Larger Than Life: Unit Joins 300 Club

WASHINGTON -- Convention never suited Randy Johnson anyway.

So it figures that he would wait 22 1/2 hours and then 36 more minutes after that before embarking on the final 2 1/2-hour leg of his journey into one of baseball's select groups. It figures he'd do it on the grayest of days in front of a crowd that might make a minor league team blush with embarrassment instead of before 45,000 adoring fans, too.

No, the poetic path never was for the Big Unit.

But he found his way into the 300-win club anyway Thursday night in the nation's capital. Two rain delays over two days were unable to prevent him from becoming its 24th member with six innings of one-run ball in a 5-1 victory over the hapless Washington Nationals.

It was only after hitting the milestone Johnson seemed able to wax philosophical.

"I think I've got a greater appreciation for the game now," Johnson said of his new-found place in history. "Because when I was doing something and I was being compared to someone else -- Sandy Koufax or Steve Carlton -- people that I've met and have a great deal of respect for and was actually in awe of when I had the opportunity to meet them ... when your name is in the same sentence as them ... I have a greater appreciation for what I'm doing because I know how hard it is to get there.

"I have a great deal of respect for my peers because I know how hard it is to do what they've done."

But then he has very few peers.

He is one of just 24 in the 300-win club, of course. But he is also one of only six left-handers to reach the milestone and one of only five pitchers to reach it since 1970. Only Nolan Ryan has more career strikeouts than him, and not even the Ryan Express retired hitters via the K at a higher rate than Johnson. Only Roger Clemens has more Cy Young Awards than Johnson (seven to his five), and given what we know now, the Rocket's record hardware haul is dubious.

"I'm actually more nervous now than I was when I was pitching," said Johnson, seeming to realize the significance of his accomplishment at the exact moment he climbed onto the dais in the bowels of Nationals Park to address the media.

"It's been a long road, but I couldn't have done it without all the teammates I've had.

"To me, wins have always outweighed strikeouts because strikeouts are just something that kind of happen, but I think I wanted to be known more for winning ballgames."

Try as he might to fit in with his peers -- even the other 23 with 300 career wins – it's awfully hard. He stands, quite literally, head and shoulders above all of them, but in terms of intimidation and pure domination of his opponents, he has also set himself apart.

Fans hardly saw vintage Johnson Thursday, but then that snarling menace to anyone carrying a piece of lumber has been gone for a few years now, replaced by an effective, but hardly dominant, 6-foot-10 southpaw.



There were brief glimpses of the old Unit -- a pitch in on the hands of Nick Johnson that moved the first baseman's feet; a fastball blown by Austin Kearns in the second inning for one of his two strikeouts on the evening -- but even those glimpses betrayed the older, less discomforting Johnson. The pitch he blew past Kearns was clocked at 92 mph on the Nationals Park scoreboard as opposed to the 97 or 98 you might have seen when he was in his prime.

But Johnson -- who, yes, did crack the exceedingly rare smile of his on multiple occasions as No. 300 became reality -- seemed to take pleasure even in his new not-quite-as-dominant pitching persona.

"I'm actually going out there and pitching," Johnson said.

Instead of blowing hitters away, he pounded the strike zone and let the defense behind him do the work.

Center fielder Aaron Rowand made a terrific sliding snag of a sinking liner in the first inning. Second baseman Emmanuel Burriss topped Rowand with a sliding stop and glove flip to shortstop Edgar Renteria in the fifth inning that started a double play and kept Johnson out of serious trouble. Then Johnson got in on the nifty glove work with a diving throw to retire Anderson Hernandez at first in the sixth inning; his clumsy landing on the play resulted in a bruised shoulder that left Giants manager Bruce Bochy with no choice but to pull him after 78 pitches.

"He doesn't power his way through lineups [anymore]," Bochy said of Johnson's remade pitching style.

Bochy managed the Padres from 1995-2006, so he had to deal with Johnson as an opponent during his prime with the Diamondbacks and has watched him transform into the pitcher he is now.

The one thing that hasn't changed?

What Bochy called Johnson's "maniacal focus" on game day – an internal determination that not even the Great D.C. Flood of 2009 could drive out of him.

"Everybody defines me as surly," Johnson said, "but I wouldn't change that, because on the day I pitch, that's my day. I've worked extremely hard in the weight room and video room, so when I succeed out there with the help of my teammates, in some regards, I feel like that's my reward.

"There's no guarantee you're going to be rewarded every fifth day, but I feel a whole lot better knowing I put in the work than I would if I hadn't."

All that hard work, all that "maniacal focus" and pent-up aggression has been rewarded 300 times now, and while it might be tempting to put a nice little bow on Johnson's Hall of Fame career, he's not finished.

"I think I'm satisfied, but I've never been content, and that's probably why I never got caught up in the accomplishments," he said.

"300 wasn't on my mind [the last few years]. It was just a matter of I wanted to get through [back] surgery, be healthy and prove that I could pitch. That was much more important to me because 300 wasn't really on the horizon when I was going through all these back surgeries."

Turns out after multiple procedures, one in 2006 and another in 2007, Johnson got both – proof he could still pitch effectively and secure that magical 300th win.

Now he can turn his attention back to helping the Giants over the final four months of the 2009 season, and the rest of us can look to the future and wonder if we'll ever see another reach the plateau Johnson just did.

"Anything's possible at this point if you stay healthy and motivated and driven to succeed," Johnson said of another pitcher winning 300 games.

Anything except being as fearsome as the Big Unit has been for the last 22 seasons, that is.