Jamestown had no shortage of Johnsons in 1985. When Randall Johnson reported to the Jamestown Expos in June, there were six pages of them in the phone book of this Scandinavian settlement. Two of them were named Randall.
And when the 6-foot-10 kid from Southern California packed his duffel in late August, never to return, the other two Randall Johnsons were still better known than he.
Jamestown reached the New York-Pennsylvania League playoffs despite him, not because of him. He didn’t win a game, averaging barely four innings per start with a WHIP (walks + hits per inning pitched) that would embarrass a softball slo-pitcher.
Phil Mule’s Jamestown baseball history “Across the Seams” tells of a terrible temper, saying he once sat out a month after breaking his hand punching a wall. “Basically, they shut him down here,” recalls Jamestown baseball historian Greg Peterson.
Furthermore, they hid his bonus.
Peterson remembers that every day Johnson would come into General Manager Greg Wren’s broom-closet office in ancient (even then) Jamestown College Park and ask if his check had come in yet. It was $100,000 (US, presumably). Johnson had been a second-round pick, 36th overall.
(For comparison, 2014’s 36th pick, Albert Almora, signed with the Cubs for $3.9 million.)
Wren had the check, secreted in a desk drawer. Montreal wasn’t sure it wanted to release it yet.
Eventually, Wren handed it over. Its value was not in its numbers, but in the investment it represented. Surely no 20th-round, busfare-bonused 0-3 pitcher with 24 walks and 21 strikeouts in 27 innings would be promoted to “High A” the following year.
He went 8-7 at West Palm Beach. Another prospect, John Smoltz, would go 7-8 a few miles away at Lakeland. Both were elected last week to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Five years later Pedro Martinez, also with the Expos and Cooperstown in his future, would start his pro career at 16-3.
Peterson never saw the side of Randy Johnson that hit walls: “It was just that he couldn’t hit the glove… a very pleasant young man, really. Polite.” Doing some legal work for the Expos, Peterson went to major-league headquarters where he found Montreal announcer and baseball icon Duke Snider dispensing autographs. Peterson got in line; there was Randy Johnson three ahead of him. “I got my picture taken with Duke,” Peterson says. “It never occurred to me to get one taken with Randy.”
Cooperstown, maybe.
MORE PROSPECTS: Johnson hasn’t a team to go home to. Jamestown’s (formerly Niagara Falls’) team has moved to Morgantown, WV. Occupying Johnson’s old punching bag this summer will be a team in the mostly Midwestern Prospect League. Jamestown spurned advances from the New York State Collegiate League, a much better fit. Its shortest trip now (to Butler, PA) would be shorter than its longest jaunt (to Geneva) in the NYSCBL. But how far to Cooperstown? Ask Randy.
Signal back to Base Paths via pollyndoug@hotmail.com
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