Julio Franco, baseball’s “ageless wonder,” has reportedly signed a contract with a Japanese baseball team to serve as player-manager for the 2015 season.
At 56 years old, Franco becomes the oldest player in the league. The former eldest, a 49-year-old pitcher, will have to settle for second banana now. (Franco is the oldest player to hit a MLB homerun, at the age of 47, and has a litany of possibly apocryphal stories to his name, including this one about hitting 130-mph fastballs.)
Franco, an Indians’ infielder for much of the 80s, rejoined the club for the ’96 season and batted .322. He was released in August of the following year. Even at that time, Franco was something of an old salt at age 38.
He’s been slumming in developmental leagues and on foreign rosters since his retirement from the Majors in 2008.
If you’ve been looking for an angle of entry in the world of Japanese sports, here’s your opportunity: Go ISHIKAWA MILLION STARS!
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2015.
