From the vault: Harvey and Julio

By Harvey McGuffin
I remember when ...

Editor's Note: With the official announcement of Julio Franco's retirement, Flotsam's Harvey McGuffin was too verklempt to offer new insights about his favorite baseball player of all time. Since McGuffin can't be sure if it's 2008 or 1998 anyway, we reflect on a past post adoring the late, great Julio Franco.

An event happened yesterday that took me back to a better time, a better place, a better state of mind.

Gone was the talk of steroids, potential asterisks on home run records, any images of Astros pitcher Ezekial Astacio and quibbles over revenue sharing. Instead, in my head, was a simple tune.

Doo Doo DooDoo Doo, Doo Doo DooDoo Doo, Doo Doo DooDoo Doo, Doo DooDooDooDooDooDooDooDoo.

That's the sound of RBI baseball on Nintendo, you punks.

Julio Franco, older than I am and still hitting baseballs out of ballparks, became the oldest man to ever homer in a game when his 47-year-old eternally-young-because-of-voodoo corpse went yard for the New York Mets. He should be collecting social security and taking Sunday drives with his wife down to the flea market, preventing me from speeding up beyond 25 miles per hour on a 35 mph one-lane backroad. But instead, he is showing whippersnappers who weren't even born when he started playing how it's done.

But here he is, a Tuck Everlasting relic from the days of yore, when everyone was small, white, stocky and caught the ball by raising their hands to the sky and praying for the best. It was a time when every struck ball -- fair or foul -- sounded like the highest key of a xylophone. Fans cheered for you no matter which team you played for. And there weren't so many goddamned teams at all! Just eight of them, all good ones.

I remember the way it felt to see Vince Coleman fly up the first base line, unstoppable unless the ball was hit directly to the second baseman. I remember the way Jack Clark was guaranteed to hit a homer with runners on base, or the way nobody could touch a Bobby Grelts fastball. I loved the way players cried and acted momentarily stunned as they committed an error or the way every outfielder scampered with his little legs, showing teamwork with his other fielders as they moved in concert toward the direction of the musical baseball.

This was the golden era. Julio Franco, bless his soul, is a staple of that era and when he dies, probably within the year, he's going to leave a gaping hole in the hearts of throwback baseball fans everywhere, like myself. We salute you Julio, for hearkening back to that time, and for not dying yet.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm about to prove Mrs. McGuffin wrong when she says the AL All-Stars cannot be beaten by the 1988 Boston Red Sox.