Randy Johnson

Baseball Player

• Born: September 10, 1963
• Birthplace: Walnut Creek, California

Sport: Baseball

Early Life

Randall David Johnson was born in Walnut Creek, California, on September 10, 1963. He and his family soon moved to Livermore, southeast of San Francisco, where he grew up. The most noticeable feature of the Johnson family men was their height. His father, Rollen Johnson, was a 6-foot 6-inch police officer, and Randy and his brothers grew tall quickly. Self-conscious because of his height—he was nearly 6 feet at the age of twelve—J played the clown in school in search of popularity. His teachers found him disruptive, and his strict parents had to correct him frequently. His father noticed that as Randy practiced for Little League baseball by throwing a tennis ball against the garage, the nails popped out of the wall.

The Road to Excellence

At Livermore High School Johnson was told he could not run fast enough to play basketball well, so he instead concentrated on baseball, especially pitching. The baseball coach, Eric Hoff, encouraged him to develop a curveball and a changeup. Long before Johnson graduated scouts watched him with interest but were concerned about his size, as it appeared that he would grow taller than anyone who had ever pitched in the major leagues. In his senior year, a new basketball coach decided that Johnson could run well enough after all, and Randy quickly became a basketball star, scoring 51 points in one game. At his final high school baseball game in 1982, twenty Major-League Baseball (MLB) scouts watched him hurl a perfect game. The Atlanta Braves selected him in the third round of the major-league draft that June. Johnson, however, decided to attend the University of Southern California (USC) that fall.

At USC Johnson progressed slowly at first. Waiting out Randy’s pitches, batters walked frequently. However, by his junior year, 1985, he displayed much better control. The Montreal Expos drafted the 6-foot 10-inch left-hander in the second round. Signing an Expos contract, Randy was assigned to Jamestown of the New York-Pennsylvania League for the rest of the season, where he pitched in eight games, won none, and lost three. After the next season at West Palm Beach in the Florida State League his record was 8–7, and though he walked 94 men in 119 innings, he struck out an impressive 133 batters.

The Emerging Champion

For the next two years Johnson continued to move up the system, pitching in AA baseball in 1987 and in 1988, earning a promotion from AAA Indianapolis to the Expos. He created a stir by winning three straight games for a moderate Montreal team. The following year, however, his control deserted him. He lost four straight games at the start of the season, and the Expos sent him back to Indianapolis. In May, 1989, the Expos, looking for a more reliable left-handed pitcher, included Randy in a trade with the Seattle Mariners for Mark Langston, only three years older than Johnson but with five solid major-league seasons under his belt. In the starting rotation in Seattle, Randy pitched better but not spectacularly for the rest of the 1989 season.

In 1990, at twenty-six years old, Johnson emerged as one of the dominant pitchers in the American League. He won fourteen games for a lackluster team in a stadium considered a home-run hitter’s paradise, and he added thirteen wins the next year. Although his record dropped to 12–14 in 1992, he was laboring for a team that finished a miserable thirty-four games below the .500 mark. Filled out at 230 pounds and possessing a wicked slider and a fastball that sometimes was clocked at 100 mph, Randy led the league with 241 strikeouts. In each of the three following seasons, he continued to lead the league in strikeouts. From 1993 through 1997 his record was an astonishing 75–20, enabling the Mariners to become competitive in the American League for the first time since the establishment of the franchise in 1977.

Continuing the Story

Although baseball performances are usually measured individually, all players like to contribute to winning teams. In 1995 Johnson paced the Mariners to a first-place finish in the American League West and into the league championship series against the Cleveland Indians. His record that year, including two postseason series, was 20–3. In both 1995 and 1997, he was named the starting pitcher for the American League in the all-star game. After narrowly missing postseason action in 1996, the following year, the Mariners led the division but lost in the first round of the playoffs, with Johnson losing two of the games.

Johnson was traded back to the National League in July, 1998. As the new ace of the Houston Astros, he sparked his club to the Central Division Championship with a record of 10–1. Opting for free agency after the season, in 1999, he signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks and enjoyed two solid seasons in which he again led the league in strikeouts. As with Seattle, he contributed to an expansion team’s first divisional championship, this time in the Diamondbacks’ second season of competition. In 2000 Johnson won the Cy Young Award for the second straight year, the third of his career.

Johnson again got off to a good start during the 2001 season, though he gained some notoriety when a fastball he threw in spring training hit and killed a passing bird. In an extra-inning game against the Cincinnati Reds on May 8, he became the third pitcher in MLB history—and the first left-hander—to strike out 20 batters in 9 innings. Afterward, he was made the starting pitcher for the National League in the all-star game. That year he led the Diamondbacks to a World Series victory against the New York Yankees.

In 2002 Johnson won the triple crown of pitching: he led the National League in wins, earned run average (ERA), and strikeouts. He won his fourth Cy Young Award that season. In the 2003 season, however, he was plagued by injuries and was on the disabled list for the majority of the season. One bright note on the season was that he hit his first and only home run on September 19, 2003, against the Milwaukee Brewers.

On May 18, 2004, against the Atlanta Braves, Johnson became the fifteenth pitcher of the modern era to throw a perfect game and set a record as the oldest pitcher to do so. That year he also threw his four-thousandth strikeout, continuing his dominance in baseball. He went 16–14 and, unhappy with Arizona, demanded to be traded. The New York Yankees traded for Randy in the winter of 2005.

In 2005 Johnson was the de facto ace for the Yankees but did not dominate as before. He gave up 32 home runs, but he did play well against New York's archrival, the Boston Red Sox. He struggled greatly at times, however, and his difficulties continued into the 2006 season. Johnson finished 17–11 in 2006, and his waning health became an issue.

Johnson was unhappy in New York and longed to be with his family. During the 2007 winter the Yankees traded him back to Arizona for prospective players. He played the 2007 season with the Diamondbacks but was hampered by a back injury that caused severe pain. He had surgery in the middle of the season and spent the rest of the year rehabilitating his back. However, he returned in 2008 to pitch at the age of forty-four. Appearing in thirty games, he added eleven wins and 173 strikeouts to his career totals. In 2009, he signed with the San Francisco Giants. While continuing to push his career strikeout total toward 5,000, he became the twenty-fourth pitcher and only the sixth left-hander in major league history to record three hundred wins when he beat the Washington Nationals on June 4.

Following the 2009 season Johnson announced that he would retire from baseball. He finished his career with a 303–166 record, an ERA of 3.29, and 4,875 strikeouts—second only to Nolan Ryan all-time. He had thrown thirty-seven shutouts and one hundred complete games and had recorded a victory against all thirty existing MLB franchises. He was inducted into the Mariners Hall of Fame in 2012 and became a first-round selection for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015, the first player inducted as an Arizona Diamondback. Later in 2015 his jersey number 51 was retired by the Diamondbacks.

After retirement the generally media-shy Johnson devoted his time to his family and pursued his interest in photojournalism. He also contributed to various charities and made occasional appearances at sports memorabilia events.

Summary

Randy Johnson was the premier strikeout pitcher of his time, his dominance equaled by only a handful of prior pitchers. Johnson and winning teams went together, with his imposing fastball and devastating slider striking fear into opposing batters across the league. At 6 feet 10 inches, the tallest pitcher in the major leagues for most of is career, the Big Unit, as he was nicknamed, was arguably the best left-handed pitcher of his time. His success was recognized with five Cy Young Awards and ten All-Star team nominations.

Bibliography

Bonner, Mike. Randy Johnson. New York: Chelsea House, 1999. Print.

Christopher, Matt. On the Mound with Randy Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998. Print.

Johnson, Randy, and Jim Rosenthal. Randy Johnson’s Power Pitching: The Big Unit’s Secrets to Domination, Intimidation, and Winning. New York: Three Rivers, 2003. Print.

"Randy Johnson." MLB.com. MLB Advanced Media, 2016. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Wancho, Joseph. "Randy Johnson." Society for American Baseball Research. SABR, 25 Feb. 2015. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.