Leroy Franklin wanted a better life for the kids who came after him, and baseball was the path he pursued to make that dream a reality.
Franklin, the winningest baseball coach in Public League history during a 35-year career at Simeon, died on Thursday morning. He was 83.
Franklin was born in New Orleans and graduated from Grambling State before moving to Chicago, where he was a teacher and coach.
“With him growing up in the Jim Crow South, a lot of opportunities were not available to him for various reasons,” Franklin’s son Derek said. “He wanted to do whatever he could … to [help kids] get as much education and get as many life skills as they can, open kids to opportunities that were closed off to him.”
One of those kids was Eddie Curry, the Public League baseball supervisor who had known Franklin since 1963 when the latter was his third-grade gym teacher at the now-closed Betsy Ross Elementary School at 61st St. and Wabash Ave.
“He was really the closest thing I had to a father because I spent so much time with him,” Curry said. “He turned so many lives around in the city of Chicago. Everybody wanted to play for coach Franklin.”
Franklin coached at Simeon from 1981 to 2016 with the exception of the 1991 season, which he missed while recovering from a cerebral aneurysm. He finished 809-261-4, ranking first among Public League baseball coaches and No. 8 overall in state history according to the IHSA website.
Franklin’s teams won nine Public League championships and earned three state trophies, taking fourth in Class AA in 1983, 1990 and 1998.
Franklin did much to promote baseball across the South Side and not just at Simeon. That included opening up his facilities for Curry to do winter training after he was drafted by the Astros in 1977.
Franklin also helped get Public League players get recruited by HBCU schools in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
“He was respected all over the South,” Curry said. “My coach at Jackson State, [he and Franklin] would meet every fall and spring.”
Franklin also was respected at Simeon and beyond in Chicago.
“I sat today and thought about not just what he was doing for baseball but the entire community,” said Dennis Butler, who succeeded Franklin and was Simeon’s coach from 2017-22. “He really touched a lot of people’s lives.
“He was a leader, a father figure to many who didn’t have the father in their life.”
Franklin was one of a trio of longtime Simeon coaches who won multiple Public League titles. Al Scott (football) and Bob Hambric (basketball) were the others.
“Him, coach Scott and Bob Hambric, they set the table,” Butler said. “They laid the foundation, they built the culture.”