PORT ST. LUCIE — Shortly after arriving in camp as a guest instructor, Mets Hall of Famer John Franco, one of only four people to serve as team captain, ran into Francisco Lindor.
“I want to see you get that ‘C’ on your chest,” the longtime closer said to the current shortstop.
It’s an exclusive club — only Franco, Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter and David Wright have been Mets captains — but Franco is all in favor of Lindor joining it. When SNY’s Instagram account posted earlier this month about Lindor’s possible captaincy, Franco commented, “That would be a great choice from one captain to another.”
On Tuesday morning, sitting in the third base dugout at Clover Park and watching Lindor and the rest of the infield take ground balls, Franco elaborated.
“He’s the unofficial captain anyways,” Franco told SNY. “There is leadership with the way he presents himself on the field — and off the field. When he was going bad, he had the same demeanor, the same approach.
“And the way he gets to know the younger players and talks to them, almost like teaching. I see him talking with the young guys and hitting, fielding, even the pitching. There are leadership qualities in the way he presents himself.”
Franco pitched for the Mets for 14 of his 21 big league seasons, earning the captaincy in 2001. He took the job seriously.
“As a captain, if a guy was struggling, I would go up and talk to him, see how he’s doing,” Franco says. “If the guy was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, I would say, ‘Listen, you can tell me to mind my own business, but here is what I see. Take it for what you will. But why don’t you listen to what I have to say?’
“If somebody had a problem in the locker room, I would talk to him or the other guy. Or I would talk to coaches about certain players. Off the field you always would bring the guys to dinner or get together for a movie. And I see those qualities in [Lindor]. And he’s always smiling. The thing I love about him, he goes 0-for-4 but he makes three great plays in the field. It’s that same even keel.”
Franco intersected briefly with his first successor in 2004, when Wright emerged as a top prospect making his major league debut.
“David came up toward the end of my career and was like a sponge,” Franco says. “He stood in the locker room and was attached at the hip to Joe McEwing. Joe McEwing had a great work ethic. He would teach him how to act. But David knew the right thing to do — when to say it, when to do (it). I remember when Noah Syndergaard was here and David threw [his lunch away] because you have to be on the bench when the game is going on. That’s what you do with young guys: teach them the traditions, and how to act.”
Now, Franco sees in Lindor another young player who respects tradition. “He’s a pleasure to be around,” Franco says.
He is not the only person to think so. Mets officials have taken notice of Lindor’s efforts toward making sure Juan Soto is comfortable with his new team. Soto left behind several close relationships with the Yankees, an organization that quickly came to feel like home for him. Lindor, far from feeling territorial about the arrival of a new superstar, has gone out of his way to be inclusive.
“He’s gravitating to him,” Franco says of Soto taking Lindor’s lead. “Why wouldn’t you want to gravitate toward someone like him?”
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