Big Unit's Hall of Fame career didn't come easy
To call Randy Johnson a Hall of Fame pitcher and a world-class crank as the Big Unit fades into retirement is far too easy. You don't reach the dizzying heights Johnson enjoyed -- well, tried to enjoy -- without a will so raw it essentially was an open wound.
When it came to competition, nobody instilled fear in batters and roommates like Johnson. Twenty-two seasons in the majors, and I didn't stumble upon my favorite Johnson story until last summer while in Seattle following the Unit's emotional homecoming and slow march toward his 300th win.
|
|
| Randy Johnson says goodbye after 303 wins, two no-hitters, five Cy Young Awards and a World Series title. (Getty Images) |
"I'd play with him and drink his orange juice," Hudler recalled. "He'd tape a line on the carton where the orange juice level was, so that when he came in he could make sure that I hadn't been drinking it, that the juice level hadn't dropped below where the tape was."
Nobody competed quite like Johnson -- sweaty hair flying, the grunts, the ice-cold death stare in from the mound, fastballs you could hear -- from orange-juice levels to every fifth day.
He finishes with 303 wins (22nd all time), 603 games started (21st all time) and 190 batters drilled by pitches (third all time, ouch!). He could be the last pitcher ever to author a 300th win. He was a pitcher for the ages, and yet none of it came easy.
Everything was a battle for him, always. Finding the strike zone, particularly when he was young and raw. Answering the media's questions. Earning respect. Facing hitters. And, yes, even jockeying for refrigerator space with a teammate.
"I remember my debut in Montreal," Johnson said while announcing his retirement in a conference call with reporters early Tuesday evening. "My parents weren't able to make it to the game, but I remember how nervous I was sitting in my apartment thinking the next day I'd be pitching in a major league baseball game.
"I really had butterflies. I was really nervous. I was really hoping I'd be able to perform and not embarrass myself."
What most people don't realize is that that feeling never fully went away. For much of his career, Johnson was a 6-foot-10 inferiority complex. It fueled him. It put the edge on a fierceness that already was razor-blade sharp.
Watching this fall's World Series, Johnson couldn't help but shake his head at all the debate over whether the starting pitchers should work on three days' rest. It made him think back to the pinnacle of his own career, when he returned to pitch 1 1/3 innings of relief for Arizona and earn the win in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series less than 24 hours after pitching seven innings and getting the win in Game 6.
| Related link |
| Blog |
|
|
His legacy, in his eyes?
"I worked hard, was a fierce competitor and gave everything I had," he said. "I was max effort from Day 1. But from Day 1 until Year 4 or 5, it just wasn't something that you wanted to watch every fifth day."
For much of his career, Johnson never felt fully appreciated. Maybe now, 300-win legacy intact, he will. Maybe five years from now, when Cooperstown comes calling, he really will.
One thing that was regularly overlooked with Johnson -- and believe me, it was difficult to gloss over anything with a guy as filthy as him -- was the Unit's work ethic. With a scorching fastball that often touched 100 mph just before it vaporized hitters, too many people took for granted that Johnson simply rode God-given ability straight to the top floor.
Wrong. As Dave Dombrowski, the former Montreal general manager who traded him to Seattle in a 1989 package for Mark Langston can tell you, there was a time when Johnson's major league future was anything but a given.
As Joe Kerrigan, one of his early pitching coaches, can tell you, there was a time when 300 wins was as far away from Johnson as the moon.
Early in his career, Johnson's extreme height gave him fits, making it nearly impossible to repeat pitches with the same motion and delivery. It took years of sweat to harness those long arms and longer legs.
At the height of his career, Johnson's extreme dominance caused even those who appreciated his brilliance to overlook part of what went into it.
"I think sometimes we overlook part of the athlete when he makes everything look easy," Johnson said in one piece of dead-on self-analysis during the conference call. "People don't see the other side, all of the hard work.
"That was the part where only my trainers and teammates really probably know the amount of time I spent in the training room and in the weight room, and how many hours I spent rehabbing after surgeries. It's not the glamorous side, it's not something most people are interested in. ..."
But it is important to know. Along with those five Cy Young Awards -- only Roger Clemens (six) earned more -- and two no-hitters (one a perfect game) were three back surgeries, a knee surgery and the awkward teenage years (so to speak) in which he was unsure whether he could ever pull together his coordination and mechanics to salvage his potential.
Even when he was at his peak, after winning the 2001 World Series and in the midst of the five Cy Youngs, it ate at Johnson that it he made it look so easy that people just took things for granted.
Privately, during the years with Curt Schilling in Arizona, he steamed when the story with Schilling became how the gregarious right-hander got serious about his workouts after a dressing down by Clemens. Part of the subtext during that time was that Schilling worked his butt off and prepared, while Johnson -- quieter and not nearly the self-promoter that Schilling was -- just reared back and fired.
Nobody out-competed Johnson during his years on the field and, yes, that included the preparation part. When he put down the blazing fastball between starts, he studied video. He kept a detailed notebook in his locker detailing opposing hitters, and referred to it frequently.
"The one thing I've always tried to tell young pitchers is how hard your preparation and your work ethic has to be in order to go out and compete every five days," Johnson said. "You want longevity, one common denominator is that you have [to] stay healthy and do your work."
Johnson couldn't always manage the former. But no small part of why we'll be talking about him in the Hall of Fame election conversation five years from now is because of the latter.
It wasn't always pretty with him, whether it was the control problems during his first few professional seasons or his rude swipe at the television cameraman on the streets of Manhattan shortly after the Yankees acquired him. But for 22 years, it worked for him -- and, far more often than not, for his teammates.
"I will miss having an outlet to be that competitive," Johnson said. "Every fifth day it was a process, and I enjoyed and I relished that process. ... There's nothing else I'll do from this point on for the rest of my life that will match that. There's not a golf game that I can play ... that will ever match how competitive I was in baseball."
In the end, he was one of the game's greatest pitchers ... and sometimes as difficult to figure out off the mound as he was for opposing hitters when he stood on it. There were times when he perplexed even himself.
With the end clearly in sight, I thought he seemed more mellow, and happier, this year. Following what amounted to a warm group hug from some 38,000 fans during that emotional start in Seattle in May, I walked out of Safeco Field with him near midnight and asked him about my perception.
"I'd like to think I've loosened up over the years," he said. "Going into this year, I'd like to think I've enjoyed it more than in the past. My career, really, has flown by pretty fast. I probably didn't enjoy it as much as I would have or should have. We're about a third of the way of the way through this year, and it's flying by, and the next thing you know, it'll be over."
