The Cathedral of the Madeleine Bishop's Dinner

Intermountain Catholic

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Herman Franks, inducted into the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame in 2001, is recognized by professional baseball as a catcher, ?a terrific handler of pitchers,? and a manager of the San Francisco Giants. Franks credits Bishop Duane G. Hunt for urging him to seek a career in professional ball. Above, is Franks' rookie trading card.IC photo by Barbara S. Lee

Editor’s note: The Cathedral of the Madeleine will hold their annual Bishop’s Dinner, a fund raiser for the care and maintenance of the Cathedral of the Madeleine and its environs, Sept. 26, 2006, at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City.

SALT LAKE CITY — My late father, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., used to watch Herman Franks play ball with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

At 92 years old Herman Louis Franks, born in 1914 in Price, remembers his career in baseball, as a player and then as a manager, with vivid clarity. He remembers playing baseball in Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Park as a child, being offered a job by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1934 for $75 a month if he would move to Iberia, La., and $100 a month if he would move to Jacksonville, Texas. He chose Jacksonville. And he remembers managing the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, when Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play baseball in the major leagues.

He also remembers in 1933, being told by one team manager that he would never play major league ball so he should go home to Salt Lake City and give up his dream. Months later a good friend urged him to prove the professional wrong.

"It was Bishop Hunt," Franks said in a Sept. 3 interview with the Intermountain Catholic. "He said to me, ‘I know you can play baseball.’ Bishop Hunt knew a scout with the St. Louis Cardinals. If I paid for my bus ticket to Houston to try out for the farm team, and if I made the team, they would pay me for my ticket. I told the bishop I didn’t have the money for a ticket to Houston, and he told me not to worry about it. He paid for my ticket, and I made the team."

Franks said Bishop Hunt, being from St. Louis, "was a great Cardinals fan, and he knew baseball." Franks got to know the Diocese of Salt Lake City’s fifth bishop when the ballplayer, whose rookie card describes him as "batting right and throwing left," was a freshman at East High School and playing baseball for Our Lady of Lourdes’ Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) team.

"I was playing at East High School in 1928, when Henry McGean and Father Casey, who knew I could play ball, asked me to play for Our Lady of Lourdes. I was a catcher, but I pitched for Lourdes. Even at 14, I could throw the ball hard. All of a sudden, the Lourdes team started winning every game against the Cathedral CYO team that Bishop Hunt coached."

Later, the Our Lady of Lourdes’ ringer and Cathedral’s coach would become close friends, and when Bill Lane, one of the owners of the Salt Lake Bees, took his team to California in 1932, Bishop Hunt asked Lane to take Franks with him. In California, Franks played for a Hollywood ball club, "but I didn’t get to play much, so I asked to be traded."

Instead, Franks was told to go back to school, and in 1933 he retuned to Salt Lake City, bought a gas station, and enrolled in the University of Utah. But baseball still beckoned him, and 1934 found Franks barnstorming the country with a semi-pro team that eventually made its way to Salt Lake City.

Bishop Hunt again urged Franks to try for a career in professional ball, introducing him to the Cardinal scout. By the end of the 1935 season Franks was playing A ball for a Cardinals farm team in Houston. Two years later he moved up – from the Houston team to a team in Sacramento, where he played for two more years. It was a long apprenticeship, but in 1939, he moved from the minors to the majors, catching for the Cardinals for 17 games.

"I was a marginal player in the majors, and I rooted every week for the guy in front of me to do well so I could get off the bench and play," Franks said. "All the time I would watch and study. In 1939, I asked to be sold to the Brooklyn Dodgers in hopes I would get to play more. I was sold, and played for the Dodgers from 1940-1941."

During World War II Franks was one of a number of professional ballplayers whose sports skills came in handy entertaining the service members all over the country and Hawaii.

"There were great baseball programs in the Navy, and they recruited major leaguers for the amusement of personnel, and I’d rather be on a ball team than a battlefield… I ended up catching for a marine team for a year and a half in Pensacola, Fla., then I was asked to manage a Navy team at the Norfolk Naval Air Base."

Franks spent most of World War II thinking, "Now, I’m really going (into battle)." He ended up playing ball on six different bases with a host of other former major leaguers.

The 1946 season found a 32-year-old Franks feeling "over the hill" as a player, and open to Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn organization’s suggestion that Rickey "make a manager out of you."

The next 10 years would see many changes in baseball, including the premiere of Jackie Robinson. Franks would manage for the Brooklyn organization, first in St. Paul, then the Angels, in Montreal ("We won everything.") In 1947 both Robinson and Franks worked with Leo Durocher.

Until 1947, Franks had never been able to earn a pension in professional baseball, either as a player or a manager. That year, he signed on with Connie Mack, playing for the Philadelphia Athletics, but because he hadn’t worked for the team on either the last day of the 1946 season or the opening day of the 1947 season, he didn’t qualify for that club’s pension plan.

With a life measured in seasons instead of years, Franks proudly said it was during the 1947-’48 season he married Amy. The two just celebrated their 58th anniversary.

"Bishop Hunt tried several times to convert me to Catholicism," Amy said. "He said it would be better for our marriage and easier on the children."

Amy never converted, but she said she always respected the bishop and their three children, Daniel Duane (named after Bishop Hunt), 56, Herman Jr., 55, and Cynthia, 49, all graduated from Judge Memorial Catholic High School.

In 1949, Franks was a coaching aid in New York with Leo Durocher. Franks stayed with the club until his first retirement in 1955.

Winter baseball in South America brought Franks out of retirement to manage in Venezuela and Puerto Rico while he was developing land deals in Salt Lake City. While his love of the game took him to San Francisco with the Giants in 1958, he and Amy always maintained their home in Salt Lake City, where Franks retired again, investing in businesses in Salt Lake. In 1959, he teamed up with the late Walter E. Cosgriff for a year to do some scouting for the Salt Lake Bees. The following two years Franks spent managing the Bees, a community-owned team, with the understanding that if the Bees made money the first year, Franks would keep the profits, and if they failed to make money, Franks would make up the loss.

"That year the Bees made $65,000, and I gave the club all but $20,000."

Franks managed the Giants in San Francisco from 1965-’68. In late 1968 he was home again, managing his Salt Lake City investments. Eight years later he was called by the Chicago Cubs to be general manager of the team, then owned by Bill Wrigley. He retired again in 1986. With a sigh, he said, "I’m sorry I retired so early."

Franks was instrumental in bringing professional baseball back to Salt Lake City in recent years, and the walls of the Franks’ basement are filled with photos that chronicle a distinguished career in baseball that was inspired by a Catholic bishop who "knew baseball."

According to my count, Franks retired eight times, making him about the most retiring person I’ve ever met, except that he’s such a character. Suffering now from neuropathy, which has numbed his feet, Franks said, "If I didn’t have such lousy feet, I’d still be out there managing or playing, even at 92."

I believe that’s true.

For further information about the 2006 Bishop’s Dinner please call (801)328-8941.