A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE BIGGEST UNIT CASTS THE LONGEST SHADOW: The Big Unit retired today.

I've been overly statty lately, and Randy Johnson's numbers make their own irrefutable arguments, so I'll leave the stats aside. At 6'11", the long, thin Johnson was one of the most unusual physical specimens in baseball. A wild and ineffective slinger in his early career in the Montreal system, my beloved Mariners acquired him (and others) for a half-season of Mark Langston and watched him grow into an elite talent (for those looking for a "Jack Morris Game 7 Moment," he delivered the second-greatest moment in the greatest game ever played, when he caused total bedlam in the Kingdome during his walk from the bullpen to the mound for three innings of one-run relief – and the win – on one day's rest). Seattle shipped him to Houston in a controversial contract-year trade: Johnson was injured and, for him, subpar in the half-season before the trade; he got healthy for the rest of the season and essentially won the division for Houston. Some misguided Seattle fans see this as evidence of malingering to force a trade, but I think this is wrong -- it wasn't in Johnson's makeup to soften his performance. He went to Arizona the following year, where he made Schilling unashamed to be a distant-second starter, won a World Series and notched the best post-40 pitcher season in baseball history; spent a couple of (still decent) decline years in the Bronx (where he was about as good, relative to the league, as Jack Morris was in his prime); and twilighted in San Francisco.

There are other pitchers during Johnson's career who could lay at least an equal, and maybe -- maybe better, claim to being the best, but of that club of sublime pitchers in the last two decades, Johnson was the most feared member. With a low, wide left-handed delivery that appeared to reach around left-handers' heads, hundred-mile-an-hour heat, and occasional wildness (like the discharge over Kruk's head in the All-Star Game), lefties always had to fear taking one on the chin, even while Johnson was slipping it right in the sweet spot. But Johnson had three plus pitches – his heater, his curve, and a murderous slider, which meant that if lefties cowered when he unfurled his left arm, righties were no happier to see that oversized appendage swinging toward them.

The Unit was prickly, probably because his prominence (at his size, it was impossible not to stick out) interfered with his private nature. All that unsightly hair couldn't have helped. But he also was canny, analytical, and hard – very, very hard – to hit. Of the modern players least likely to be duplicated, Johnson, with his size, power, and stamina, must be the foremost.

P.S.: When he goes to the Hall, his hat should have an S on it.