Talking Chop

How to reach the kids these days? For the veteran Braves, It's a piece of cake

They celebrated Julio Franco's 47th birthday with a raspberry cake next to the first base dugout at Wrigley Field-four Braves who personify the franchise's past, present and future. "Hey, Satchel Paige," called out 38-year-old John Smoltz, who also kidded that the 7 candle should have been placed before the 4. (In fact, the oldest man ever to homer in a big league game may be 74 before he retires, if he ever does.) Catcher Brian McCann and outfielder Jeff Francoeur, 21-year-old Atlanta-area kids now playing for the team of their childhood, laughed but did not dare partake in any Geritol jokes. They respect their elders too much for that.

Throughout a one-hour on-field conversation linking two generations of Braves, the worshipful rookies were like little kids giggling in church next to their parents. Longtime friends and current roommates, McCann and Francoeur whispered asides to each other during the discussion but never once interrupted or disagreed with Franco or Smoltz. And they did a lot of what they always do around the veterans: they listened.

Francoeur: My mother used to dress me as a kid in a John Smoltz uniform. We have the pictures.

Smoltz: I can't tell you how much motivation that gives me. And it reminds me I've been lucky to play this game for a very long time.

Franco: You? You're like a little baby compared to me.

Smoltz: Julio motivates us every time he walks into our clubhouse. He's motivating us even when he's taking a nap in there, because he's taking a nap in his uniform at 47.

Francoeur: Julio made his major league debut before I was born. My parents are 48 and 49, and here he is, still turning on 98 mph fastballs at their age. He's not human.

Franco: God is not human. He deserves the praise. But thank you. Can you believe my son is 21 too? My son is your age. That's why we try to be everything to these rookies--mentors, teachers, teammates, peers, friends, fathers. They're not even like my little brothers; they're more like my sons.

Smoltz: I've noticed over the past decade that the young generation of ballplayers was getting worse and worse. Really bad. Rookies were like, "So what? We don't care who you are or what you did, old man. We have the answers." That's why these guys are so refreshing. They're respectful and humble, so you want to answer their questions.

McCann: And all we do is ask them questions. Even though a lot of times, I'm still as speechless around John Smoltz as the day he signed a ball for me as a little kid.

Smoltz: You're my catcher. You aren't supposed to be intimidated by me.

McCann: I can't tell you how scared I was catching you for the first time. All I kept telling myself all game was, just don't mess up, just don't mess up. I was terrified all game that I was going to throw the ball back to you over your head. The whole game. Even in the bullpen with you. Terrified.

Francoeur: [laughing] I was still in the minor leagues when he caught him the first time. I called Brian after the game and asked him if he even went out to the mound to talk to John.

McCann: [laughing] Talk to him? You have to be kidding. I wasn't going near his mound. Ever. I wasn't going out there unless he called for me. John had to cover first a couple of times in my third game catching him, so Bobby Cox sent me to the mound to give him a breather. I didn't say a word then, either. Not one. Just stared at the ground. I didn't talk to him for three games.

Francoeur: Brian called me after the third game just to tell me that he visited him on the mound. He was all excited. Breathless.

Smoltz: I threw a complete game with him as my catcher the very first time, and I hadn't thrown one of those in forever because I'd been a closer for so long, so we kind of went for the ride together. He's been my catcher nearly every start since. I haven't lost once with him.

McCann: Walking out to the bullpen with him the first time for the first warmup is still the neatest feeling I've had in the big leagues. I couldn't believe I was there next to him. It was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me.

Smoltz: How can that stuff not reenergize veterans like us? They get their first hit and it brings back all the stuff from your youth: your parents in the stands, the ball being retrieved. I still get goose bumps thinking about that. You forget a lot of stuff in this game, but you never forget any of the details from your first day.

Francoeur: He told me that before I ran out to the outfield the first time, told me you never get your first day back, so I took a moment to let it sink in. "I'm here. I made it." I just stood in the outfield and looked around in awe. And then Julio saw I was trying to hit the ball 800 feet, and he pulled me aside in the dugout and relaxed me, and the next time up I hit one out. Julio's been in the game longer than I've been alive. I have to listen.

Franco: They keep us young. They really do. All their emotion is contagious. They remind us of 20 years ago. But I'm always reminded of my age, too. I see Francoeur run first to third and I always say to myself, "It must be nice to be young." I don't run that smoothly anymore. Used to. Not anymore. Chipper calls me Grandpa. Andruw Jones says they're going to put a rocking chair in the dugout for me when I'm still playing first base at 50.

Francoeur: We don't feel comfortable teasing him like that, though. If we'd been with him three or four years, maybe. But not now.

Smoltz: Andruw had no problem with all that as a rookie. He had attitude. Andruw was the most brash, in-your-face guy at 19. He didn't care, and that was resented in a clubhouse full of veterans. He was lucky he didn't get beat up. He really was. He had his pants cut up left and right. If these young guys weren't the way they are, you might go out of your way to make things miserable for them.

Franco: I wasn't like them at all when I was 21. I was so wild, too wild. Back in the old ages.

Smoltz: Back when teams used to go from city to city by train?

Franco: These two rookies are a good example of why this is more like a family than an organization. Since the minor leagues, they've been taught how to behave a certain way on and off the field, and they arrived without attitude.

Smoltz: And everything after that becomes a reflection on our manager. It is my job and Julio's job to keep everything in that clubhouse a reflection of our manager.

Franco: Bobby Cox is a very good man.

Francoeur: I can't tell you how much we respect these guys. And they make it easy to approach them. I talk to my buddies in other organizations, and they feel like they can't talk to the veterans. I ask these guys for advice about everything in life. Everything.

McCann: This is a dream for me to have these guys as teammates. They've seen and felt everything we're about to experience.

Franco: That's why I'm always giving them advice, because they want it so badly. But it's like being a parent. There are certain things you can't teach your kids-they just have to experience their mistakes for themselves and learn from them. I can and do warn them to shorten their swings sometimes, but there's nothing I can tell them that will feel like a 98 mph fastball. They've got to figure that part out themselves.

Smoltz: If you have any brains at all, you aren't going to be disrespectful to people who can help you.

Franco: I'm going to give them what others passed down to me, so they can pass it on 10 or 20 years from now. It's what Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa, Manny Trillo, Bob Boone did for me when I was coming up with the Phillies.

Smoltz: Listen to those names. Every time we mention the names of guys we've faced or played against, they always laugh. A lot of the young guys in baseball don't know half the guys we played with or against.

Franco: Rose, Schmidt--those guys, they know. But I did for these guys what the veterans did for me. I went out of my way to congratulate them and welcome them the day they got here. They were strangers in our land. That takes some of the fear out of the way.

Smoltz: You can walk into any clubhouse and tell how a veteran was treated when he was coming up. The guys who are abusive were abused. And the guys who are helpful were helped when they didn't know anything. This game is hard and cruel enough without fearing your teammates, too. Our young guys are under a lot more pressure than I was coming up. The Braves were terrible when I started. We stunk. So I didn't have to be real good. We need these guys to be real good.

Franco: We're raising them to be winners. We can't be selfish with our knowledge. It has to be passed on.

Smoltz:[whispering to Franco] Jeff is gifted, incredibly gifted. We just can't let him know it. We don't have psychology degrees, but we're practicing psychology here.

Franco:[talking loud enough for Francoeur to hear] How much praise do we give them? Enough. Just enough. Only what they deserve.

Francoeur: We don't deserve any. We haven't earned anything.

Smoltz: We pump Jeff up and then put him in his place without damaging the goods. He gets ragged on more than anyone else because it cuts through the jealousy he gets for being on the magazine covers.

Franco: But the ragging is always in a good way.

Francoeur: There's no rookie hazing, but they have fun at our expense.

McCann: And we love it.

Franco: Relieves pressure.

Francoeur: But they never take it to the point where we resent it. I read an article about a rookie centerfielder who made a mistake in New York and the Yankees got all over him. That surprised me. Any mistake I've made, I feel like the veterans are here to help me through it.

Smoltz: The 21-year-old who feels like he knows everything won't last in this organization. I've had guys after a tryout say, "Give me four months, dude. I'll be up here." They don't last. Ever. Not in this organization.

Franco: But we can learn from the 21-year-olds too. They can refresh and remind you. Like I'm sure these guys have never been to Wrigley Field before, right? First time I played in Yankee Stadium, I didn't sleep the night before. Mantle. Ruth. DiMaggio. No, I didn't play against those guys. But I was at the park eight hours early my first day in Yankee Stadium. How early did you guys get here today?

Francoeur: About eight hours early. All of us ran out here on the top step as fast as we could with our cameras and took pictures of the empty field.

Franco: They bring back that stuff for us. Every day something like that happens. Something new and fresh.

Smoltz: Their energy carries over. The Braves have been criticized for too long for being too businesslike. And this can become such a mundane business with the repetition. But Julio brings energy in his way, after all these years, still passionate. I bring it every fifth day, in my way. And the kids bring it every single time they come to the park, doing things like running out and taking pictures of Wrigley Field.

Franco: That feeling doesn't get old.

Smoltz: For 13 or 14 straight years of winning, we've had to break in one or two rookies a season. This year, by accident, it's been 16! I realized the age difference in spring training. I asked a bunch of guys if they wanted to bring their kids and go with me and my kids to the Magic Kingdom. But with the exception of Julio, nobody on the team has kids the same age as mine. Maddux, Glavine, we grew up together. There's such a gap in here.

Franco: We're not going to be partying with them. There aren't a lot of things we can do together off the field with the rookies.

Francoeur: Golf. Weight lifting. Bible studies. Basketball.

Franco: But we're at different times of our lives, so it's a different kind of friendship. Smoltz: Half our team knows each other really well because they played together in the minor leagues. In the major leagues, we don't really know each other that way. My wife kids me that all I care about is the bare essentials. Franco: If women were together 240 days a year, they'd know everything about everything. But there's a separation up here.

McCann: John and I did go shopping one day together. He bought me a suit.

Francoeur: Where's my suit? What about me?

Smoltz: You haven't helped me win eight straight decisions.

McCann: I needed some help too. I only had one terrible suit. I'm the worst dresser in the clubhouse.

Francoeur: We don't dress in the minor leagues. It's shorts and a collared shirt. And we're not talking about a silk-collared shirt.

McCann: Just being with John at a store, I told all my friends. I called them all: "I'm at the store with John Smoltz!"

Smoltz: There are some awfully dressed players on our team, man. For all the great things this organization teaches, didn't they teach you how to dress? Honestly, I feel sorry for these guys. They look in the mirror with the ridiculous things they are wearing and actually say to themselves, "This looks good!"

Franco: There is so much left to teach them.

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