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In Reply to: Wow! Cabbage juice is great! posted by Oldtimer on February 24, 2006 at 16:50:31:
NY Times
March 1, 2006
Breakfast at Julio's
By BEN SHPIGEL
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., Feb. 28 — A few minutes before 7 a.m. Tuesday, Julio Franco greeted a visitor to his apartment with the news that he had eaten 14 egg whites for breakfast.
But he was still hungry. A plate loaded with oatmeal awaited him, as did a banana and a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, and still Franco wanted more egg whites. Franco's wife, Rosa, normally cooks him breakfast, but she wasn't there; so, in Spanish, he asked a friend to cook him six egg whites.
"It's O.K., six more's not going to hurt," Franco said. "It's good protein."
Franco's day always begins like this. He eats the first of five, sometimes six, meals before the sun has finished blazing over the horizon. Sometimes he adds vegetables, like bell peppers or spinach, to his egg whites or he substitutes a scooped-out bagel (he prefers cinnamon raisin) for the oatmeal.
Franco has known no other way for the last 15 or so years. He is this way not only because he plays baseball for a living. He also wants to stay alive as long as possible. In December, the 47-year-old Franco, who began his professional career in 1978 as a Phillies minor leaguer, signed a two-year contract with the Mets that will expire after his 49th birthday.
Part Methuselah, part Incredible Hulk, Franco is, by 4 years 2 months 26 days, the oldest player in the major leagues. But he has the sculpted muscle definition and trim waist of an athlete half his age.
If, as Franco wishes, he plays until he is 50, he will not diverge from a regimen that includes ingesting about 5,000 calories daily; lifting weights six days a week; and attending weekly sessions with his chiropractor and massage therapists to align his spine and restore his balance.
A religious man, Franco obeys the Ten Commandments, and he also has three personal rules, in increasing order of importance: eat well, work hard and get proper rest.
"There are no magic pills," Franco said.
Franco is a walking anachronism and he knows it. He belongs in another era, when fast food, soda, preservatives and additives did not exist. Why else, he said, would he drink a liquid concoction made from beets, cauliflower, celery, broccoli, garlic, onions and an apple (to mask the unsavory tang)?
"It tastes nasty, but it's so good for you and 100 percent natural," Franco said. "That's all that I care about."
He would have reveled in the diet of a few centuries ago, he said, when people ate what they caught and relied on nature for their next meal. He says he would have thrived in biblical times, when, as he said the story goes, people lived 400, 500 years. Spending time with Franco, listening to him describe his philosophies on health and happiness, it almost becomes possible to believe he'll be around in a few hundred years.
On willpower, Franco said: "All the time people tell me that they shouldn't eat something but they do anyway. They don't need cake. They don't have to have it. I walk by bakeries, see things that look good, smell good, but I know I don't need that cheesecake. It's not worth it for me."
On his easygoing nature: "If it's hot outside, great. If it's cold, great. If it rains or it's windy, I don't care. They're out of my control. The things in my life that I can control — my diet, baseball, my interaction with friends, family, teammates — that's what I can control, and that's what enriches my life."
On his predecessors: "The smart ones were the old ones," he said, between forkfuls of egg whites.
Franco has learned this particular lesson the hard way. In his younger days, he drank and caroused and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning.
"Julio needed some guidance," said the Mets' special assistant to the general manager, Tony Bernazard, who formed a double-play combination with Franco from 1984 to 1987 with the Cleveland Indians. "I'll leave it at that."
To bulk up, Franco read bodybuilding magazines, picking up tips from professionals, following diets found in the back pages. He swore off alcohol and other vices, and underwent a religious transformation after winning the American League batting title in 1991 (.341 average).
His workout routine is an amalgam of exercises recommended by the Mets' training staff and those assigned by his personal trainer, Michael Ashley, who also created a diet exclusively for him.
"When I got acquainted with him, I learned quickly that you can't associate him with people of his age," Ashley said. "His discipline is unlike anything I've ever seen."
In his native Dominican Republic, Franco says he can pick his produce off trees and visit a butcher at 7 a.m. to receive a filet mignon from a cow that was killed two hours earlier. Here, he shops at natural foods stores and is at the mercy of the supermarkets' produce sections. Franco eats foods for their nutritional benefits, not for their taste.
The big breakfast fortified Franco for a long day, which included the Mets' first intrasquad game of the spring. He navigated his Hummer through heavy traffic on St. Lucie West Boulevard and arrived about 7:50 a.m., 20 minutes later than normal. He hit soft-toss pitches for 15 minutes, then returned to the clubhouse to hold court. He sat on the floor, legs spread at a right angle, surrounded by five Hispanic players, and told jokes with Jose Lima.
After stretching in the training room and riding the exercise bike for 30 minutes — to burn off the extra calories from those last six egg whites, Franco said — he jogged out to Tradition Field to take batting practice. There, he watched José Reyes sock home run after home run beyond the right-field wall, then congratulated him for his power.
But he also advised Reyes to use his hips more in his swing and reminded him of a wager they had made Monday: For every ball that Reyes pulled, he owed Franco a dollar.
"He's helped me so much," Reyes said. "I try not to pay him, but it's a little bit of payment for him helping me."
Franco, who is envisioned as a backup first baseman and pinch-hitter, batted ninth and served as designated hitter for his side.
Despite going 0 for 2 in a game that included players named Wright, Beltran and Delgado, Franco received the loudest cheers. The crowd gasped during Franco's second at-bat, when he ripped an opposite-field shot that was caught at the wall in right-center. Afterward, as he was stepping into his car, Franco said he thought he had hit a home run.
"The wind brought it back in," Franco said.
And then he smiled, took a bite out of a protein bar, pulled the gearshift into reverse and sped out of the players' parking lot, heading toward his next stop on the 29-year journey of a budding folk hero.
