Quietly Doing the Right Thing
Most regular TAH readers know I’m a baseball fan. Indeed, one of many things that p!ssed me off at the now-4-years-deceased Usama bin Laden is that my post-9/11 mobilization required me to travel on 4 November 2001 – the night of game 7 of the 2001 World Series.
At the time, I was an Arizona resident. And yes: if you lived in Arizona and were a baseball fan, that was indeed a magical year.
I’d have given much to have been in Bank One Ballpark (now Chase Field) that night. I’ve talked to someone who was there; when a certain very tall guy walked out of the bullpen to pitch in relief with 2 outs in the top of the 8th, it was truly an electric moment – followed by an equally electric moment about 15 minutes or so later when Luis Gonzalez choked up and hit a soft single off a guy named Mariano Rivera into center field in the bottom of the 9th to end the game.
That very tall guy was, of course, Randy Johnson. This Sunday he’ll be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
But that’s not what this article’s about.
. . .
Most regular readers know I’m a fan of Johnson the pitcher. I personally think he’s got a great case for being the best lefty ever, bar none. IMO his career is what Koufax’s career might have been absent arthritis and injury.
But I’m an even bigger fan now. Because Johnson has quietly done something that you may not have heard much about if you live outside Arizona – and he appears to have done it simply because it was the right thing to do.
Johnson today remains hugely popular in Arizona; he’s still employed by the Diamondbacks today as a special assistant. In honor of Johnson’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, at the request of the Diamondbacks the state of Arizona was planning to temporarily rename State Highway 51 in his honor.
There’s just one issue. The highway – a freeway in the Phoenix metro area – already has a name. It’s the “Piestewa Freeway.”
As in SPC Lori Piestewa, US Army – a Native American resident of Arizona who was KIA in Iraq on 23 March 2003.
It turns out no one had asked the Piestewa family their opinion on the temporary renaming. And to put it mildly, they weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea.
After hearing of the family’s objection, neither was Johnson. You see, Johnson is also a rather large (no pun intended) backer of the US military. He’s made 3 different USO tours to Afghanistan in support of US troops. He’s trying to arrange bringing two Wounded Warriors to his Hall of Fame Induction.
So a few days ago, after hearing of the Piestewa family’s objections, Johnson apparently asked that the plan to temporarily rename the road be scrapped. It was. The highway will remain named the Piestewa Freeway. It won’t be temporarily renamed in his honor.
Would it have been better had someone approached the Piestewa family earlier? Certainly. That should have happened well before it did. IMO, someone should have asked that family’s permission for the proposed temporary renaming long ago – and abided by their wishes either way. That would have avoided the problem.
Still: here, the right thing happened. And it apparently happened because of one man saying, “No – that’s not the right thing to do. I’d prefer you didn’t do that for me.”
I always respected Johnson as a fierce competitor and an athlete. But now, I respect him even more as a man with his head “screwed on straight”.
Well done, Mr. J. Damn well done.
Category: Baseball, Military issues, Veterans Issues
Great story … as usual!
I agree, great story – I always liked the man that Johnson is and liked him even better when he pitched for the Yankees during the 2005 and 2006 seasons.
And we were sitting at work today talking about these commercials that had Randy Johnson in them. I didn’t even know about the Hall of Fame ruckus.
https://youtu.be/pVOlw6PIjBE
and
https://youtu.be/kAE9DupriyI
I render a hand salute to The Big Unit.
It was, indeed, the right thing to do.
Watched him pitch a few games when he was with the Mariners. And on an unrelated topic Bergdahl got busted in a pot raid. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/24/bowe-bergdahl-found-during-california-pot-raid-released-by-officials/
Nucsnipe: actually, Bergdahl and another individual were present, but weren’t “busted”. They were released with no charges filed.
Draw your own conclusions as to why he was there at all. In theory, it could be a mere coincidence. Or maybe not.
However, rumors floating around out there that I’ve heard – at least one supposedly from a CIA source – is that Bergdahl was either high and/or looking for hashish when he got nabbed by the Taliban. I have no idea if those rumors are correct or not.
That wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Bose Bergdahl is a walking pile of Phil Monkress!
Correction, Bowe Bergdahl, sometimes I just love that mother forklift of an auto-correct!
True, but you can bet he has now gotten paperwork for a command directed urinalysis. What are the odds he pisses dirty?
A soft spoken devout Christian….just a decent guy.
My rotation if I could pick’em: G. Maddux / P. Martinez / R. Johnson / M. Bumgarner / C. Kershaw
Bumgarner and Kershaw’s careers have yet to play out completely, so maybe including them is a bit premature. But even so, if we’re talking everyone at their peak I think I’d take either Seaver or Gibson plus Koufax over Bumgarner and Kershaw.
….and Mariano in for the save.
Assuming a 12-man pitching staff and everyone in their prime, for the bullpen I’d go with Rivera, Smoltz, Wagner, Quisenberry, Gossage, Lyle, and Wilhelm. That gives me two great lefties, a right-hander with a submarine motion, a knuckleballer, and 3 of the best “conventional” right-handed relievers ever.
I hate to leave Eckersley and Hoffman off the list, but you only have so many slots for pitchers. If I decided to go with a 13-man pitching staff and only 12 position players, I’d probably take Eckersley- as a former starter, that would give me a third pitcher who could perhaps do long relief and/or make a spot start if required (Smoltz and Wilhelm were also successful starters).
Sniffle, sigh, and shuffle my feet a little.
How about a little Cubbie love?
Bruce Sutter and Lee Smith were pretty good back in the day.
They were – and they would have been damned good choices, too. But both were right-handers, and I’ve already got 5 of 7 right-handers in the bullpen.
Quisenberry or Sutter is a damned hard call. In the end, I went with Quisenberry because his submarine motion was so funky that it made him damned difficult for most to hit the first few times they saw him.
Roger.
Another funky submariner was Kent Tekulve. Both he and Quis were fun to watch and could really stymie the batters.
Tekulve reference is for my son, a very rabid Pirates fan.
He was a hoot to watch. Looked like he was hurling himself off the mound sideways.
I also remember a fellow named Roberto Clemente. They pitched to him about four feet off the plate. Carefully.
The best rotation on a single team (in my memory, at least) were Palmer, Dobson, McNally, and Cuellar on the Orioles. Four 20-game winners on one team in 1971.
Dunno about that. The early/mid 1990s Braves had 3 future CYA winners and HOFers (Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz) – plus Steve Avery, who was pretty damn good himself. I think their 1993 rotation matches up damn well against that of the 1971 Orioles.
Wins are IMO a hugely overrated measure of how well pitchers are pitching. Just look at Nolan Ryan’s 1987 season.
That year, Ryan led the majors in Ks, FIP, H/9, K/BB, and K/9; and led his league in ERA and ERA+. But because of poor run support, his W-L record was a whopping 8-16.
Ryan finished 5th that year in CYA voting because of his W-L record. He should have taken the award.
Johnson was a heck of a pitcher and threw fireballs that many hitters could only smile at, when they weren’t breaking their bats in frustration. Johnson bounced around MLB but the D’backs had him when it counted most. As often happens with guys who can throw in the triple digits, the strike zone was not his friend for years. When he found it consistently, he was in his 30s and pitched well into his 40s. I always liked Johnson. He was a throwback guy who worked hard and never made the news for the wrong reasons.
29, actually – he managed to get command of the plate in 1993, which was his breakthru year. He didn’t turn 30 until that September.
That year – plus the next 11 – were a run of sustained pitching greatness with few equals in baseball history.
Here’s a point I find fascinating: Johnson is tied with Nolan Ryan for the most 300k seasons in the modern era (post 1900), and maybe in baseball history – I haven’t checked pre-1900 thoroughly, and some of the early pitchers pitched hellacious numbers of innings and racked up huge strikeout totals until they broke down. He and Ryan each have 6 such seasons.
However, the 1994 strike may well have cost Johnson 2 additional 300 K seasons. He was on a pace to strike out 300 in 1994, having struck out 204 in 23 starts; over a full season, he’d make 34 or 35 starts. And the late start to the season in 1995 (also due to the strike) robbed him of another probably 4 or 5 starts in that season – when he struck out 294 batters in 30 starts. My guess is he’d have hit 300 Ks in both of those seasons had the strike not occurred.
Johnson also had 2 other seasons where he struck out 290 or more batters – 1996 (291, in 29 starts, after having back surgery the year before) and 2004 (290, in 35 starts – at age 40, after having knee surgery the previous year). Had things gone slightly differently, he conceivably could have finished his career with 10 seasons with 300 or more Ks.
He was indeed a Giant among men – especially the day he got his 300th win. (smile) I’m still kicking myself for passing on going to that game because of projected bad weather and the need to be on duty early the next day.
Good on him for doing the right thing here.
It’s not clear from the article, but even if the great highway naming gurus wherever they reside did not give the family veto rights, they should at least have given them a heads up that it was happening. Simple courtesy, which seems now to reside with common sense somewhere in the ether.
Yeah, this wasn’t handled well. It makes the family of the soldier killed sound like the bad guys. They aren’t the bad guys. The uncle said, in so many words, that the sacrifice his niece made and a baseball player’s accomplishments on the field aren’t comparable. And who would argue otherwise?
Since we’re on the topic of baseball, I’ll relate the following from this week. Quick background: my wife has been hospitalized off and on since March so my 5 year old son and I have not been living at home.
He is doing a summer program at his pre-school. On Tuesday, the camp took the kids to a Dunedin (FL) Blue Jays game (single A). Apparently the stadium’s film crew asked if any of the kids wanted to be interviewed on the field. Most of the kids were shy but mine jumped at the chance to talk and be the center of attention. He was interviewed on the jumbo tron; he told them his full name and that he wants to be an animal rescuer when he grows up.
He got to sit in the dugout with the players while the game was on. At some point he got to go stand near 1st base. After a play at 1st, the first baseman gave him the ball. At some point, the team gave him a Dunedin Blue Jays hat and even the pizza guy gave him a stuffed pizza guy mascot. He was thrilled. I was on a business trip when I heard this story and it made my day. The team made his day special and we’re going back to another game soon. My hat’s off to the D-Jays.
What a great story.
That is a memory that will stay with him for the rest of his life.
Sounds like you have the makings of a great young man there.
Stand proud !!!
That World Series that the Diamondbacks won was probably the best I recall since 1960 when the Pirates beat the Yankees.
I scored some tickets right behind home plate in 1995 and had the pleasure of watching Randy Johnson pitch. My god I don’t know how anyone could hit him. Glad for him that he found a team to help win a ring. The Mariners were never serious contenders after he left.
My wife always refers to the Mariners as the farm team for the Yankees
So does mine… before hissing the word “traitors”. A giant Red Sox fan… as I bleed Cardinal red it makes for some interesting Series.
As long as you’re talking pitchers, Mr. Mathewson and Mr. Paige would like a word with you.
I’m not much of a pro sports fan – multi million dollar cry babies playing in stadiums paid for with hard earned tax dollars stolen from the citizens. And then gettin’ jailed for beating on the wife of kids. Wouldn’t cross the street to meet one of ’em.
Howsomever, this Randy Johnson fella is a class act !!!
BZ Mr. Johnson, hand salute.
The Big Unit always had class. I see he’s still got it!