April 20, 1985: Where art thou, Julio? Franco and his .516 average go AWOL at Yankee Stadium

Cleveland Indians manager Pat Corrales had drawn up his team’s starting lineup long before the 2 P.M. Saturday game against the New York Yankees on April 20, 1985. The Indians were off to a sluggish 3-6 start, but Cleveland had hope in the form of 26-year-old shortstop Julio Franco, a top-of-the-order hitter off to one of the fastest starts in major-league history. Corrales penciled Franco into the lineup for the second meeting of a three-game series at Yankee Stadium, just as he had almost every day since taking over as Cleveland’s manager in July 1983.

With a .516 average, Franco was only the 35th player since 1901 to hit better than .500 while playing in each of his club’s first nine games of a season. His first-inning two-run homer off Yankees ace Ron Guidry was the difference in Cleveland’s 2-1 win in the series opener.

But Franco did not add to his torrid start in the 10th game of the year, and Corrales had to tear up his lineup card—because Franco never showed up for the game.

Concern swept over the team, and light-hitting Mike Fischlin replaced Franco in the lineup. Fischlin left five runners on base and failed to lay down a pivotal squeeze bunt during New York’s 5-2 victory. By the end of the game, the Indians had not gotten closer to solving the mystery of Franco’s whereabouts, even after general manager Joe Klein and traveling secretary Mike Seghi contacted the New York Police Department, area hospitals, and Franco’s wife, and had a hotel security officer at the Indians’ team hotel, the Grand Hyatt, check Franco’s room.

“We all were very worried about him,” said Vern Ruhle, a Cleveland pitcher. “We just hoped he wasn’t hurt and lying in a gutter somewhere. An awful lot of things can happen in a big city like New York.”1

But before the Indians left the clubhouse for the night, a visitor arrived bearing news of Franco’s whereabouts. Juan Todman, a childhood friend of Franco’s from the Dominican Republic, spent the previous night catching up with Franco.

“Julio and I played baseball together,” Todman said. “After Friday’s game, we went back to my mother’s house in the Bronx. Then, I went home, and Julio went to my brother’s house.”2

There, Franco reportedly fell ill, but since Marciano Todman did not have a telephone, Franco did not contact the club as he tried to sleep off his symptoms. When Juan Todman settled into his seat at Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon and did not see Franco on the field, he became concerned.

After receiving that story, Franco’s roommate, second baseman Tony Bernazard, and hitting coach Bobby Bonds went to Marciano Todman’s house and brought Franco back to the Grand Hyatt. The next day Corrales fined Franco a day’s pay for missing the game,3 but did not take him out of the lineup because “[Y]ou don’t penalize the ballclub, you penalize the individual.”4

“I believed what he told me,” Corrales said. “I can’t say, ‘OK, that makes it all right.’ But the matter has been resolved. He realized he made a mistake and apologized to the Cleveland Indians and the people of Cleveland.”5

Franco had only a brief response to the matter: “I talked to Pat and apologized to my teammates. If you want to know anything else, talk to Pat.”6

Whether Franco’s absence left the team rattled or nerves got the better of 21-year-old José Román in his first start of the season,7 Cleveland spotted the Yankees an early lead and never recovered, much to the delight of the Yankee fans in the crowd of 20,188.

Yankees leadoff hitter Omar Moreno wasted no time producing a run, singling to right, stealing second, moving to third on a groundout, and scoring on a wild pitch. Singles by Dave Winfield and Don Baylor and a walk to Ken Griffey loaded the bases for left-handed batter Mike Pagliarulo, who scorched a bases-clearing double to left in his first at-bat since April 11 to give New York a 4-0 lead.

“I was a little tense before the game, but [coach] Lou Piniella told me to calm down,” said Pagliarulo, who missed time with a sore right side and also found himself on the wrong side of a platoon as the Yankees faced four straight left-handed starters. “I haven’t been up for a while, but he just walked Griffey with a forkball, so I went up thinking fastball. I was ready to jump on it if he threw me one. He threw me a fastball right down the middle, and he’s not really a hard thrower, so I didn’t have any trouble with it.”8

After Pagliarulo’s double, Román settled down and retired 11 of the next 14 batters he faced. Corrales removed him after the fifth inning.

Bernazard hit a rare home run to lead off the third and put Cleveland on the board,9 and the Indians got another run back in the fifth when Otis Nixon led off with a double, stole third, and scored when Pat Tabler reached on an error by Pagliarulo. Otherwise, 46-year-old winning pitcher Phil Niekro limited the damage from five hits and four walks to pick up his second victory of the season against the Indians. It was the 286th win of Niekro’s career, tying him with Robin Roberts for 18th all-time.10 Outside of Franco, Cleveland also missed power hitters Andre Thornton (recovering from knee surgery) and Joe Carter (hand injury)—a combination of losses that highlighted the club’s lack of depth and talent.11

New York reliever Bob Shirley allowed two runners to open the sixth before foiling Fischlin’s squeeze bunt and recording nine straight outs. In the ninth, closer Dave Righetti worked around a leadoff single to notch his fourth save of the season, three of which had come against Cleveland.12 Moreno added an RBI single in the seventh to close the scoring.

The victory was New York’s fifth in six games after a 0-3 start.13 The Yankees surged to a 97-64 record—their best finish since 1980—but fell two games behind the AL East champion Toronto Blue Jays. Cleveland struggled to a 60-102 record, its worst showing since 1971.

Throughout the remainder of the season, Franco continued to shine, hitting .288 with 183 hits in a team-high 703 plate appearances. He missed only one other game—sitting out on June 11 as he nursed a pulled hamstring—but he nearly missed another on August 4, when he overslept and arrived at the ballpark only 50 minutes before the first pitch against the Baltimore Orioles. During Franco’s rookie season of 1983, he was late for a game against the Detroit Tigers on June 17, and manager Mike Ferraro scratched him from the lineup and fined him. On June 8, 1986, Franco abruptly left Cleveland Stadium without permission about 45 minutes before a game against the California Angels. Corrales fined Franco $200 and suspended him for two games without pay after the incident.

For some, moments like those defined Franco’s six-year tenure in Cleveland as much as his on-field accomplishments, such as three straight seasons hitting better than .300 and winning a Silver Slugger Award in 1988. After Franco failed to take the team bus to a game in New York in 1988, catcher Chris Bando declared about team rules: “There is one set of rules for Julio, and one set of rules for the other 23 guys.”14 When Cleveland traded Franco to the Texas Rangers at the 1988 winter meetings, his departure was met with headlines such as “Getting Rid of a Problem”15 and “Julio Is Disappearing for Good.”16

Franco seemed rejuvenated by the trade, becoming one of the top offensive threats in baseball, making three straight All-Star Games from 1989 to ’9117 and winning a batting title in 1991 (.341). He later returned to Cleveland in 1996 and part of ’97, and his major-league career continued until age 48 in 2007. Franco utilized a strict regimen of diet and exercise to keep himself in playing shape, and he became the oldest National League player to hit a home run (48 years, 254 days old). He retired as the all-time leader in hits among Dominican-born players. (His 2,586 hits ranked fifth at the end of the 2022 season.)

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent materials and the box scores noted below. He also used information obtained from coverage by The Sporting News, several New York newspapers, and several Ohio newspapers.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA198504200.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1985/B04200NYA1985.htm

Notes

1 Milton Richman (United Press International), “Franco Forgot the Game,” Martinsville (Indiana) Reporter-Times, April 22, 1985: 8.

2 Paul Hoynes, “Franco Skips Tribe Loss,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 21, 1985: 1-C.

3 The Plain Dealer estimated Franco’s fine at around $2,300 based upon his annual salary of $430,000.

4 Paul Hoynes, “Franco Fined a Day’s Pay by Corrales,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 22, 1985: 7-C.

5 Hoynes.

6 Hoynes.

7 Román took the place of the injured Ernie Camacho in Cleveland’s rotation. Before his call-up from the Triple-A Maine Guides, Román had not made a start—though he had tossed four innings from the bullpen for the Indians. He made two more starts but struggled to an overall 0-4 record with a 6.61 ERA.

8 Murray Chass, “Yanks Win by 5-2,” New York Times, April 21, 1985: S-1.

9 Going into the 1985 season, Bernazard had homered, on average, once every 19 games.

10 Niekro finished his career with 318 victories, which ranked 13th in major-league history when he retired in 1987. Through 2022, Niekro sat in 16th place.

11 Cleveland replaced Franco, Carter, and Thornton with Mike Fischlin, Otis Nixon, and George Vukovich. According to Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement metric, the replacement value of those three players in 1985 was  -1.6 wins. Overall, Cleveland’s offense lacked punch in 1985; only four players in the lineup provided an offensive WAR above 2.0.

12 Righetti picked up saves in both games as the Yankees swept a two-game series in Cleveland on April 13 and 14, spoiling the Indians’ home-opening festivities.

13 The Yankees lost eight of their next nine games, and owner George Steinbrenner fired manager Yogi Berra on April 29, replacing him with Billy Martin—who began his fourth stint as New York’s skipper.

14 Bob Kravitz, “Getting Rid of a Problem,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 8, 1988: 1-F.

15 Kravitz.

16 Steve Love, “Julio Is Disappearing for Good in This Deal,” Akron Beacon-Journal, December 7, 1988: D1.

17 In the 1990 All-Star game in Chicago, Franco drove in both of the American League’s runs on a seventh-inning double in a 2-0 victory, netting him game MVP honors.