Colorado Rockies: The best Jeff Francis story you will hear today

On Wednesday, former Colorado Rockies ace Jeff Francis was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame as the only member of the class of 2022. Francis spoke with the media, including Rox Pile, for nearly an hour after the news broke.

Among other things, Francis, who was born, raised, and went to college in Canada, spoke about pitching at altitude, which is something that people thought was impossible just five years ago, let alone 15 years ago, when Jeff Francis had his best season with the Colorado Rockies and when they went to the World Series.

Francis was the ace for the Rockies, as he went 17-9 with a 4.22 ERA in 34 starts. He also pitched 215 1/3 innings with a 114 ERA+, a 1.379 WHIP, and he came in 9th in NL Cy Young Award voting.

For that season and the Rockies making it to the playoffs and, later, the World Series, Jeff Francis was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine.

On Wednesday, Francis spoke about that edition from 15 years ago.

Former Colorado Rockies ace Jeff Francis got his hands on as many copies of that edition of Sports Illustrated as he could.

The Colorado Rockies ace wanted to get as many copies of the Sports Illustrated magazine as he could … but Jeff Francis didn’t want to get them himself. After all, it would be weird if you’re wiping out a store of all of their Sports Illustrated’s because you are on the cover.

So Francis sent his wife to do it.

“My version of that (cover) is on my wall,” Francis said. “When that came out, I cleaned out, I think, every Walgreens on the west side of Denver, and I couldn’t do it myself. So I had my wife go and buy just about every Sports Illustrated on the west side of Denver.”

Here is what the cover looked like:

Francis played with the Rockies from 2004 through 2010 and again in 2012. However, he had a rough 2008 season (as did many other Rockies) and was injured for all of the 2009 season due to shoulder surgery and was, frankly, never the same after 2007.

Francis and the other new members of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, including former Rockies first baseman Justin Morneau will be inducted on June 18 in St. Marys, Ontario.