WILT Chamberlain once famously said that nobody loves Goliath. That may or may not be true, but it is incontrovertible that nobody much cares about a Goliath who has been cut down to size.
Randy Johnson was larger than life when he first pulled on Pinstripes a year ago, and that’s saying more than a mouthful about a man who stands 6-10. Now, however, he’s hardly half the pitcher he used to be.
And we’re all left wondering what happened to the rest of him.
It used to be an event when Johnson took the mound, used to create a sense of anticipation. You’d come to the ballpark and, as Joe Torre observed so often last season, almost expect something magical to happen.
Now, not.
Now, as Torre said after Johnson surrendered four runs on eight hits in six innings in yesterday’s 6-1 loss to the A’s, “It’s never out of your mind that [something special] might happen, but the fact that he’s still searching right now, I’d say it’s doubtful to expect that.
“As far as unrealistic, no, but it’s doubtful.”
When Johnson was a snarling, sneering, obnoxiously overpowering force on the mound, his failures were as proportionately colossal as his successes. Now, though, and in less time than it takes to get crosstown by car during rush hour in Manhattan, his failures have morphed into the ordinary. And if there’s one adjective that’s never before been associated with Johnson, it’s just that – ordinary.
The Yankees aren’t about ordinary.
Nobody quite cares much about ordinary.
Ordinary is as ordinary was, which was Johnson’s pitching line yesterday. The fact that Torre, the left-hander himself and catcher Jorge Posada all claimed encouragement by the effort that began with Oakland scoring three first-inning runs on four hits – including left-handed hitter Mark Kotsay’s home run – only indicates how low the floor had dropped under the Unit.
Actually, Johnson had entered the game with a 5.01 ERA, 35th best among all AL starters, which likely is stretching the definition of ordinary. He left with the 36th-best ERA in the league at 5.13, leapfrogged in fact by his Oakland opponent Dan Haren, who lowered his own ERA to 4.40 with a commanding six-hit, complete-game performance in which he kept the Yankees guessing all afternoon.
With Johnson, it’s anybody’s guess. Yes, it’s true, he survived the three-run first inning in which he threw 36 pitches. Yes, it’s true, he dug in to keep the Yankees in the game, surrendering only one more run before departing after six. All due credit where credit is due.
But the fact is that the homer Johnson allowed to Kotsay was his first to a lefty in 37 starts dating back to last April. And the fact is the homer he surrendered to Jay Payton in the sixth was the Oakland outfielder’s first homer in 214 at-bats dating back to last September. And the fact is that six of the first seven batters on whom Johnson reached two strikes got on base. The knockout punch appears gone.
There’s no way of knowing exactly how far gone the arm is that has produced 4,408 punch-outs across a major league career that began with the Expos in 1988. Is Johnson merely in a protracted slump? Will adjustments in his arm slot provide a solution? Or, after 3,646 major league innings, is he on the same fast-track slide that Warren Spahn, the greatest left-hander ever, encountered almost overnight just over four decades ago?
At 42, Spahn went 23-7 in 1963 for the Milwaukee Braves. The next year, he was 6-13, 1-9 in his last 10 decisions. The year after that he was pitching for the Mets, then the Giants, and then he was gone.
Overnight. Over the winter. Gone.
Now, Johnson is 42 and on a slippery slope.
And cut down to size.
Nobody cares about that kind of a Goliath.