Randy Johnson's brushback tactics

Randy Johnson’s number will be retired later this year by the Seattle Mariners.

This is fun for everyone. I don’t want to call Johnson Seattle’s first true ace as Mark Langston—whom Johnson was traded for—was a hell of a pitcher, but Johnson was the first Mariner to win the Cy Young Award and an absolutely signature part of 1990s Seattle.

The news his number would be retired prompted the circulation of what has to be one of the odder quotes I’ve ever seen:

Turns out the story that quote is from is even crazier than the quote. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first we’ve got some ground to cover.

The Mariners were beaten 5-1 by the Orioles on Tuesday night.

The good: George Kirby was significantly sharper against Baltimore than he was in his first two starts after returning from the injury he suffered in spring training. Rowdy Tellez clobbered a home run off the window of the Hit It Here cafe.

It was his ninth homer of the year, and I was somewhat disappointed to learn he has 15 singles, which puts a crimp in my hopes of seeing him finish with as many home runs as singles in a season. However, I did figure out who he reminds me of. No, not Shrek. It’s Yukon Cornelius, the prospector from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” who actually dreams of being a dentist.

The bad: Kirby took a batted ball off the face on what turned out to be the final batter he faced. He deflected the initial blow with his pitching hand, but was bleeding from his mouth as he came off the field. He said afterward it didn’t really hurt, and he was fine moving forward. What a bad ass.

The ugly: Collin Snider came on to pitch the ninth, giving up two runs in the frame. It wasn’t the difference in the game, but it did add to what is an alarming total.

Over the past five games, the bullpen has blown three saves and given up 19 runs in the ninth and 10th innings, though to be fair, the Mariners did win two of those three games in which a reliever blew the save. Still, 19 runs in the ninth inning or later? Yikes.

I’ve been writing about my family’s history for a couple of years now. Part of that is the resolution of what was a years-long grudge I held against my stepfather. Part of that is how the grudge came to exist. This essay goes back to the first time he visited my family’s home, which was actually the day we buried my father.

It’s not as weird as it sounds. My stepfather was the principal of the school I attended along with my brother and sister. For years, I wondered what he was thinking about that day. Well, he told me not too long ago, and the answer should not have surprised me as much as it did.

In 1995, Randy Johnson told a reporter that he did not own a gun.

He did say he kept a bucket of baseballs by his bed, though, and that anyone who planned to rob him ought to come equipped with a batting helmet because he’d be throwing for their head.

As odd as this quote was, it turned out NOT to be craziest thing in the story in which it originally appeared:

Headline: In arms’ way — Machismo, fear pushing athletes to buy handguns, and analysts cringe

Date: July 20, 1995

I actually gasped when I read the first paragraph. I mean this wasn’t THAT long ago. I was 20 years old in 1995, and there were stories running in which metaphors for on-field performance were being used to intro a story on real-life death? Dearlordinheaven.

Now because the P-I was part of the Hearst newspaper chain, this story—or parts of it—appeared in a number of other papers around the country. Some of the display choices were … odd. SecretBase a great account of some of the odder juxtapositions.

Here in Seattle, the story was clearly a reaction to the death of Brian Blades’s cousin. In fact, the story that appeared below this one on the front of the sports section was about Brian Blades being charged with manslaughter in the death of his cousin. (Note: Blades was found guilty by a South Florida jury, but the conviction was overturned by a judge who ruled there was insufficient evidence to support the charge.)

Unfortunately, the P-I online archive is fairly non-functional so I can’t link to the full story. I had to look it up through the Seattle Public Library’s archive.

The story has not aged well. There’s a whole lot of hand wringing over whether athletes possess handguns because they think they’re special or entitled and must protect what they have. A police official pointed to the “macho personality that is produced by the physical violence of football.” An academic flat-out stated that athletes from poor urban environments were raised in an environment that normalized guns.

“It is part of the cultural norm and social norm,” said Dr. Stephen Ungerleider, a sports psychologist in Eugene, Ore. “They grow up around guns and are comfortable with them.”

Another academic then asserted the issue of guns transcended “the ghetto.” The art that accompanied the story certainly isn’t helping.

OK. I’m going to stop here because I went off looking for the story that produced this ridiculous quote from Randy Johnson and I wound up hip-deep in a 1995 think piece on firearms.

I don’t want to have an argument about guns and/or gun control. I am not providing an opinion on guns. I will simply say that gun ownership is not confined to any one specific demographic in America. People all over this country own guns, their right to do so written into the founding documents of this country. I’m not declaring that this is right or this is wrong. It is simply a fact, and it only makes sense, then, that a fair number of athletes—who similarly come from all over this country—own guns, too.

Nowhere does the story answer whether athletes own guns at a higher rate than the general population. It doesn’t even ask the question, and this fact undermines the entire premise of the story.

Though I suppose it did accomplish one thing: It gave us a hell of a quote from Johnson, which I finally reached the end where half a dozen Mariners were asked if they owned guns. One answer name drops Goose Gossage. Another mentions fruit loops. At the end comes Johnson’s gem.

Please note: Jim Street, who covered the Mariners for the P-I at the time, did not write the main story. Also, Jim Street is from Dorris, Calif., which is just across the border from the logging town where I grew up.