Julio Franco factoids

After considering and deciding not to blog about Julio Franco's official retirement from baseball at the ripe old age of 49, I just read this very cool article with some cool factoids and decided to post a link to it here. You can find his statistics here.

I think my favorite factoid from the article is the following: In 1982, Franco was traded by the Phillies with Jay Baller, Manny Trillo, George Vukovich and Jerry Willard to the Indians for Von Hayes. The last player in that deal to retire (other than Franco) was Jerry Willard … 14 years ago.

By the way, I remember for years there were rumors that Franco is actually older than his listed age. These were never officially put to rest, though eventually his listed age got high enough that nobody bothered to mention this anymore.

Finally, Franco is ripped. If you've ever seen him up-close, it's kind of ridiculous. His arms look like solid muscle.