Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 8, 1994 TAG: 9405080128
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Franklin leads professional baseball - majors and minors - in home runs. In the first 30 games of the Carolina League season, the Winston-Salem left fielder has 17 homers. He's the captain crunch on a club of free-swinging Spirits. He leads the league in RBI with 38.
The Spirits' batting practice Friday afternoon at Municipal Field became a game of street ball at the Salem intersection of Sixth and Florida. Winston-Salem set the league record for homers last year (160) and has 57 this season. That projects to 266 in a 140-game season.
Franklin is on a 79-homer pace.
"I don't think I'll quite get there," he said, smiling.
At the start of the season he told Spirits manager Mark Berry he wanted to hit more homers than two-time Carolina crush champion Bubba Smith, Franklin's ex-teammate who belted 32 and 27 in the past two seasons.
He may do that in the first half-season. He may need to do that if Winston-Salem wants to stay atop the Southern Division with the worst pitching in the league. If Franklin keeps connecting as he has, the league record of 55 homers by Leo "Muscle" Shoals of Reidsville in 1949 may be crunched.
No Carolina Leaguer has belted 35 homers since Tony Soliata's 49 in 1968 for High Point-Thomasville. Franklin has a chance because the Reds' system has plenty of outfield talent at Class AA Chattanooga.
Cincinnati player development boss Chief Bender said the Lookouts already are juggling four major-league prospects - Chad Mottola, Adam Hyzdu, Cleveland Ladell and Steve Gibralter. So, Franklin could spend a Spirited summer at Ernie Shore Field, a homer home.
"I'd be very happy to do that and put up some big numbers," Franklin said. "There are a lot of good hitters in the Reds' organization. If you produce, you'll eventually get your chance. One thing I've learned is that time takes care of everything."
Surely, Franklin has more than time and switch-hitting on his side. He turned 22 two weeks ago, but Cincinnati is his second organization. His short history in the game is as intriguing as his power and his herky-jerky but compact swing.
The star of Lincoln High School in San Francisco was a third-round draft pick by the New York Mets in 1990. He batted .259 at Kingsport in the Appalachian League that summer, then started the next season with Pittsfield in the New York-Penn League. Soon, he found himself dropped by the Mets to Erie, a co-op club.
He was trashing the Mets more than David Letterman does. The club had plenty of questions about him, too. During spring training in 1992, he asked for his release. The Mets obliged. A week later he signed with the Reds because they called him first.
"I guess I was one of those attitude guys," said Franklin, who at 6 feet, 200 pounds admits he still had some growing up to do. "Some people grow out of it at 16. Me, it took until I was 18 or 19. It wasn't an easy situation. I could blame them, but it was my fault. I just didn't grow up. It's what happens."
He batted .335 at Billings in the Pioneer League in '92 and showed some power. Last season, he hit 17 homers with Charleston (W.Va.), where Watt Powell Park is anything but a hitters' haven, and he hit another three in 20 July games with the Spirits. He went back down to Charleston to finish the season.
"I was 2-for-25 at the start of this season," he said. "Mark wanted me to try a different swing, and it just took me some time to get used to it."
Berry has no advice now.
"When a guy's going like he is, I just shut up and write his name on the lineup card behind `4' [the cleanup spot] every day," the Spirits' manager said. "They've tried pitching him away. They've tried up and in. They've tried pushing him back off the plate. They pitch him tough. He hits it."
Franklin has struck out 34 times in 107 at-bats, but he's also making contact. His .324 batting average ranks third in the league. In Saturday night's game, while he reached base six times, he made Municipal Field the sixth park he's homered in this season. In the majors and minors last year, only Detroit's Tiger Stadium yielded more homers per game than the 2.46 in Salem.
"I don't go up there trying to hit home runs now," Franklin said. "There's no way you can think you'd have this many home runs already. I just try to go up and hit the ball hard."
Berry said Franklin "is in one of those zones." It's somewhere just south of the ozone.
Write to Jack Bogaczyk at the Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, 24010.
by CNB