Herman Franks

Herman Louis Franks (January 4, 1914 – March 30, 2009)^[1][2] was a catcher, coach, manager, general manager and scout in American Major League Baseball. He was born in Price, Utah.

Catcher with Cardinals, Dodgers and A's

A left-handed hitter who threw right-handed, Franks attended the University of Utah. He broke into baseball with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League in 1932, but he was soon acquired by the St. Louis Cardinals and joined their vast farm system. He made the Cardinals for just 17 games and 17 at-bats in 1939, before being drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers, where he served as a second-string catcher in 1940-41 and began his long association with the Dodgers' manager at the time, Leo Durocher. After 3½ years of military service during World War II, Franks became the playing manager of the Dodgers' St. Paul Saints affiliate in the AAA American Association in 1947. In August of that season, however, he resigned to resume his major league playing career with the Philadelphia Athletics, where he appeared in 48 games in 1947 and 1948 and batted .221.

As a coach: Durocher's right-hand man

In 1949, he received his first coaching assignment, as an aide to Durocher with the New York Giants. He was a member of two National League championship clubs (1951, 1954) and one World Series (1954) title team through 1955. According to author Joshua Prager in his 2006 book The Echoing Green, Franks played a critical role in the Giants' Bobby Thomson's famous pennant-winning home run in the 1951 NL playoffs -- Baseball's Shot Heard Round The World. According to Prager, Franks was stationed in the Giants' center-field clubhouse at the Polo Grounds, their home field, stealing the opposing catcher's signs through a telescope and relaying them through second-string catcher Sal Yvars (who was stationed in the bullpen) to the Giants' coaches and hitters.^[3] When asked where he was when Thomson hit his home run, Franks said, in 1996, that he was "doing something for Durocher" at the time.^[3]

Whatever his role may have been on that day, Franks was known as a devotee of Durocher-style, win-at-any-cost baseball, including intimidation through flying spikes and brushback pitching. Author Roger Kahn quoted Dodger outfielder Carl Furillo that Franks would poke his head into the Brooklyn clubhouse to taunt Furillo that Giant pitchers would throw at his head during that day's game. Furillo, whose hatred for Durocher was so intense that he would engage Durocher in a fistfight in the Giant dugout filled with enemy players, said of the Giants, in Peter Golenbock's book Bums, "They were dirty ballplayers ... They all wanted to be like Durocher, to copy Durocher. That Herman Franks, he was another one."

Manager of Giants and Cubs

But when Durocher quit the Giants after the 1955 season, Franks left, too. From 1956 to 1964, Franks was a Giants' scout, general manager of the PCL Salt Lake City Bees, then again a Giants' coach before succeeding Alvin Dark as the club's manager after the 1964 season.

Even though the team featured future Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry, Franks' four seasons (1965–68) managing the Giants, by then based in San Francisco, each produced frustrating second-place finishes in the National League. The club lost close pennant races to the Los Angeles Dodgers by two games in 1965 and 1½ games in 1966. It finished farther behind the Cardinals the next two years, 10½ lengths out in 1967 and nine back in 1968. After he stepped down as skipper following the conclusion of the 1968 season, he was quoted as saying, " Is finishing second so evil?" He was replaced by Clyde King.^[4]

A successful businessman off the field, Franks spent the next eight years out of the major league spotlight, apart from a partial season (1970) as a coach under Durocher with the Chicago Cubs. After the 1976 campaign, Franks returned to the major leagues when he replaced Jim Marshall as manager of the Cubs. In 1977, he led the Cubs back to the .500 level, but the team lost ground in 1978 and was just one game above the break-even mark in September 1979 when Franks resigned (issuing a number of complaints about certain players [1]). He was the interim general manager of the Cubs from May through November 1981. However, most of his tenure was taken up by the 1981 players' strike. He lost his chance to be named full-time general manager when the Tribune Company bought the Cubs and replaced him with Dallas Green.

Although Franks compiled a poor record as a player (a batting average of .199 with three home runs in 188 games over parts of six seasons), he notched a winning record as a manager - 605-521, .537.

References

External links

• Baseball-Reference.com - career managing record and playing statistics
• McGrath, Dan. "Former Chicago Cubs manager Herman Franks dies at 95," Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, April 1, 2009.
• Herman Franks at Find a Grave
• Drew, Jay. "SLC baseball legend Herman Franks dies at 95," The Salt Lake Tribune, Wednesday, April 1, 2009.
• Herman Louis Franks Sr. – The Salt Lake Tribune Obituary Notices.

Bibliography

• Baseball-library.com
• Official Baseball Register (1968 edition). St. Louis: The Sporting News.
• Golenbock, Peter. Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984.