Second Time Around

Way better than the first.

Take John Kruk’s word for it. No batter wanted to face this sight. (Image credit: MLB.com)

Recently, I wrote about my (and Ben Zobrist’s) divorce. And while the experience was painful — the divorce, not the article, hopefully — it got me thinking about how lucky I’ve been in my second go-around at marriage. We celebrated our ninth anniversary earlier this year, and it’s easily been the best extended period of my life.

Naturally, I wondered how I could connect this to baseball, because that’s what I do here, and the answer was obvious. I wanted to write about a player who didn’t work out at their first MLB stop, but made it all click with their second.

MLB history has no shortage of examples for this type of player, but I wanted to pick someone everyone would recognize for this analogy. In the end, I settled on one of the best pitchers of all time, Randy Johnson.

Believe it or not, Johnson was nothing extraordinary as a minor leaguer in the Expos system. He had some success, but just as much, if not even more failure, and no one expected anything special from him in the big leagues just by looking at his track record. Not for nothing, this lines up with my pre-marriage dating life better than I like to admit.

Nevertheless, Johnson got his first call up to the Show in late 1988, and everything started out fantastic, not unlike my first marriage. The Big Unit*, as he would come to be called, started four games with a 3-0 record, 2.42 ERA, 25 strikeouts, and a 1.154 WHIP. One of the wins was even a complete game.

*To the best of my knowledge, my first wife has never referred to me as the Big Unit. She called me lots of names over the years, some good, most of them bad, but never that one.

I will say this about my first marriage, we had more than a few good years before our relationship got sideways. I can’t say the same about Johnson and Montreal. After that month of bliss to end the ’88 season, things went downhill fast.

Johnson began the 1989 season pitching like a shell of himself. He went 0-4 in six starts with a 6.67 ERA, 26 strikeouts, and a 1.854 WHIP. The Expos had seen enough and wanted out, not unlike my first wife. Eyeing a pennant run that never developed, they shipped Johnson, along with Gene Harris and Brian Holman to the Mariners in exchange for Mark Langston.

I’d love to tell you Johnson hit the ground running in Seattle and immediately made the Expos feel like morons, but that’s not really how it went. He finished the ’89 season in Seattle with a 7-9 record in 22 games, a 4.22 ERA, 104 strikeouts, and a 1.435 WHIP. I like to think this period correlates with my initial post-marriage dating life. Not a total waste, but far from a rousing success as I tried to reacclimate myself to unfamiliar territory.

But in the following season, Johnson found his groove, just like I did when I met my second wife. For us, it was meeting for dinner and staying up most of the night talking about medieval history and the English language. (We’re gigantic nerds, obviously.) For Johnson, it was a 14-11 record with a 3.65 ERA. Not eye-popping numbers, but anyone watching could see that something greater was taking place. Johnson earned his first All-Star nod.

He went 13-10 with a 3.98 ERA in 1991, but it was in 1993 he took the great leap forward and truly became the Big Unit. Johnson went 19-8 with a 3.24 ERA in 34 starts, and led the majors with an astounding 308 strikeouts. He finished second in the AL Cy Young race.

Two years later, in arguably the best overall Mariners season ever — many people will point to the record-setting 116-win season in 2001, but considering the way it ended, I think ’95 was actually better — Johnson got his Cy Young. He went 18-2 with a 2.48 ERA, 294 strikeouts, and 1.045 WHIP. By the way, he led the league in each of those last three stats.

Unfortunately for the M’s, after their dramatic comeback against the Yankees in the ALDS, they fell to Cleveland in the 1995 ALCS. But Johnson had arrived. For the rest of his career, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. His final career stat line of 303-106, 3.29 ERA, 4,875 strikeouts, 1.171 WHIP, and 101.1 WAR earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame.

Here is where I hope his story diverges from my marriage analogy. The last nine years of my life have been awesome. In terms of our relationship and home life, I have no complaints. We have a son (in addition to the older two boys I brought to the relationship), and we still talk and joke around and genuinely seem to like each other, which in my experience, is no given after living together for nearly a decade. We’ve traveled more than I ever have before, and at the same time we feel perfectly comfortable curling up on the couch and staying in. And one of the best parts is she’s been just fine with watching a lot of baseball with me.

The honeymoon didn’t last forever with Johnson and the Mariners though. He was absolutely dominant, but despite having some really good talent around him (Ken Griffey Jr. for starters), there just wasn’t enough to make it work for the long term. The Mariners made the postseason again in 1997, but that was the last time with Johnson. They traded him to Houston at the 1998 deadline.

Johnson helped the Astros reach the postseason, and signed with the Diamondbacks in the offseason. Interestingly enough, his fourth go-around was actually his best. Though it seemed impossible, based on his performance in Seattle, Johnson took it to a whole new level in Arizona. He won his only World Series in 2001, splitting the WS MVP award with fellow ace Curt Schilling. And then he won four straight Cy Young awards. Yes, you read that right. Four straight. Absolutely ridiculous.

Arizona wasn’t his last stop, but while Johnson wasn’t terrible as a Yankee, he was past his prime by the time he landed in the Bronx. He bounced around a little after that, but there’s no need to focus on that here. Let’s just celebrate the good times, like you should probably do whenever you examine a past relationship in the rearview mirror.

I will say this, however. If my wife ever gets tired of looking at me and kicks me to the curb, I totally plan on following the Randy Johnson path. My third marriage will be a short whirlwind affair, but not without its highlights. Then, that fourth marriage is really going to knock it out of the park.

Just kidding, sweetheart. I love you. And I hope I spend the rest of my life in our own little metaphorical Seattle.

---

Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. What are your thoughts on Randy Johnson? Any other players you can think of whose careers took off at their second stop?