June 19, 2022

By J.P. Antonacci

Canadian Baseball Network

As Father’s Day gifts go, seeing your son become a Hall of Famer has to rank right up there.

“This is obviously the pinnacle of his career to be elected to a prestigious place like this. I mean, it’s amazing,” Mike Francis said before watching his son, Jeff, process out of the VIP tent and onto the stage at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony in St. Marys, Ont., on Saturday.

The younger Francis credits his father’s love of baseball for sparking his own passion for the game and launching a career that saw him pitch parts of 12 seasons in the major leagues and win Pan Am gold with Team Canada in 2015.

Mike Francis cheered for the Los Angeles Dodgers throughout Jeff’s childhood in North Delta, B.C. But he switched allegiances when his son was drafted ninth overall by Colorado in 2002 out of the University of British Columbia and made his major league debut with the Rockies two years later.

“I was a Dodgers fan until Boomer started pitching against the Dodgers, and then I became a Rockies fan right away,” Mike said with a laugh, calling Jeff by the childhood nickname bestowed on him by his grandfather.

Jeff’s mother, Joanne Francis, said induction day in St. Marys was the culmination of a baseball journey for the Francis family that started when Jeff was four years old.

“From Tot Tee-Ball all the way to the major leagues and the World Series, we followed him everywhere,” she said.

“We miss it, absolutely.”

As a child, Jeff excelled at all sports he tried, but he quickly honed in on baseball.

“When he got to high school, he quit all the other sports and he announced to us, ‘I’ve decided I’m going for baseball,’” Joanne said.

“And it paid off for him,” Mike added.

Famous for being a vocal supporter of Jeff’s from the bleachers, Joanne was battling some nerves ahead of the induction ceremony.

“I have butterflies in my stomach,” she said.

So did her son.

In an interview with the Canadian Baseball Network a few hours before his speech to a tent packed with Canadian baseball fans and fellow Hall of Famers, Jeff admitted to feeling the same anxiety that used to creep in on game day.

“In fact, this morning I woke up and I had that feeling in my stomach like I was pitching today,” he said.

These days Francis focuses on coaching his three kids in baseball and softball, which keeps him in the game without the stress of being on the mound. Before Saturday’s ceremony, his youngest child, Marshall, took the field with the North London Nationals, where Jeff is 15U bantam convener.

How was the game, Marshall?

“Good. We won,” he said, a wide grin nearly reaching up to the eye black smeared on his cheeks.

***

On a day dedicated to celebrating his accomplishments – which include being the first Canadian to win a playoff game – Francis shifted the spotlight to the coaches, trainers and teammates that helped him go from a standout hurler with the North Delta Blue Jays to starting the first game of the 2007 World Series at Fenway Park.

“To think that I pitched at that level, it’s just crazy,” he said.

“I watch playoff baseball and I think, ‘There’s no way I looked like that.’”

Francis has only been retired for seven years, but he said the game has already changed a great deal.

“Guys are throwing harder, and playoff baseball looks different than regular-season baseball,” he said.

“It’s hard to believe you could do that at one time. Because once you stop – could I even throw 70 miles an hour anymore?”

At the height of his powers, Francis was the ace of a Rockies team that rocketed to the postseason in 2007 by winning 21 of their last 22 regular-season games, a remarkable run that became known as Rocktober.

“We were a team that was just riding a wave of success. It was like we didn’t know any better,” Francis said.

“It all happened too fast to really realize what we were doing.”

Wearing a dress shirt and tie that could be mistaken for Rockies purple – a happy coincidence, according to Francis – he said he feels fortunate to have been drafted by Colorado.

“They gave me chances to pitch. They gave me chances to fail, which you don’t get in a lot of places,” he said.

“I think that was the best thing for me.”

***

When reflecting on his career – which spanned 1,291 innings over 254 MLB games – Francis is thoughtful and able to poke fun at himself.

He noted that by today’s statistical metrics, someone with his arsenal – and particularly his low strikeout rate – might not be expected to end up on Cy Young award ballots, as Francis did after winning 17 games with a 4.22 ERA over 215 1/3 innings in 2007.

“I shouldn’t have been as good as I was,” he said with a laugh.

“I had some deception that hitters didn’t pick up the ball very well. Deception that I think went away at the end of my career, and it turned out I was a little over-matched when I didn’t have that anymore. So I had to sort of wile my way through an at-bat sometimes.

“But certainly when I was young, there was a certain way I threw the ball. It wasn’t anything I did on purpose, just that it was God-given that people couldn’t pick up the ball sometimes.”

Being a lean six-foot-five worked in his favour on the mound, as did throwing from the left side, which his mother said was a genetic gift from her side of the family.

“I have a left-handed sister, so I claim (the credit),” Joanne laughed.

Francis posted high strikeout numbers in the minors, his deceptive stuff generating plenty of swings and misses while he kept baserunners to a minimum. Coaches like Jim Bennett and Bob McClure, who had been left-handed pitchers themselves, worked with Francis to refine his approach to pitching.

Francis was named Minor League Player of the Year by Baseball America and USA Today in 2004, the same year he made his big-league debut on the road in Atlanta, striking out eight over five innings.

After dealing with shoulder soreness and recovering from surgery that caused him to miss the 2009 MLB season and the World Baseball Classic, Francis experienced the tough end of the business of baseball when he went from staff ace in Colorado to riding the waiver wire, splitting the 2014 campaign between three organizations.

“Sometimes you just sit back and you laugh,” he said of the “unpredictable” nature of professional sports.

“I knew that I was expendable sometimes with my places on rosters, and I just never thought I was owed anything. I felt like I earned everything I got, and sometimes I maybe had earned more than I got, but I tried never to take it personally.”

Ending his major-league career with the playoff-bound Blue Jays in 2015 was an unexpected coda for the Canadian.

“My goal that year was to play in the Pan Am Games. Any opportunity I got with the Blue Jays was a bonus,” said Francis, who joined Toronto as a spring training invitee on a minor league deal.

“And I’m grateful to them – they gave me two opportunities, two different months to be a part of a historic Blue Jays team that won the AL East,” he said.

“That’s just right place, right time, people believing in me.”

He thanked general manager Alex Anthopolous and manager John Gibbons – who was bench coach in Kansas City the year Francis pitched for the Royals – for letting him lace up his cleats on home soil and make Canadian baseball history when he and Russell Martin formed the first all-Canuck Blue Jays battery.

“I’m grateful to all those people,” Francis said. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for people like that.”

Francis joined the Blue Jays for the playoff push, but his second stint in Toronto almost didn’t happen.

He was at home in London in late July, packing to return to triple-A Buffalo for the final few weeks of the minor-league season while still buzzing over Team Canada’s dramatic extra-inning, gold-medal win against the Americans at the Pan Ams.

Francis started and pitched seven innings of the deciding game after recording two saves earlier in the tournament. He was now debating whether to call it a career on that high and stay home with his young family instead of heading back to the minors.

“I didn’t want to go,” he said. “But my wife talked me into it. She said, ‘Just finish the season.’ Then I had success in the minor leagues and the Blue Jays gave me an opportunity in September that I wasn’t expecting. It was great.”

***

In total, Francis made 14 relief appearances with Toronto, recording the last of his 72 career wins as a Blue Jay.

“The year I quit, home runs went through the roof the next year. And I remember tweeting, ‘I thought the home run rate would go down when I quit playing baseball,” Francis said with a laugh.

He brought that same self-deprecating humour to his Hall of Fame induction speech, citing Roy Halladay’s remarks at the 2017 ceremony as an inspiration.

“He did nothing but tell stories about his struggles, and it was just so perfect, because we all know how great Roy Halladay was,” Francis said.

“Today is a celebration of what I’ve accomplished, but people don’t want to hear me talk about how good I am. It’s fun for people to hear about the struggles.”

Mike and Joanne Francis say their son’s fame and success as a professional athlete have not changed him.

“He’s always been humble. He’s always had the reputation of being a really nice kid,” Joanne said.

“And even when he was in the major leagues, when we’d go to games, parents of other players would come and say, ‘You know, we have to tell you that our son thinks Jeff is one of the nicest guys he’s ever met.’

“So it’s not just us saying that.”