Happy Birthday Boy! Julio Franco is (only) 53 today

On occasion, Big League Stew honors a birthday boy per week by taking a longer look at his career. Please join us in lighting the candles. It's hard to call Julio Franco an ageless wonder. Unlike, say, Craig Biggio, Franco looked his age during each of his 23 major league seasons from 1982 to 2007. But Franco is perhaps the greatest old position player of all time,  having broken Jack Quinn's 76-year-old record to become the oldest player ever to hit a home run. Counting his stats in professional baseball in Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Dominican Winter League, and the majors, he has more than 4,000 career hits in his career, and his 2,586 major league hits place him 80th on the all-time list, three ahead of Ernie Banks. (Franco is just one hit ahead of his former teammate, Chipper Jones, who likely will soon push Franco to 81st.) Franco is one of the greatest players to emerge from San Pedro de Macoris, the sugar town on the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic that became ...