Bowden Francis: Baseball’s Hottest Pitcher Has Almost No Baseball Cards

In 1985, legendary writer and sports journalist George Plimpton left us yearning.

It was an April Fools Day feature on fictitious pitcher Sidd Finch. If you are too young to remember Sidd Finch, he was a Buddhist monk who played the French horn. He pitched with one foot in a workboot and the other barefoot. He is what Crash Davis wanted Nuke Laloosh to become.

And by the way, he had a 168 mph fastball.

It remains the sports April Fools Day GOAT – a prank that all others are compared to. It was cruel. The world was heartbroken when they learned it was all a put-on. It was so good that every baseball fan in America desperately wanted Sidd Finch to be real.

Let’s fast forward 39 years. Bowden Francis is not Sidd Finch, but he’s the closest thing baseball has given us since the mythical Mets prospect went to Tibet for yogic mastery of mind and body.

Bowden is part Sidd Finch, part Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, and part Greg Maddux. In the past six weeks, he has posted the best WHIP of any pitcher over a six-week span in MLB history. His 0.40 WHIP over six weeks betters Jacob deGrom (0.41 in 2021) and Grover Alexander (0.48 in 1915).

And yet, he’s flown almost completely under the baseball card radar.

What’s My Name?

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Not only has Bowden Francis come out of nowhere to put together one of the best stretches baseball has ever seen, but he also has the most commonly mispronounced name in baseball.

If you are wondering how to say Bowden Francis’ first name, there is an easy way to remember it. A native of Tallahassee, FL and born into a family of Florida State Seminoles fans, Bowden Francis was named after legendary football coach Bobby Bowden. No, that’s not a joke.

So it’s not Bowden like Owen. It’s Bowden, like Rowdy Tellez, the player he was traded for when he went to the Blue Jays’ organization. Like howdy! Or wow, how did this guy become the Kurt Warner of baseball?

When Francis joined the Toronto Blue Jays rotation for good in early August, he was still relatively unknown even though he had been around for a while. Francis appeared in 20 games in 2023 as a reliever and had a 1.73 ERA with 35 strikeouts in 36.1 innings.

But Francis did not leave a good enough impression to be included in the 2024 Topps Baseball set. He was not in Series 1, and he was not in Series 2. In fact, the best pitcher over a six-week span in baseball history has never been on a Bowman card, and he still does not have a standard base issue rookie card.

Francis was in the 2014 Leaf Perfect Game National Showcase set coming out of high school, in a couple of Buffalo Bisons minor league team sets and he has autographed cards in the 2022 Topps Chrome Update set.

So far, his only available 2024 cards are from the Topps NOW program. 

The 2022 Update cards carry sticker autographs. The base and parallels do have the ‘RC’ designation and a rush of recent sales has made them a little hard to come by.  

Who is Bowden Francis?

The lanky 6’5” righthander likes to burn a stick of holy wood called palo santo, a South American wood used to treat stress and pain. In his locker, there will be a ceramic yogi frog wearing beads. Part of his regimen is “fire breathing”, where he alternates minute-long inhales and exhales. And of course, there is yoga.

He earned the nickname “Shaman” among his teammates, reportedly because of his mystical aura and for his spiritual circles to which he recruits teammates. He is laid back and easy going, and seems to be universally liked.

After baseball, he dreams of buying land in Hawaii and having a big garden with room for some cows and chickens.

“(I see) me barefoot, my kids in the garden singing, dancing and picking vegetables or whatever we’re growing,” said Francis in an interview with the Toronto Star. “That’s what I think about all the time.”

Two Near No-Nos

Francis already had a couple of very good starts under his belt before his breakthrough game Aug. 24. He took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the Los Angeles Angels. Francis was above his pitch count, but manager John Schneider did not want to deny Francis a shot at history. He sent him out for the ninth, and after Taylor Ward homered to lead off the inning, Schneider went out to get him.

Francis was distraught in the Blue Jays dugout. His teammates came and picked him up, and brought him up to the railing to cheer on his teammates and watch the rest of the game. It was a small gesture, but it was that moment that made Francis, as out there and quirky as he is, one of the boys.

In his next start, Francis took a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Boston Red Sox before Nick Sogard broke it up with a double.

On Wed., Sept. 11, Francis once again flirted with a no-no. It was deja-vu all over again, as Schneider left him in to try to grab a piece of history. This time, it was Francisco Lindor, the Most Valuable Player in the NL among players not named Shohei Ohtani, who took Francis deep. 

Francis struck out only one batter that game. He won the game on his recently improved splitter, his fastball, a sharp slider, and pinpoint location. The Mets delivered nothing but soft contact off him until Lindor’s dinger. In his last seven starts, he’s given up two or fewer runs in six of them.

Francis Frustration

As collectors have been scrambling through eBay and paging through their binders of Bowman and Topps sets, they are coming up empty. 

So far, Topps has featured Francis on two cards issued through the on-demand NOW platform.  One (#682) honors Francis as the only pitcher in MLB history to take no-hit bids past the eighth inning within his first 11 starts. Not even Mark Fidrych accomplished that in his magical rookie year. He also got a Topps NOW card after striking out 12 in his no-hit bid against the Angels.

In this era of players having hundreds or even thousands of cards out (counting parallels) before players get a taste of major league action, Bowden Francis is proof that a late bloomer who slipped through the cracks can still become a breakthrough star.

There is little doubt that Francis will soon get his First Bowman card and start to show up in some other sets. At age 28, it’s about time. 

The only question now is whether or not Topps will put a piece of game-day used South American palo santo swatches on his relic cards next year.

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About Jeff Morris

Jeff Morris is a hobby veteran who has been a collector for more than 50 years. Originally a hobby journalist, he became brand manager at Pinnacle, and then was an executive for Collector's Edge and Shop at Home before joining Pacific Trading Cards as VP of Marketing. He is the former editor and publisher of Canadian Sports Collector magazine, and he was also a columnist for ESPN.com.