Recent Stories with tag randy johnson

More exciting than Mariner baseball

Baseball is supposed to bring fathers and sons together, and it certainly did yesterday for the father and son sitting one row in front of me. It brought them together in a united effort to ignore the fiasco unfolding before them and instead play video games on their iPhones.

We weren't out of inning six before son, a pre-teen in a stylish windbreaker, busted out Cube Runner. Dad, who bore a passing resemblance to Phil on Modern Family, got next turn. By the eighth they'd moved on to what looked like Centipede.

I stupidly kept my eyes fixed on the field, where the Mariners put forth the lamest opening day offensive effort in team history. Two hits! Two! Yes, the Mariners had been two-hit before in a home opener, but that was by Pedro Martinez in his prime. A's starter Justin Duchscherer is a talented pitcher, but vintage Pedro he's not.

For sheer awfulness, the only home opener comparison is 1992, when the M's bullpen blew a five-run lead in a portentous 12-10 loss.

Starting pitcher in that game 18 years ago was Randy Johnson. The Big Unit who appeared a few hundred yards to the south yesterday at Safeco to throw out the first pitch. Johnson made his entrance from centerfield, walking toward the mound enveloped by a sustained standing ovation. His pitch, to longtime battery mate Dan Wilson, was an indisputable strike. Wilson and Johnson met and shook hands after the pitch; they were soon joined by fellow Mariner legends Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner, and Ken Griffey Jr. for a '95 Mariners photo-op....

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We've come a long way, baby. I can remember when the Mariners' opening day musical guest was Kenny G, and the first pitch honoree was Morganna, the Kissing Bandit.

Today's Mariners opening day festivities, which begin at 3 p.m. at Safeco Field, will feature Death Cab for Cutie; the local boys will sing two unannounced "classic baseball" songs. Randy Johnson, the best pitcher in team history, will throw out the first pitch. And Ichiro will get his Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards. If you aren't going to be at Safeco, you can watch the event live on the M's website.

 

Death Cab practicing their Opening Day set (@therealmariners via Twitter)

Also new to fans this year: A renovated menu, including more options for vegans, gluten-haters, foodies, and the frugal. For example: A Dungeness crab sandwich served on garlic artisan French bread from Essential Baking Company. (That's at the "Sound Seafood" stand in section 248.) A new stand called "The Natural," in section 132, will feature vegetarian, vegan, and organic foods. Like fresh fruit! What a revelation! As someone who'll hit probably 25 M's games this year, I'm delighted, as I would prefer not to end the summer weighing 275. Another improvement: a new LED scoreboard in left field.

Parking is always a nightmare on opening day; when you combine a near-sellout crowd with the normal commuter crowd, it gets gross. Happily there are some traffic improvements. The new Royal Brougham way overpass opens today (map in pdf), it provides direct access to the Qwest Field parking lot, and will also put cars, bikes and pedestrians over the train tracks. Other good news: There are now two turn lanes from 1st Avenue S. onto Edgar Martinez Way and the entrance to the Safeco Field lot. Bad news: The northbound I-5 exit onto 4th Avenue S. won't be open until later this month.

Oh! And there will be a baseball game played! Game time is 3:40. The M's Ryan Rowland-Smith and the A's Justin Duchscherer will pitch, the same matchup as we had last Wednesday in Oakland. Neither pitched well, nor did they figure in the decision, a 6-5 A's win. Let's go Hyphen!

In the most shocking and yet outstanding news Mariner fans have received maybe ever, star pitcher Felix Hernandez has agreed to a five-year contract. Hernandez could've left the Mariners to sign with another team after the 2011 season, and would've have been possibly the most sought after free agent in baseball history. Now the M's have locked him up through the middle of Sarah Palin's first presidential term.

Why is Hernandez so sought after? The same reason Mariner fans will have silly grins on their faces all morning. Felix Hernandez is one of the best pitchers in baseball, and he's only 23 years old--an age at which some of the all-time greats were still struggling to break into baseball.

Randy Johnson didn't have a single major league win at 23. Bob Gibson had 3. Sandy Koufax, despite having logged five major leagues seasons by age 23, had just 28 wins. Felix Hernandez already has 58.

With his high-90s fastball and knee-buckling curve, Hernandez can be nearly unhittable. And given the current state of medical science, and the fact that fireballing pitchers now seem to be able to pitch into their mid-40s, Hernandez would seem to have an outside shot at equaling Roger Clemens' modern day record of 354 wins (for pitchers in the era of five-man rotations).

The Mariners and general manager Jack Zduriencik (who I could kiss right now) have locked up at least five more seasons of this excellence. I'm shocked that they managed it....

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The following article was written last May, in response to Randy Johnson coming to Seattle one last time on the 22nd of that month, and posted to my site about the 1995 Mariners. Since we’ve just heard about his retirement, I thought I should reprint it here as an acknowledgment of his central position in Mariners’ history.

Randy Johnson's start at Safeco Field last Friday night for San Francisco was probably his last in Seattle.  I got to the game early, hoping for a Felix Hernandez bobblehead (which didn't happen), but also to see Johnson warm up before the game. I figured it was the last chance I'd have, and a lot of others figured the same way: the crowd was five or six deep all along the Giants' bullpen. 

We didn't get to see the bid for 300 wins that was supposed to make Friday's game uniquely compelling, but standing in the crowd pressed up against the pen, waiting for the Big Unit to make his appearance, that didn't really seem to matter. Most everybody was there because of what Johnson had done in Seattle, not because the cumulative digits with Houston, Arizona, etc., had turned over enough times to put him within grasp of the 300-victory club.

This wasn't the playoffs or a crucial late-season game, but the excitement around the bullpen was at that sort of level as Johnson first tossed the ball in the outfield, then slid open the gate and made his way into the pen. Really meaningful Mariner games have been scarce ever since 2001, but Randy was going to give us one even if he got ejected in the first inning. 

No matter what happened in the game, this would be our last chance to see him up close, so it's no wonder the stairs leading down to the bullpen were jammed, you saw cameras everywhere, and we craned our necks through the crowd to get a better glimpse. Not even the dour and usually efficient Safeco ushers were able to really manage this crowd.

As Randy threw, one guy who looked a bit like Jay Buhner kept yelling "Randeeee!," hoping for a wave or glance from Johnson; he didn't give it. We've all heard about the Big Unit's game face, but I'd never seen it up close.  Separated by a few rows of people, what comes across most clearly is what he doesn't do: look over at us or the field, or up at the sky, or into the stands, or say anything, sniff the air, take care of an itch, motion at anything other than the catcher. 

It's just him, the ball, the pitching motion, and a catcher's glove. The "Randeeee!" guy said as much to me when I admitted that yes, I wanted the Unit to win and leave Seattle with a bang. I think we were all hoping for at least a 10-strikeout game, and with luck, a no-hitter.  The Mariners could make up the loss sometime later: getting a game closer to .500 in late May just wasn't as important as Randy Johnson coming back and delivering something memorable for his audience....

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For a few years in the mid-1990s, Randy Johnson had the power to make 60,000 Seattleites stand in unison. In the last few weeks of the magical 1995 Mariners season, fans began standing whenever strikeout master Johnson reached two strikes on a batter. The tradition continued through the next three seasons of Johnson's Mariner career, which ended prematurely when he was traded in 1998.

Twelve years after Johnson left the Mariners, he's leaving baseball. The most dominant #51 to wear an M's uniform (sorry Ichiro) announced his retirement this afternoon on a conference call with reporters.

The hard-throwing lefty, who even all-stars were afraid to face, came to the Mariners in another mid-season trade, a trade that was wildly unpopular at the time. "This is the saddest day in Mariner history," third baseman Jim Presley told the P-I after the Mariners traded ace Mark Langston to Montreal for Brian Holman, Gene Harris, and a former USC basketball player known more for being the tallest player in major league history than for his pitching prowess. Randy Johnson was 25 years old (two years older than Felix Hernandez is now), and had just three career major league wins.

"These guys have a chance to be very good," Mariner manager Jim Lefebvre said at the time. He had no idea how good.

Johnson made 22 starts for the 1989 M's, finishing with a 7-9 record. In June of 1990, he pitched the first no-hitter in Mariner history, striking out the Tigers' Mike Heath on a fastball in his eyes. The Dave Niehaus call is a classic, and some delightful soul has recorded it on YouTube.

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