Spotlight on Fran Healy
The Amazing Fran Healy: “The Voice of the Mets,”
More Than Just An Announcer, a Witness to History
This guy could play baseball! And so could his dad!
By Evan Pritchard
Mets fans, you remember Fran Healy announcing the playoffs against Houston and the World Series against Boston in 1986, and then the playoffs against the Giants and Subway Series in 2000, but did you know that Fran Healy used to play this game? In fact he was a Yankee for a while. But he played for other teams too, and had a lifetime batting average of .250, with a lifetime .980 fielding percentage as a catcher. Not bad for a play-by-play guy. What’s amazing is that between himself and his father and great uncle, the Healys have played for some of the finest managers in history. Connie Mack, John McGraw, Bill Terry, Frankie Frisch, Jack McKeon, Whitey Herzog, Charlie Fox, Billy Martin, Bob Lemon… Imagine the stories that must have been passed down to a young Fran Healy, and the stories he could tell! Those three men have a continuous memory of baseball that goes back to the 19th century. The family that plays together, stays together.
Fran, the Mets’ announcer, is six foot five, and his playing weight was 220 pounds. He was born September 6th, (Virgo) 1946 in Holyoke, Mass, and has his debut on September 3rd, 1969, just three days before his 23rd birthday, and played his first game just as the Mets were charging towards their first NL East pennant. Unfortunately, he was not on the Mets, not even in their league. He got his first “cup of coffee” in Kansas City, playing for the Royals. He was one of the first “third-generation” major league ballplayers to come along, a part of a family playing tradition dating back to 1915. It is fitting that he is with the Mets organization, for his family had ties with the Giants, originally called “The Metropolitans,” and also the Athletics, who had their start in Brooklyn, just one exit away from Queens.
His ancestor, (I assume his great-uncle) born October 30th, 1895, was Thomas Fitzgerald Healy of Altoona, PA. Thomas was on the Philadelphia Athletics under Connie Mack from 1915 to 1916. His hitting in 1916 was a respectable .261 and his fielding that year was .936, which was a good fielding percentage for those days—too many potholes, and such a dinky glove. In 1914, the A’s had won the pennant with 99 wins out of 158. The A’s had great pitching: Chief Charles Bender, Joe Bush, Herb Pennock, Eddie Plank and Bob Shawkey, but they lost the World Series to the “Miracle” Boston Braves that year who had 26 game winner Bill James, who had an ERA of 1.90, and who threw 11 scoreless innings, and Dick Rudoph, a 27 game winner. However, when Thomas was hired, it was after the great disaster of the 1914-15 off-season, and legal battles with the Federal League, and the A’s lost most of their players. They hired Thomas, who saw the defending champions lose 109 in ’15 and 117 the year after. It was like watching the Titanic go under. But at least he played under a great manager. Connie Mack managed 7,755 big league games, and won 3731. with 9 pennants. Thomas Healy retired after that year.
His nephew was Francis Xavier Paul Healy, also of Holyoke, born June 29, 1910, who spent three years as a catcher with the Giants, 1930-1932, under the great John McGraw (who managed 4,769 major league games, which is pretty much the record, winning 2,763 of them, with 12 pennants). The Giants finished third, (87 wins) second, (87 wins) and eighth, respectively in those years. The pitching coach on that team in 1931 was none other than Charles “Chief” Bender, the Ojibway Hall of Famer, Perfect Gamer, and inventor of the slider, and one of the pitchers Connie Mack lost in 1915 when Thomas Healy was hired. Small world! One of the pitchers Bender was coaching on that team was Carl Hubbell. It is not clear if Francis Healy ever caught a game for the great knuckle-baller, Carl Hubbell, but they played three years together, so one might suppose he did. Hubbell won 17, 14 and 18 games in those three seasons. (Healy caught 14 games in 1932, when Carl won 18.)
Francis Healy, Sr. was there on June 3rd of 1932 when McGraw retired as manager and was replaced by the star first baseman, Bill Terry. Francis was there on June 22nd, when the National League approved the introduction of numbers for the back of the Giants’ uniforms. (The AL had had them since 1929) Healy played under Terry for half a season. Sadly , the team finished 72 and 82, not the numbers they had hoped for. Francis did not play major league ball in 1933, when the Giants defeated the Senators in the World Series, 4 games to 1, with Gus Mancuso catching Carl Hubbel’s knuckleball for the Giants. New manager Bill Terry went on to earn a record of 823 wins and 661 losses, with 3 pennants as manager, all with the Giants, retiring as a player in 1934 with a lifetime average of .341. But Francis was not to be a part of that streak. He spent a year in the minors at a time when money was scarce.
Somehow, miraculously, he wound up as a backup catcher behind Bill DeLancey (.316 with 13 homers that year!) on the 1934 “Gas House Gang” St. Louis Cardinals, under the management of another immortal player-manager, first baseman, Frankie Frisch, (who managed 2246 major league games and won 1138, not bad!) Francis Healy batted.308 on the season. (13 at bats). He played in 15 games, and as far as I can figure, must have caught at least one of the Dean brothers, or perhaps Dazzy Vance, Bill Hallahan, Tex Carleton, or one of the other great St. Louis pitchers. That team, powered by Dizzy and Paul Dean, won the pennant with 95 wins (95-58) Francis did not actually play in the World Series for the Cards, but watched from the sidelines, as his team beat the “G Men,” Gosling, Gehringer, and Greenberg, and the rest of the Tigers in seven games, one of the greatest series ever played.
But that was it for Francis. He packed it in. He eventually settled down and had kids. One of them later became the voice of the Mets, Fran Healy, who was born 12 years after his father’s exit from major league baseball.
Fast forward through the 1940s and 1950s, and let’s see the videotape for 1969, and look in on son Fran. Though his forebears had short careers, plagued by misfortune in some respects, Fran had a long and interesting career, following in his father’s footsteps as a catcher.
Fran Jr. got his first shot with the 2-year old Royals in 1970, under rookie manager Bob Lemon. He went 4 for 10 that year, giving him a batting average of .400, and didn’t make an error in 6 games. He was then traded to the Giants, the team that his father had caught for when they were in New York.
Fran Healy played two years for the San Francisco Giants, batting .280 in 1971.The Giants, under the watchful eye of manager Charlie Fox,. won the division in 1971 with 90 wins and played against Roberto Clemente and the Pirates in the NLCS, but lost 3 games to 1. Fran did not have an at-bat in the post season, like his father before him. He and the Giants had an off year in 1972, although he had four doubles in 45 at-bats. Then he was traded back to the Kansas City Royals. In 1973, in Kansas City again, under rookie manager Jack McKeon, he was a .276 hitter with 6 homers. That year the Royals landed in second, with 88 wins, but six games behind the team they replaced in KC, the now Oakland Athletics. On April 27th, Royals’ pitcher Steve Busby threw a no-hitter, the first no-hit pitcher not to bat, as the DH rule had just been introduced. (I do not know if Healy caught it, but he caught 92 games that year, so the odds are in his favor.) Then in 1974, (also under McKeon) he was a .252 hitter with 9 homers in 139 games, with a career high 53 RBIs. As luck would have it, the Royals had a very unregal year. In 1975, the Royals under McKeon and then Whitey Herzog, had an excellent year, and won 91 games, going 41 and 25 under Herzog in the final months of the season. The bad news is that the Oakland A’s won 98, almost an exact repeat of 1973, leaving the Royals 7 games behind. Healy played his part, and hit a respectable .255 with 2 homers.
Herzog shook up the team, and in early 1976, Healy was traded to the New York Yankees, and did well as a backup catcher for the indestructible Thurmon Munson, who led the team to the World Series, batting .302 with 17 homers with a .981 fielding percentage. Healy, playing under Billy Martin, batted .267, with a .983 fielding percentage, catching Ed Figueroa, Dock Ellis, Catfish Hunter, Grant Jackson, Dick Tidrow, Ron Guidry, and Sparky Lyle, when Munson was off duty. In 1976, the Yankees won the division, and beat his former team the Royals, for the pennant. That was the ALCS that ended with Chris Chambliss’ famous walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth, after Brett’s 3 run homer had tied it in the eight. Imagine being in the dugout, knowing nearly all the players on both teams personally, as Fran Healy must have.
The team lost to the Reds in four straight in the World Series, and Munson played every game, so Healy didn’t get to play, again part of a family tradition. (Even Elrod Hendricks didn’t get to catch, but pinch-hit twice)
The following year, 1977, the Yanks did well, winning their division again, with Munson doing most of the catching, hitting 308 for the season with 18 homers. It was a big year for Cajun star, Ron Guidry, aka “Louisiana Lightning.”. Perhaps Fran Healy caught his hot sauce fastball once or twice. They called it “The “Blew-By-You!” in honor of Linda Ronstad and Guidry’s Cajun ancestors. And Mike Torrez pitched a good fastball as well. Billy Martin and the Yanks faced the Royals again in the ALCS, but once again Healy didn’t play. The Yankees beat the Royals, 3 games to 2, and then beat the Dodgers 4 games to 2. Healy’s average declined to .224 that year and his fielding declined as well as Munson played in 149 regular season games and all of the post-season games.
Healy had only one at-bat in 1978 for the Yanks, the year of the Bucky Dent Home Run, the year Bob Lemon took over as manager, the year the Yanks beat the Royals and Dodgers again, almost an exact repeat of the year before. That at bat, he struck out, and decided to call it quits. Munson died in a plane crash after 97 games in 1979. If Fran had stayed and worked on his swing in the minors, who knows? Maybe he would have been called up to fill in. We’ll never know.
Healy eventually became an announcer, and made more fame for himself as an announcer than a player, in part for his dramatic coverage of the famed Bill Buckner error. He is now retiring, more or less, as the play-by-play announcer for the Mets, at the age of 59. He will celebrate his 60th birthday on September 6th of this year, a witness to a remarkable slice of baseball history.
Note: This article is posted awaiting comment from Fran Healy and the Healy family regarding the relationship between Thomas and Francis, and other details. EP
More Than Just An Announcer, a Witness to History
This guy could play baseball! And so could his dad!
By Evan Pritchard
Mets fans, you remember Fran Healy announcing the playoffs against Houston and the World Series against Boston in 1986, and then the playoffs against the Giants and Subway Series in 2000, but did you know that Fran Healy used to play this game? In fact he was a Yankee for a while. But he played for other teams too, and had a lifetime batting average of .250, with a lifetime .980 fielding percentage as a catcher. Not bad for a play-by-play guy. What’s amazing is that between himself and his father and great uncle, the Healys have played for some of the finest managers in history. Connie Mack, John McGraw, Bill Terry, Frankie Frisch, Jack McKeon, Whitey Herzog, Charlie Fox, Billy Martin, Bob Lemon… Imagine the stories that must have been passed down to a young Fran Healy, and the stories he could tell! Those three men have a continuous memory of baseball that goes back to the 19th century. The family that plays together, stays together.
Fran, the Mets’ announcer, is six foot five, and his playing weight was 220 pounds. He was born September 6th, (Virgo) 1946 in Holyoke, Mass, and has his debut on September 3rd, 1969, just three days before his 23rd birthday, and played his first game just as the Mets were charging towards their first NL East pennant. Unfortunately, he was not on the Mets, not even in their league. He got his first “cup of coffee” in Kansas City, playing for the Royals. He was one of the first “third-generation” major league ballplayers to come along, a part of a family playing tradition dating back to 1915. It is fitting that he is with the Mets organization, for his family had ties with the Giants, originally called “The Metropolitans,” and also the Athletics, who had their start in Brooklyn, just one exit away from Queens.
His ancestor, (I assume his great-uncle) born October 30th, 1895, was Thomas Fitzgerald Healy of Altoona, PA. Thomas was on the Philadelphia Athletics under Connie Mack from 1915 to 1916. His hitting in 1916 was a respectable .261 and his fielding that year was .936, which was a good fielding percentage for those days—too many potholes, and such a dinky glove. In 1914, the A’s had won the pennant with 99 wins out of 158. The A’s had great pitching: Chief Charles Bender, Joe Bush, Herb Pennock, Eddie Plank and Bob Shawkey, but they lost the World Series to the “Miracle” Boston Braves that year who had 26 game winner Bill James, who had an ERA of 1.90, and who threw 11 scoreless innings, and Dick Rudoph, a 27 game winner. However, when Thomas was hired, it was after the great disaster of the 1914-15 off-season, and legal battles with the Federal League, and the A’s lost most of their players. They hired Thomas, who saw the defending champions lose 109 in ’15 and 117 the year after. It was like watching the Titanic go under. But at least he played under a great manager. Connie Mack managed 7,755 big league games, and won 3731. with 9 pennants. Thomas Healy retired after that year.
His nephew was Francis Xavier Paul Healy, also of Holyoke, born June 29, 1910, who spent three years as a catcher with the Giants, 1930-1932, under the great John McGraw (who managed 4,769 major league games, which is pretty much the record, winning 2,763 of them, with 12 pennants). The Giants finished third, (87 wins) second, (87 wins) and eighth, respectively in those years. The pitching coach on that team in 1931 was none other than Charles “Chief” Bender, the Ojibway Hall of Famer, Perfect Gamer, and inventor of the slider, and one of the pitchers Connie Mack lost in 1915 when Thomas Healy was hired. Small world! One of the pitchers Bender was coaching on that team was Carl Hubbell. It is not clear if Francis Healy ever caught a game for the great knuckle-baller, Carl Hubbell, but they played three years together, so one might suppose he did. Hubbell won 17, 14 and 18 games in those three seasons. (Healy caught 14 games in 1932, when Carl won 18.)
Francis Healy, Sr. was there on June 3rd of 1932 when McGraw retired as manager and was replaced by the star first baseman, Bill Terry. Francis was there on June 22nd, when the National League approved the introduction of numbers for the back of the Giants’ uniforms. (The AL had had them since 1929) Healy played under Terry for half a season. Sadly , the team finished 72 and 82, not the numbers they had hoped for. Francis did not play major league ball in 1933, when the Giants defeated the Senators in the World Series, 4 games to 1, with Gus Mancuso catching Carl Hubbel’s knuckleball for the Giants. New manager Bill Terry went on to earn a record of 823 wins and 661 losses, with 3 pennants as manager, all with the Giants, retiring as a player in 1934 with a lifetime average of .341. But Francis was not to be a part of that streak. He spent a year in the minors at a time when money was scarce.
Somehow, miraculously, he wound up as a backup catcher behind Bill DeLancey (.316 with 13 homers that year!) on the 1934 “Gas House Gang” St. Louis Cardinals, under the management of another immortal player-manager, first baseman, Frankie Frisch, (who managed 2246 major league games and won 1138, not bad!) Francis Healy batted.308 on the season. (13 at bats). He played in 15 games, and as far as I can figure, must have caught at least one of the Dean brothers, or perhaps Dazzy Vance, Bill Hallahan, Tex Carleton, or one of the other great St. Louis pitchers. That team, powered by Dizzy and Paul Dean, won the pennant with 95 wins (95-58) Francis did not actually play in the World Series for the Cards, but watched from the sidelines, as his team beat the “G Men,” Gosling, Gehringer, and Greenberg, and the rest of the Tigers in seven games, one of the greatest series ever played.
But that was it for Francis. He packed it in. He eventually settled down and had kids. One of them later became the voice of the Mets, Fran Healy, who was born 12 years after his father’s exit from major league baseball.
Fast forward through the 1940s and 1950s, and let’s see the videotape for 1969, and look in on son Fran. Though his forebears had short careers, plagued by misfortune in some respects, Fran had a long and interesting career, following in his father’s footsteps as a catcher.
Fran Jr. got his first shot with the 2-year old Royals in 1970, under rookie manager Bob Lemon. He went 4 for 10 that year, giving him a batting average of .400, and didn’t make an error in 6 games. He was then traded to the Giants, the team that his father had caught for when they were in New York.
Fran Healy played two years for the San Francisco Giants, batting .280 in 1971.The Giants, under the watchful eye of manager Charlie Fox,. won the division in 1971 with 90 wins and played against Roberto Clemente and the Pirates in the NLCS, but lost 3 games to 1. Fran did not have an at-bat in the post season, like his father before him. He and the Giants had an off year in 1972, although he had four doubles in 45 at-bats. Then he was traded back to the Kansas City Royals. In 1973, in Kansas City again, under rookie manager Jack McKeon, he was a .276 hitter with 6 homers. That year the Royals landed in second, with 88 wins, but six games behind the team they replaced in KC, the now Oakland Athletics. On April 27th, Royals’ pitcher Steve Busby threw a no-hitter, the first no-hit pitcher not to bat, as the DH rule had just been introduced. (I do not know if Healy caught it, but he caught 92 games that year, so the odds are in his favor.) Then in 1974, (also under McKeon) he was a .252 hitter with 9 homers in 139 games, with a career high 53 RBIs. As luck would have it, the Royals had a very unregal year. In 1975, the Royals under McKeon and then Whitey Herzog, had an excellent year, and won 91 games, going 41 and 25 under Herzog in the final months of the season. The bad news is that the Oakland A’s won 98, almost an exact repeat of 1973, leaving the Royals 7 games behind. Healy played his part, and hit a respectable .255 with 2 homers.
Herzog shook up the team, and in early 1976, Healy was traded to the New York Yankees, and did well as a backup catcher for the indestructible Thurmon Munson, who led the team to the World Series, batting .302 with 17 homers with a .981 fielding percentage. Healy, playing under Billy Martin, batted .267, with a .983 fielding percentage, catching Ed Figueroa, Dock Ellis, Catfish Hunter, Grant Jackson, Dick Tidrow, Ron Guidry, and Sparky Lyle, when Munson was off duty. In 1976, the Yankees won the division, and beat his former team the Royals, for the pennant. That was the ALCS that ended with Chris Chambliss’ famous walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth, after Brett’s 3 run homer had tied it in the eight. Imagine being in the dugout, knowing nearly all the players on both teams personally, as Fran Healy must have.
The team lost to the Reds in four straight in the World Series, and Munson played every game, so Healy didn’t get to play, again part of a family tradition. (Even Elrod Hendricks didn’t get to catch, but pinch-hit twice)
The following year, 1977, the Yanks did well, winning their division again, with Munson doing most of the catching, hitting 308 for the season with 18 homers. It was a big year for Cajun star, Ron Guidry, aka “Louisiana Lightning.”. Perhaps Fran Healy caught his hot sauce fastball once or twice. They called it “The “Blew-By-You!” in honor of Linda Ronstad and Guidry’s Cajun ancestors. And Mike Torrez pitched a good fastball as well. Billy Martin and the Yanks faced the Royals again in the ALCS, but once again Healy didn’t play. The Yankees beat the Royals, 3 games to 2, and then beat the Dodgers 4 games to 2. Healy’s average declined to .224 that year and his fielding declined as well as Munson played in 149 regular season games and all of the post-season games.
Healy had only one at-bat in 1978 for the Yanks, the year of the Bucky Dent Home Run, the year Bob Lemon took over as manager, the year the Yanks beat the Royals and Dodgers again, almost an exact repeat of the year before. That at bat, he struck out, and decided to call it quits. Munson died in a plane crash after 97 games in 1979. If Fran had stayed and worked on his swing in the minors, who knows? Maybe he would have been called up to fill in. We’ll never know.
Healy eventually became an announcer, and made more fame for himself as an announcer than a player, in part for his dramatic coverage of the famed Bill Buckner error. He is now retiring, more or less, as the play-by-play announcer for the Mets, at the age of 59. He will celebrate his 60th birthday on September 6th of this year, a witness to a remarkable slice of baseball history.
Note: This article is posted awaiting comment from Fran Healy and the Healy family regarding the relationship between Thomas and Francis, and other details. EP
posted by evan pritchard | 7:35 PM
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