From Wild Thing to Big Unit to 300

SAN FRANCISCO -- Even though Randy Johnson was the one who was pitching, catcher Dave Valle still woke up the next day with a sore left shoulder.

Valle, the Mariners' primary catcher in the early '90s, was the man who had to handle Johnson when he was more Wild Thing than Big Unit.

"The fastball would soar up and away (to righties) and if you'd catch it at the wrong angle, it would feel like your arm is going to be pulled out of the socket," Valle told FanHouse. "Then he'd throw that slider down at the back foot. So that was a lot of territory to cover for a catcher ...

"He was a rough day at the office for a catcher. He was throwing 100 mph and didn't have a real good idea where it was going."

In that sense, Johnson was no different from countless other hard-throwing, inconsistent pitchers who make short passes through the big leagues all the time.

Except Johnson got straightened out. In unprecedented fashion.

The five Cy Young Awards, 4,000-plus strikeouts and two no-hitters (including a perfect game) punched his ticket to the Hall of Fame long before he won his 300th game Thursday night in Washington. When Johnson is inducted into the Hall, he will have completed a remarkable journey.

Common sense tells you a lot of Hall of Famers must have had rough starts to their careers, but none were quite like Johnson's.

After his fourth full season in the majors, Johnson had a respectable 3.95 ERA, but he was 49-48 and he'd issued 519 walks in 818 innings.

Only two pitchers walked 500 batters in their first 800 innings and went on to make the Hall of Fame: Bob Feller and Nolan Ryan (appropriately, as you'll see).

Both of them reached the majors as teenagers, and had already become dominant by their mid-20s. Johnson was still lost on the mound at age 28. According to Baseball-Reference.com, the pitchers most similar to Johnson at that age were guys like A.J. Burnett, Jose Guzman, Walt Terrell and Odalis Perez.

Safe to say none of them will be joining Johnson in Cooperstown.

"He's what I would call a late maturer," Ryan said. "He was 6-foot-10 and trying to be consistent with extremities that long, trying to control his body. That's probably the biggest challenge he had as a developing pitcher. The remarkable thing is what he accomplished in his 30s."

Ryan, who was instrumental in Johnson's development through one significant moment, said now he marvels at Johnson's career: "For 10 or 15 years, he was one of the most dominating pitchers in baseball. I think (winning 300 games) pretty much completes his career."

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It was a career that began with high hopes, but plenty of issues. After the Expos grabbed Johnson out of USC with a second-round pick in 1985, they quickly realized they had a project on their hands.

Mark Gardner, who was in the same Expos draft class, moved up the minor-league chain with Johnson and saw first-hand his struggles.

"He had a lot of things to do," said Gardner, now the Giants' bullpen coach. "He velocity wasn't like it was in his prime. His location was off. He could walk three and strike out three. That's how unpredictable he was."

In four minor-league stops in the Expos system, Johnson had a 3.52 ERA, but he walked 333 in 462 1/3 innings. He frequently chucked balls to the backstop. His entire lanky body was out of control, evident by his 20 balks in one season.

Johnson got to the big leagues for 11 games with the Expos in 1988 and '89, but Montreal then shipped him off to Seattle in a deal for Mark Langston.

"I guess the people in Montreal didn't think he was going to pan out," Gardner said. "They were wrong."

Even in his early years with Seattle, Johnson still didn't have it together, on the mound or off of it.

"You knew there was a gifted arm, but a fragile individual," said Dan Warthen, the Mariners' bullpen coach in 1991 and pitching coach in 1992. "He questioned his ability. He questioned his ability to throw strikes. He wasn't fully confident in probably much of anything. I think he still felt he was a little awkward."

Warthen, now the Mets' pitching coach, said the Mariners tried over and over to get Johnson to make the mechanical changes he needed to be consistent, but the changes didn't stick and Johnson grew more frustrated.

"I think it would be frustrating to anybody," Warthen said. "He is in so many ways a perfectionist. He's a photographer, a natty dresser. Everything he tried to do, he tried to be the best at. When he'd get on the mound, he didn't have any idea where the baseball was going. The competitive juices were flowing. He'd miss with one pitch and then try to throw harder the next pitch."

Where Johnson Ranks, All-Time
Stat	Rank
Wins	24th (300)
Strikeouts	Second (4,845)
K/9	First (10.7)
ERA+	21st (136)
CG	57th (37)
Innings	38th (4,097 1/3)
K:BB	23rd (3.26)
H/9	22nd (7.27)

Johnson, to this day one who can stew over a poor outing, admitted he had trouble handling failure early in his career.

"Absolutely it was discouraging," Johnson said. "When you go out and perform in front of thousands of people and your teammates and you have high expectations and you don't meet those expectations, it's easy to get down on yourself. At a young age, those are the kind of things that weigh on you. As you get older, you realize that there will be inconsistencies. It's how fast you can get back to where you need to be."

In the spring of 1992, Johnson seemed to be there. Warthen, then his pitching coach, said Johnson had worked hard in Arizona to open the season with his mechanics just right.

Johnson pitched shutouts in two of his first three games. In May, the Mariners asked him to pitch on three days of rest, and he lasted only three innings. He struggled after that and ended up on the disabled list in June.

"He was miserable," Warthen said. "He was mad at us for asking him to do it. That was the low moment. I lost him for a month there."

In early August of that year, Johnson experienced the seminal moment of his career. The Rangers were in Seattle. Johnson was walking back from a bullpen session and he wasn't very happy with what he'd done. He ran into Ryan and Rangers pitching coach Tom House -- who had known Johnson because both played at USC -- and the three started chatting about mechanics. They agreed to come back out the next day and do some drills.

"They showed me what I had been doing and what I needed to do," Johnson said. "It was just some mechanics, staying back over the rubber, following through, having the same release point. It was stuff a lot of other people had emphasized, but it wasn't clicking."

"I guess the people in Montreal didn't think he was going to pan out. They were wrong."
-- Mark Gardner, Johnson's Expos teammateOne of the key changes was getting Johnson to land softly on the ball of his right foot, preventing him from pivoting and losing his release point.

"I just think Randy was on the verge of putting it all together at that point in his career," Ryan said. "I appreciate him giving me credit, but I really feel like if we hadn't visited that day, it wouldn't be long before he got it all together."

House, now the pitching coach at USC, still talks to Johnson regularly. He said that moment in Seattle "was like an epiphany, when you throw something at someone and it clicks. They look at you like it's magic. It's just a point in time. He was ready mentally and physically to change some things."

The uniqueness of the meeting was perhaps why it left such an impression on Johnson.

"It's kind of unheard of," Johnson said. "It meant a lot being Nolan, but it's unheard of to get advice like that from someone with another team. It doesn't happen too much."

Ryan said he didn't think anything of helping out Johnson -- who wasn't pitching against the Rangers in that series, by the way -- because so many people had helped him when he was young.

The results were unmistakable. He pitched a three-hit complete game in his next outing. He was 5-2 with a 2.65 ERA in his 11 starts after the Ryan-House meeting, including an 18-strikeout game against the Rangers in September.

"That's when he turned the corner and became the most dominating pitcher in the game of baseball," said Valle, who now works as an analyst for the MLB Network.

Valle remembered a game when Johnson was scuffling in the eighth inning, but clinging to a 2-1 lead.

"I went to the mound and said 'Look down at that bullpen. Is there anyone you want to hand this ball to, for your win?' He paused and said 'Let's go.' He struck out a guy, popped out a guy, and struck out a guy. I looked at him as he walked back to the dugout and said 'He's going to try to take you out of this ballgame. Don't let him.' We get back to the dugout and Bill Plummer, the manager, reached out to shake his hand, and Randy wouldn't shake his hand. He said, 'I'm not done.'

"Moments like that were the phenomenal moments to realize just how good he was."

You know the rest of the story. From 1993 through 2008, Johnson was 246-112, with a 3.08 earned run average. He struck out 11 batters per nine innings, while walking only 2.6. (Prior to 1993, he had walked 5.7 per nine.)

Aside from the five Cy Youngs he won, he finished second or third four other times.

The final line on his Hall of Fame resume was added on a dreary, rainy Thursday in June in Washington D.C., when he became the 24th member of the 300-victory club.

"From where he started to where he's at, he's made great great strides," Gardner said. "When you saw him young, I'm sure everybody saw potential, but they didn't realize this guy would win five Cy Youngs."