So I read article about Randy Johnson and Julio Franco being the oldest pitcher/batter combination in baseball history.
Johnson will turn 44 this season, and Franco, 49. I think the Niekros pitched into their early-mid 40s, and Ryan made it to 46 or so. Is Julio Franco the oldest person in major league baseball to be an active, non-gimmicky participant?
Minnie Minoso and Satchel Paige were trotted out at ages older than that, I think, but those were nothing more than a stunt to attract attention. Julio Franco’s presence on the roster is pretty much deserved, altho he’s a marginal replacement, but it’s not like the Minoso/Paige circus stunt. Has there ever been anyone older than him to actually play?
Also, Franco hit a home run off Unit last night hehe.
Julio Franco is up there, but there have been a few other 49 year olds playing regularly, including Hoyt Wilhelm (the first guy I thought of- he was still pitching for the Braves when I was a kid) and Jack Quinn.
Nice list. I was intrigued to see that Nick Altrock did a “Minoso” long before Minnie joined the majors. And most especially, I noticed one of my favorite characters from the dead-ball days, “Orator” Jim O’Rourke, the only man ever to play in both the first major league game ever played and the first World Series.
Some time in the 1950s, when Ty Cobb was 75, a sports reporter was interviewing him about the decline in batting averages, and whether it was due to improved pitching:
Almost everybody on that list is a pitcher, so Franco is among the oldest position players ever, and maybe the oldest one to get regular playing time. Wikipedia says he IS the oldest.
Franco is already the oldest to hit a home run (when he hit one off Johnson in that game, though he held the honor previously). He’s not quite the oldest to steal a base, but may surpass this (he’s said he wants to play until he’s 50).
Franco’s career leads to odd trivia. For instance, last year, toward the end of the season, Franco started a third base. It has been a long time since he started at third. A very long time. So much so, that the guy who was playing shortstop next to him (Anderson Hernandez) hadn’t even been born yet.
Cobb turned 75 on December 18, 1961. Of course, he was slightly dead at the time. So that snippet isn’t exactly gospel. I would bet that it went back to a Life Magazine article which he supposedly wrote in 1952. But even that one isn’t true. He didn’t write the story.
The anecdote does show up in the movie Cobb. Since Ron Shelton (writer and director) has said that he followed the writings of Al Stump, Cobb’s biographer (with one exception*), there’s a good chance it’s true.
The movie dialog is:
*Cobb never found Stump’s secret notes, but, as Shelton put it, if you’re going to show Stump taking secret notes, the rules of drama say that Cobb has to find them.
Franco is by far the oldest non-gimmick hitter of all time. Pitchers and hitters are different animals.
Or so I think. Charley O’Leary pinch hit, belted a single, and scored a run for the Browns in 1934. He was 51. I don’t know the story behind that or why he was trotted out 21 years after his previous game, but hey, he got the job done.
Julio Franco won a batting title sixteen years ago. At the time he’d been in the majors for ten years. His first All-Star game was eighteen years ago.
When he made his debut for the Phillies, in 1982, “The Return of the Jedi” was still in production.
Veeck may have kept Paige around lon enough to earn him a pension, but Paige was still “only” 46 or so when he last pitched for Veeck.
It was Charlie Finley, owner of the then-Kansas City A’s, who put Paige in as a pitcher at age 58. At that time, attendance in Kansas City was pitiful, and Finley resorted to stunts on a regular basis to increase attendance.
He was a coach for the St. Louis Browns. The Browns were playing Detroit(who won 101 games that year, I think) in the final game of the year, September 30. He pinch hit for the pitcher in the 5th or 6th in the second game of a double header. Probably put him in just because it was against his former team and the last game of the season.
