Franco, a Native Son, Is Touched by His `Big Family'

This is from the Saturday, September 15, 2001 NY Times. It is merely the text version, but you may be able to see it as it appeared on the Times' site if you click here before they decide the article is old enough to charge you to take a look-see. This is the NY Times "old news = fishwrapper we can sell" internet strategy.

Here's the link: http://nytimes.com/2001/09/15/sports/baseball/15METS.html [1]

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September 15, 2001

Franco, a Native Son, Is Touched by His `Big Family'
By TYLER KEPNER

Barton Silverman/The New York Times
John Franco

Discuss the Mets

t was the longest bus ride most of them had experienced since the minor leagues, eight hours from Pittsburgh to the parking lot at Shea Stadium. Players watched a movie or listened to music through headphones, but there was none of the usual upbeat chatter.

Sometime after 1 a.m. Wednesday, the Mets crossed the George Washington Bridge. "Everybody peeked out the windows and saw the smoke," said reliever John Franco, the Mets' captain. "Everybody was silent."
It was the players' first look at evidence of the horror caused in their city by Tuesday's attacks, which resulted in the postponement of their series in Pittsburgh and the scheduling of another series at Shea next weekend.

New York is a temporary home to most of the Mets, but it has always been home to the Brooklyn-born Franco. Like most New Yorkers, he is equal parts saddened, enraged, defiant and proud.

"Nobody in my family is hurt," Franco said by telephone yesterday. "But our big family, that's what you feel. In New York, everybody's a family right now."
Franco has been touched by the tragedy. John Bergen, a firefighter and a coach of his son's Little League team on Staten Island, is missing. Family members have seen Franco's cousin Mario Starace, a firefighter, assisting with rescue efforts on television.

Franco ó whose late father, James, worked for the Department of Sanitation ó has befriended numerous police officers at games, and he worries. "Some of those guys might be missing right now," he said.

Franco's 9-year-old son, J. J., saw the footage on television and asked his father if Staten Island was going to be bombed. Franco told him not to worry and tried to assure his son he was safe.

Franco says he has never felt unsafe in New York, even now. Seeing the city's reaction has bolstered his hometown pride.

"Guys come up to you from other teams and say you couldn't pay them enough to play here or live here," Franco said. "But to myself or Al Leiter, there's no other city like it in the world. It shows when there is tragedy or destruction how New York rallies around each other, with no regard to race, color, religion. It's mind-boggling how everybody in a city of this size comes together."
Franco and the Mets will play their next game on Monday in Pittsburgh, in the opening game of a series originally scheduled for Shea Stadium. The Mets still do not know if they will go to Pittsburgh by plane or by bus.

The team will work out at Shea today, but considering the setting, the tone will be somber. Players could use the physical diversion ó Franco said he had been watching television constantly since the attacks ó but the mental adjustment could take awhile.

Franco would not say if he agreed with Commissioner Bud Selig's decision to resume play Monday. "You do what you're told," he said.

But at least initially, Franco said, players' minds may be elsewhere.

"I just can't foresee myself giving a high-five to someone for a big hit or a strikeout when there are bodies of people who are missing and thousands who might be dead," he said.