Presented by PINNACLE WINDOWS & DOORS.
This Day In Sports…June 4, 2009:
On his first attempt, Randy Johnson becomes the 24th major league pitcher and only the sixth left-hander in history to reach 300 career wins. The Big Unit, a Bay Area native pitching for the San Francisco Giants at the age of 45, topped the Washington Nationals 5-1 at Nationals Park to reach the milestone. He was the first pitcher to notch No. 300 on his first try since Tom Seaver in 1985. Johnson, a five-time Cy Young Award winner, possessed a 100 miles-per-hour fastball in his prime. Later, it was his guile that stood the test of time.
Johnson was in the final season of his 22-year big league career and would become a first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer in 2015. He began his career in 1988 as a 6-foot-10 curiosity with the Montreal Expos but was traded to the Seattle Mariners after struggling early in his second season. Johnson blossomed in Seattle, leading the American League in strikeouts in 1993 and 1994 and winning the Cy Young Award in 1995. But it was with the Arizona Diamondbacks that he made an indelible mark. Johnson won four straight Cy Youngs from 1999-2002 and led the D-Backs to the 2001 World Series title in the franchise’s fourth year.
No one since Johnson has reached 300 wins, and it will probably never happen again. The active career leader in victories is Justin Verlander, now back with the Detroit Tigers, with 266. Verlander is 43 years old and does not have many more wins left in him (he’s just about to come off the 60-day injured list). Toronto’s Max Scherzer is next with 221 victories, and he’s 41. From there it goes all the way down to the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole and his 154 wins—he’s just over halfway there at the age of 35.
Perhaps the most memorable pitch Johnson ever threw came in a game that didn’t even count in 2001. It happened in a March spring training contest between the Diamondbacks and Giants. Johnson wound up and uncorked a fastball, just as a mourning dove was flying across the field a few feet off the ground. The collision resulted in an explosion of feathers—and a dead bird. The video has been viewed 2.5 million times on YouTube. Giants star Jeff Kent walked out on the field and picked up the expired dove and smiled at the Big Unit. Johnson did not smile back. He had his game face on. The dude was a competitor.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
