Randy Johnson
Randall David Johnson (born September 10, 1963), nicknamed "The Big Unit", is a retired left-handed Major League Baseball starting pitcher. Over a 22-year career, Johnson played for six different teams.
The 6-foot-10-inch (2.08 m) Johnson has been celebrated for having one of the most dominant fastballs in the game. He regularly approached, and occasionally exceeded, 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) during his prime. However, his signature pitch was a hard, biting slider. Johnson won the Cy Young Award five times, second only to Roger Clemens' seven.
For all active pitchers through the 2008 season, Johnson is first in strikeouts per nine innings pitched (10.67 – which is also first for all starting pitchers in history) and hit batsmen (188 – third all-time), first in strikeouts (4,875 – second all-time), fourth in hits allowed per nine innings pitched (7.24 – 10th all-time), first in shutouts (37 – 57th all-time), third in wins (303 – 22nd all-time), eighth in ERA (3.27), third in wild pitches (104), and seventh in won-lost percentage (.648). His 4,875 strikeouts are also first all-time among left-handed pitchers. In addition, he pitched one of the 18 perfect games in Major League Baseball history.
On January 5, 2010, Johnson announced his retirement from Major League Baseball!
Early life
Randy Johnson was born in Walnut Creek, California, to Carol Hannah and Rollen Charles (“Bud”) Johnson.[1] By the time he entered Livermore High School, he was a star in baseball and basketball. In 1982, as a senior, he struck out 121 batters in 66 innings, and threw a perfect game in his last high school start. He also played on a Burkovich team that assembled top players from throughout California. He continued to star at the University of Southern California under coach Rod Dedeaux, but often exhibited control problems.
[edit] Professional career (1988-2009)
[edit] Expos, Mariners (1988–98)
Since entering the majors, Johnson has been among the most feared pitchers in the game because of his effective fastball, augmented by his intimidating appearance (height, wild mullet hairstyle and mustache), and his angry, energetic demeanor on the mound. Part of his early intimidation factor came from his dramatic lack of control; after being traded away to the Seattle Mariners by the Montreal Expos for Mark Langston, Johnson led the AL in walks for three consecutive seasons (1990–92), and in hit batsmen in 1992 and 1993. In July 1991, facing the Milwaukee Brewers, the erratic Johnson allowed 4 runs on 1 hit, thanks to 10 walks in 4 innings. A month later, a 9th-inning single cost him a no-hitter against the Oakland Athletics. Johnson suffered another 10-walk, 4-inning start in 1992.
But his untapped talent was volcanic: in 1990, Johnson became the first left-hander to strike out Wade Boggs three times in one game, and a no-hitter against the Detroit Tigers attested to his potential. Johnson credits a session with Nolan Ryan late in the 1992 season with helping him take his career to the next level; Ryan has said that he appreciated Johnson's talent and did not want to see him take as long to figure certain things out as he had taken. Ryan recommended a slight change in his delivery; before the meeting, Johnson would land on the heel of his foot after delivering a pitch, and as such, he usually landed offline from home plate. Ryan suggested that he land on the ball of his foot, and almost immediately, he began finding the strike zone more consistently.[2]
Johnson broke out in 1993 with a 19–8 record, 3.24 ERA and his first of six 300-plus strikeout seasons (308). In May 1993, Johnson again lost a no-hitter to a 9th-inning single; again, the opponent was the Oakland A's. He also recorded his 1,000th career strikeout against the Minnesota Twins' Chuck Knoblauch. At the 1993 All-Star Game in Baltimore, Maryland, in a famous incident, Johnson threw a fastball over the head of Philadelphia Phillies first baseman John Kruk. It is still replayed on highlights shows to this day. A similar incident would occur with Larry Walker in 1997.
After pitching well in the strike-shortened 1994 season, Johnson won the American League Cy Young Award in 1995 with an 18–2 record, 2.48 ERA and 294 strikeouts. His .900 winning percentage was the second highest in AL history, behind Johnny Allen, who had gone 15–1 for the Cleveland Indians in 1937. Johnson, who also finished second in the 1993 and 1997 Cy Young voting, and third in 1994, remains the only Seattle Mariners pitcher to win the award.
Johnson capped the Mariners' late season comeback by pitching a 3-hitter in the AL West's one-game playoff, crushing the California Angels' hopes with 12 strikeouts. Thus unable to start in the 5-game ALDS series against the Yankees until the third game, Johnson watched as New York took a 2–0 series lead. Johnson beat the Yankees in Game 3 with 10 strikeouts in 7 innings.
When the series went the full five games, the Mariners having come back from an 0–2 deficit to win both games at the Kingdome, Johnson made a dramatic relief appearance in the series final, Game 5, on only one day's rest. Johnson's slow walk to the pitcher's mound from the left field bullpen electrified the sold-out home crowd. Entering a 4–4 game in the ninth inning, Johnson pitched the 9th, 10th, and 11th innings. He allowed 1 run, struck out 6, and held on for the series-ending win in Seattle's dramatic comeback.
Johnson posted an 0–6 playoff record in his next four playoff series, each of which his teams lost.
Johnson was sidelined throughout much of the 1996 season with a back injury, but he rebounded in 1997 with a 20–4 record, 291 strikeouts, and a 2.28 ERA (his personal best). Between May 1994 and October 1997, Johnson had gone 53-9, including a 16–0 streak that fell one short of the AL record. Johnson had two 19-strikeout starts in 1997, on June 24 and August 8.
In June 1997, Oakland slugger Mark McGwire's swing connected perfectly with a 97 mph Randy Johnson fastball; the result was a rocketing home run into the upper deck of the Kingdome, later estimated at 538 feet (164 m). The image of the home run bouncing off the left field wall of the Kingdome, above the seats, complete with Johnson swiveling and mouthing the word "Wow!," was replayed repeatedly on sports highlight shows. Johnson had 19 strikeouts in the game but lost, 4–1. Despite the claim of 538 feet (164 m), independent research later concluded that the farthest the ball could have traveled was 474 feet[3]- 64 feet (20 m) shorter than the Mariners' estimate.
[edit] Houston Astros (1998)
1998 was a tale of two seasons for Johnson. He was due to become a free agent at the end of the season but the Mariners' budget prevented them from making any serious offers for a contract extension during the season. Johnson was traded on July 31, 1998, when a deadline trade sent him to the Houston Astros for Freddy García, Carlos Guillén, and a player to be named later (eventually John Halama). Houston was in the thick of a pennant race and Johnson's strong arm anchored their rotation. In 11 starts, he went 10-1 with a sparkling 1.28 ERA, leading the Astros to the playoffs. Despite only pitching for a third of a season in the National League, Johnson finished 7th in National League Cy Young Award voting. Johnson's 1998 post-season was less positive. Despite striking out 17 San Diego Padres and walking 2 in 14 innings, the Astros scored only one run while Johnson was on the mound. Johnson finished the series with a 1.93 ERA, but finished 0-2 due to lack of run support.
[edit] Arizona Diamondbacks (1999–2004)
Johnson agreed to a four-year contract, with an option for a fifth year, for $52.4 million, with the Arizona Diamondbacks; a second-year and relatively inexperienced franchise.[4] It turned out to be one of the best free agent signings in baseball history, as Johnson won the NL Cy Young Award in each of the four seasons covered by the contract.
The deal paid immediate dividends for Arizona, as Johnson led the team to the playoffs that year on the strength of a 17–9 record and 2.48 ERA with 364 strikeouts, enough to earn him his second Cy Young Award. Johnson's numbers could have been even more impressive; at one point in the season, Arizona failed to score a run in four consecutive Johnson starts, including a pair of 1–0 losses. Johnson's pitching line in the four starts: 32 innings, 19 hits, 54 strikeouts, a 1.40 ERA and an 0-4 won-lost record. Both Johnson and Pedro Martínez won 1999 Cy Young Awards, thus joining Gaylord Perry as the only pitchers to have won the award in both the American and National Leagues. (Roger Clemens has since done the same).
Johnson finished 2000 with 19 wins, 347 strikeouts and a 2.64 ERA, and won his third NL Cy Young Award. Just as importantly for the Diamondbacks' future, the team acquired Curt Schilling from the Philadelphia Phillies in July 2000, giving Arizona the most feared power pitching duo in the sport of baseball at the time.
In only the fourth year of the franchise's existence, Johnson and Schilling carried the Arizona Diamondbacks to their first World Series appearance and victory in 2001 against the powerful New York Yankees. The two pitchers shared the World Series MVP Award and were named Sports Illustrated magazine's 2001 "Sportsmen of the Year." For the first of two consecutive seasons, Johnson and Schilling finished 1-2 in the Cy Young balloting.
Johnson's performance was particularly dominating, striking out 11 in a 3-hit shutout in game 2, pitching seven innings for the victory in Game 6 and then coming on in relief—on zero days' rest—to pick up the win in Game 7. Johnson had already pitched a shutout in Game 2, thus tying the record with three wins in one World Series, and erasing many of the doubts regarding his post-season ineffectiveness. Of Arizona's 11 post-season wins in 2001, Johnson had five.
Johnson's Game 7 relief appearance was his second of the 2001 season; on July 19, a game against the Padres was delayed by two electrical explosions in Qualcomm Stadium. When the game resumed the following day, Johnson stepped in as the new pitcher and racked up 16 strikeouts in 7 innings, technically setting the record for the most strikeouts in a relief stint.
Johnson struck out 20 batters in a game on May 8, 2001 against the Cincinnati Reds, Johnson recorded all 20 strikeouts in the first nine innings, but because the game went into extra innings, it was not categorized by MLB as an "official" 20-strikeout game (Washington Senator Tom Cheney's 16-inning, 21-strikeout game is also listed separately).
