Longtime baseball great Herman Franks died at age 95 on March 30, 2009. The player from many eras of baseball veteran will be remembered as both the Giants manager and as a Cubs manager. Franks was also a player early in a professional baseball career that stretched just under 50 years. Perhaps best now remembered for controversy, Herman Franks was emblematic of the highs and the lows of professional competition.
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Utah native Franks’ playing years began in the early 1930s playing for an affiliate minor league ball club in the Pacific Coast League. Interrupted by war service for three years in the middle, Herman Franks was drafted and played for the Brooklyn Dodgers and their affiliate club as a back up catcher from 1939 through 1947. After that he played two years for the major league club, the Philadelphia Athletics. While serving as a backup catcher and quasi-manager, he garnered an not-too-impressive .199 batting average in over 400 at bats during in that time.
It would be nearly twenty years until Franks became a coach in the major leagues again. In the meantime, he had served as an assistant to the Giants and served as scout and coach for another affiliate team. As an assistant, Franks was involved in a controversy when, on their way to a World Series Championship with the Giants in 1951, it was reported years later and verified that Franks stole signs from the opposite team which culminated in Bobby Franks famous home run. He was an important piece of this scheme that potentially changed the final game of a pivotal pennant race game to the Giants. When Herman Franks died without ever clarifying exactly what he did, the real truth died with him.
In 1965 he became coach of the San Francisco Giants. Franks inherited a team that included four future Hall of Fame players, including super greats Willie Mays and Gaylord Perrry, a right-handed pitcher who accomplished the rare feat of winning the Cy Young Award in both the National and American Leagues. The team never won it all and kept finishing in a frustrating second place each year. Ownership and Franks split ways after the final season. Over the course of those four season, Franks managed the team to a very respectable winning percentage of .567.
After a failed bid to organize a group that almost ended up buying the New York Yankees that spoke to his off the field business prowess, Franks returned to the big leagues. Beginning in 1977, Herman Franks was hired to manage the Chicago Cubs. He immediately helped the team in the first season to break above the .500 level. The joy did not last long, however, because the next season they slid and late in the following season, he resigned. After recording a .497 winning average with the cubs, Herman Franks long tenure in professional baseball was finished. He returned to his native Utah in Salt Lake City and lived there until his death.