Look, out on the mound, it's a bird, it's a crane ...
It's Randyman!
"If he keeps doing this, we'll be looking for the cape in his locker,"
Diamondbacks pitching coach Mark Connor said recently of the most dominating
left-handed pitcher on the planet.
|  | | Johnson has allowed only six earned runs in seven starts this season. |
In this era of inflated run totals and elevated earned run averages,
Randy Johnson's left arm is Kryptonite.
His fastball is a speeding bullet. He can bend hitters' knees with his
slider. He's more powerful than Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa combined.
For more proof that Johnson is a major league superhero, we submit his
resume: Seven starts, seven wins, four complete games, three shutouts and 75
strikeouts.
He's hitting .273. His helpless opponents are batting .156. He has four
RBI. The helpless opponents have six earned runs.
Most men who throw a baseball for a living are either retired or in
decline by the age of 36. Johnson is peaking. He is coming off a season in
which he won his second Cy Young Award and he's been even more dominant this season.
How does he do it?
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Johnson towers over all
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Johnson leads the NL in nearly every conceivable pitching category. Here are his league-leading totals entering Wednesday's start and the pitcher who ranks second in that category: |
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Stat
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Unit
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Second Place
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ERA
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0.93
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Glavine, 1.73
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Wins
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7
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2 tied with 6
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K's
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75
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Dempster, 51
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IP
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58.1
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Maddux, 58.1
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CG
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4
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L. Hernandez, 2
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SHO
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2
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Several tied with 1
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Avg.
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.156
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Glavine, .173
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OBP
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.208
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Glavine, .232
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SLG
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.236
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Glavine, .240
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"I don't think I'm ever satisfied or complacent with anything," Johnson
said. "I evaluate my good games as much as I evaluate the bad ones. I'm never
content with the results. I'm always trying to improve and push the limits."
Proof of that came with his reaction to a 6-0 record in April.
"I don't get all wrapped up in it," Johnson said. "It's not what I'm
about. Everybody keeps getting wrapped up in this month. Last time I looked,
the season was six months long."
Johnson's pursuit of perfection comes from his late father. Rollen
Johnson was a police officer in northern California and he expected a lot
from his son.
"I learned how to push myself when he was alive," Johnson said. "He was
the disciplinarian in our house and he instilled discipline in me. He taught
me that a lot of times in life you only have the opportunity to do something
once and you better do it right the first time."
That's the way Johnson has learned to approach pitching. He has condensed
the cliché of one day at a time to one pitch at a time. Every pitch has a
purpose.
Johnson doesn't think it's any coincidence that his career took off after his
father died on Christmas Day in 1992.
"That had a big impact on my life," he said. "My father really instilled
in me to never be satisfied with anything. I can remember when I pitched my
no-hitter against Detroit in 1990. I called my dad from the clubhouse and
told him about it. He asked me how many walks I had."
Many people would have responded negatively to such a question from their
father. Johnson told the story as a fond memory. He chose to take his
father's words as a lesson in determination and self-discipline.
Before his father's death, he was a respectable 49-48 with a
3.95 ERA in his career. Since then, he is 118-40 -- that's a .747 winning percentage -- with
a 2.78 ERA.
Like McGwire, Johnson has also found success and happiness in his new
league. His final days in Seattle were not pleasant. He was disturbed by his
contract situation and he made it clear to the Mariners it was time for him
to go. The Mariners agreed and traded him to the Astros for Carlos Guillen,
Freddy Garcia and John Halama.
How fitting that Johnson went to Houston for liftoff.
"When I went to Houston, I felt like something had been lifted off me,"
Johnson said. "Nobody wants to go through what I went through for nine years
and then have trouble getting a contract extension."
Johnson went 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA in the final two months of the 1998
season with the Astros, then exercised his right as a free agent by signing with Arizona, where he lived in the offseason. Since returning to the National League (he debuted with the Expos in 1988), Johnson is
34-10 with a 2.02 ERA.
He has also used his superhuman concentration and determination to turn
himself into a more than respectable hitter, currently carrying a .273 average. When Johnson originally came
back to the NL, he was considered an easy out. At 35 and with a
6-10 frame, that didn't figure to change.
But it has, which is just another reason to believe the Big Unit deserves
his own comic strip and Saturday morning cartoon.
He is Randyman.
Bob Brookover of the Delaware County (Pa.) Times covers the National League for ESPN.com.
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