At 57, Julio Franco can't quit playing baseball

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The Million Stars manage two early runs, but Searle, who leads the league in strikeouts this season, never gets an easy inning. The Miracle Elephants start sacrifice-bunting in the first. Before the night is over, Searle will give up at least five infield hits. Franco claps and cheers when things go well and shakes his head, stern and stoic, when they don't. The argumentative young player of the past is noticeably absent.

In the third, a Miracle Elephants bunt results in a runner safe at first, and Franco walks over to the umpire, who looks to be about 18. Sugano, the translator, follows a few steps behind. Franco shakes his head and wags his finger the way American managers so often do, while Sugano politely tries to explain to the umpire that Franco has a difference of opinion on this call. After a minute of strained cultural exchanges, Franco returns to his perch at the top of the dugout.

The game stretches on for a painful four and a half hours, and the Million Stars lose 5-2, an ugly loss full of amateur errors. At one point, Searle is heard screaming and punching a door in the clubhouse. Franco is calm. After 48 years of this, he knows there's always tomorrow.

The next day the team has an afternoon game against the Fukushima Hopes. Following batting practice, Franco pulls aside his bench coach and they sit face-to-face in plastic chairs behind the dugout. With Sugano seated between them, it looks like a small prayer circle.

"We need to push it," Franco tells the coach. "We need to go from first to third. We need to go from second home."

If the team had more power, Franco explains, it might be different. But the Million Stars don't. They have speed. So he wants to use that, and he needs everyone to buy in to his approach. "I want to take the best from the Japanese way and the best from the American way," he says.

Sugano says that for the most part, the players are receptive to the changes. "They know he brings something they don't have," he says. "They know he's had great success. They value that and want to learn from him."

Still, despite the calm exterior, Franco's patience is waning. After such a miserable loss, he can't stand by and watch anymore. He wants to play. So today, although he's recovering from a hamstring injury, he puts himself in the lineup as the designated hitter. He bats fourth.

In the first inning, Franco steps up to the plate with two outs and a runner on first. He tips his cap and bows to the catcher. He tips his cap and bows to the umpire. He turns, loosens his knees, sticks out his butt and winds himself up.

Trumpets blare and drums beat. Another youth baseball team -- the Sun Boys -- cheers from just above the dugout.

The first pitch is a ball, high and outside. The second is a strike. The third comes down, and Franco turns on it. One second he's coiled. The next his body has shifted, the bat has connected and the ball is rocketing by the shortstop.

He hustles, as much as a 57-year-old DH can hustle, around first. The runner on first stops at second. Franco waves his hands, exasperated. The next batter hits a double, and this time, Franco gets the signal to stop at third. He shakes his head. He's stranded. Luckily, by the end of the game, it doesn't matter. Franco goes 2-for-4, and the Million Stars win 3-0.

After the game, Franco says his body feels good. "No stiffness," he says. "No aches." He bows to the field and takes off for a run in the afternoon sun.

The story Franco tells is that he'd like to spend the next 10 years managing in Japan, then 10 years managing in America, then three more years in a front office somewhere. At 80, he says, he'd be content to retire to a remote hillside somewhere, to grow his own food, make his own medicine and drink his matcha. The gap between that dream and this reality doesn't seem to matter to him. He's playing baseball.

The laws of the universe dictate that there will come a day when he takes his last at-bat. It might be next week. It might be a decade from now. But this much is certain: When it comes, he will coil up, like a viper in a jar, and he will smile and ask the pitcher: "Are you brave?"