday such a special occasion. His is the ultimate dream come true, as he grew up in Brooklyn, rooting for the ’69 Mets, imagining that he was Tug McGraw when he was pitching in the backyard to his brother, Jimmy.
“The ’69 team, that was my team,” Franco said this past week. “Tug McGraw became my favorite, but I loved watching Seaver, Koosman, Agee, Swoboda, all of them.
“Now to be sharing the same wall with some of those guys, it’s truly an honor. It’s kind of cool.”
This is a New York story, all right. Leave it to Lou Carnesecca, the legendary St. John’s basketball coach who has been a mentor and friend to Franco from their days together at the college, to put it in perspective.
“He’s one of our own, that’s the big thing,” Carnesecca said the other day. “He belongs here. He wasn’t exactly a big guy, you know, but he was nails. All nails. The way I always looked at him, Johnny Franco is New York.”
Memories of his days with Carnesecca and so many others
will come flooding back