Penurious

Back then he was Johnny Bear, and he and his buddies Lumpy and Buckteeth each cut 20 coupons off the backs of milk cartons to get free New York Mets tickets. They boarded the B train at Brooklyn's Bay 50th Street subway station and rode 18 stops to 42nd Street in Manhattan, where they transferred to the Number 7 line for 18 more stops to Shea Stadium in Queens. It was the summer of 1969, the summer of the Miracle Mets, and Johnny Bear was a pudgy little eight-year-old sitting a few rows from the top of the upper deck watching his idol, closer Tug McGraw, prove that you gotta believe.

McGraw came back to Shea on Sunday to take part in the 30th-anniversary celebration of that blessed season, and Johnny Bear was there too, having long ago shed his baby fat and matured into John Franco, major league closer. Franco, a 38-year-old lefthander, studied McGraw and the other old-timers, including Tommie Agee, Jerry Koosman and Tom Seaver, their gray hair and crow's feet a reminder to Franco of his own baseball mortality. Twenty-four hours earlier the Mets had commemorated Franco's 400th career save (which came on April 14 against the Florida Marlins) with a This Is Your Life pregame parade of guests handing him scrapbooks and plaques. McGraw rode in from the bullpen on a classic Harley-Davidson chopper and then turned the keys over to the guest of honor. Franco stepped to the microphone and politely thanked everybody for coming, but he really felt like screaming, "Yo, fellas, I ain't dead yet!"

To the contrary, Franco was off to the best start of his 16-year career. Through Sunday he had nine saves in nine chances and a 0.87 ERA, and he was anchoring the best bullpen in baseball this season. Yet there he was, standing before a crowd of 33,825 last Saturday, the kid from the Marlboro projects in Bensonhurst, the son of a city garbageman, a loyal Met for 10 seasons who has lived his life by McGraw's rallying cry, and as John Franco Day festivities concluded, there was not a wet eye in the house. "I have a weird hate-love relationship with the fans," Franco said afterward. "They always boo me until I get three outs, and then they cheer me like crazy as I'm walking off the field. Whaddya gonna do?"

Mets fans have been known to hold a grudge for generations, and many of them still haven't forgiven Franco for what happened in 1990. Before that season Franco was thrilled to be traded from the Cincinnati Reds, with whom he had spent his first six years in the majors, to the Mets, who he figured had a better chance to win a World Series. Alas, the Reds won the world championship that autumn after the Mets had unraveled in September, falling out of a tight race with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League East. During that dreadful month Franco blew three saves and had a 5.91 ERA. Over the ensuing Christmas holiday Franco went to see The Godfather III at a Brooklyn theater, and as the lights dimmed, some kid shouted, "You suck, Franco!"

What followed were seven mostly miserable seasons in New York, with Franco collecting 178 mostly meaningless saves—and blowing his share of them as well. He was always testing Mets fans' patience with his penchant for nibbling at the outside corner with his superb changeup and average fastball, and for putting lots of runners on base, just as McGraw once did. Fairly or not, Franco became the poster boy for a decade of Mets futility, and rumors of his demise circulated more often than those concerning Generalissimo Francisco Franco (no relation). He was convinced he should be the fans' favorite son and not their scapegoat, but he usually understood where they were coming from. "Hey, when you stink you should get booed," Franco says, "but there were a few nights when I thought I would need a ride home with the National Guard."

Last season, finally, the Mets were wildcard contenders until the final day of the season. Franco saved 38 games, but he blew four in a critical stretch from July 10 to Aug. 4. Then, on Sept. 15, in the first game of a doubleheader against the Astros in Houston, he coughed up another game. Before the nightcap, when he stepped into an Astrodome passageway to speak to reporters, he turned his back, put his hands on the wall, spread his legs and said, "Take your best shot." On the season's penultimate Friday, Franco surrendered a late lead in a devastating loss to the last-place Marlins. The next day's banner headline on the back page of the Daily News read JOHNNY B. BAD. The Mets missed the wild card by one game, and Franco finished the season 0-8 with eight blown saves.

How galling last year was for a player who had never pitched in a postseason game, the active major leaguer with the longest service time never to have done so. Disappointed with his performance, Franco last winter reviewed videotapes of every outing in 1998 and brainstormed with pitching coaches past and present. He decided that this year, for the first time since '96, he would work from a full windup with nobody on base, an adjustment that he believes has added movement and a few miles per hour to his fastball. He has also begun using a third pitch, a slider with a cross-seams grip that he learned from Seaver, who this season is working with the Mets staff as a special instructor. "He's 38, and he didn't have to make changes, but that's who he is," New York manager Bobby Valentine says of Franco. "That's why I'm a fan."

Of course, Franco's success involves more than mechanics. He is, after all, a southpaw reliever and thus devoutly superstitious. He credits his smooth start partly to a 1973 commemorative Canadian coin given to him in early April by a little Italian man in the stands at Montreal's Olympic Stadium. Franco carries the coin to every game in a small bag that also holds stones from the graves of his mother and father. "The guy said to rub it for good luck this season, and I've been known to try anything," Franco says. "It's been working for all of us in the pen."

Indeed the Mets relief corps, consisting mostly of castoffs from other organizations, is deeper, more experienced and more talented than it has been in a decade. Through Sunday, rubber-armed 36-year-old lefty Dennis Cook had a 1.64 ERA and had already collected five wins to tie for the league lead with Houston righthander Shane Reynolds. Cook appeared in 11 of New York's first 25 games, and in eight the Mets scored on his behalf, which makes him their unofficial good luck charm. (Yes, he rubs Franco's coin regularly.) His teammates prefer to call him the Vulture.

There's also the mercurial 31-year-old righthander, Turk Wendell, who—as he has throughout his seven-year major league career—hops over the foul line when taking and leaving the field and spikes the resin bag before facing each batter. However, Wendell no longer chews black licorice on the mound or brushes his teeth between innings. Through Sunday he'd allowed two runs in a league-leading 14 appearances while wearing number 99 and pitching on a one-year pact at a salary of $1,200,000.99 and with bonuses of $4,999 apiece if he should make 67,68 and 69 appearances.