Walter Johnson

Walter Perry Johnson pitched 21 seasons for the Washington Senators, a team that finished in the second division more often than not, and still won 417 games. He threw 110 shutouts, a record that nobody has come close to touching. Pete Alexander is second with 90. Johnson held the career strikeout record from 1921 until 1983, when three different pitchers passed him in the same season. He threw one pitch, a fastball, and for most of his career that was enough.

Kansas to Washington

Johnson was born on a farm in Allen County, Kansas, the second of six children. His family moved to Olinda, California, when he was 14, and his father took a job in the oil fields. Johnson pitched for semipro teams in Southern California and then in Weiser, Idaho, where he went 14-2 with a 0.55 ERA and threw 77 consecutive scoreless innings in 1907. Joe Cantillon, who managed the Senators, heard reports about the kid in Idaho and sent scout Cliff Blankenship to see him. Johnson signed his first professional contract that summer.

He debuted on August 2, 1907, against the Detroit Tigers. Ty Cobb was in the opposing lineup. Cobb later described the experience in detail. "The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. Every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park."

Cobb's summary was simpler. "Just speed, raw speed, blinding speed, too much speed."

The Fastball

Sportswriter Grantland Rice gave Johnson his nickname, "The Big Train," around 1911, comparing his fastball to a speeding locomotive. Johnson threw with a distinctive sidearm motion, a sweeping delivery that generated exceptional velocity from an easy, almost casual windup. A 1917 test at a munitions laboratory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, measured his fastball at 134 feet per second, roughly 91 miles per hour, a speed that few if any contemporaries could match.

He relied on the fastball almost exclusively for his first several seasons, adding a curveball around 1913. By then, the fastball had already made him the most feared pitcher in baseball. He won 20 or more games in twelve seasons, including ten consecutive from 1910 to 1919. In 1913, widely regarded as the greatest pitching season of the modern era, he went 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA, 243 strikeouts, and 11 shutouts in 346 innings. He won roughly 40% of his team's victories that year.

He set an American League record with 55 and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings in 1913, a mark that stood until Don Drysdale broke the overall record in 1968. He won 38 games by a score of 1-0 and lost 26 more by that same score, both records.

The Gentleman

Johnson was known as much for his temperament as his arm. He never argued with umpires, never threw at hitters, never used foreign substances on the baseball, and never got into a fight. His sportsmanship earned him a set of nicknames distinct from "The Big Train." Sportswriters called him "Sir Walter," "The White Knight," and "The Gentle Johnson."

His reluctance to pitch inside was genuine and well-documented. He worried that his fastball could seriously injure someone. Ty Cobb recognized this and deliberately crowded the plate against Johnson, knowing the pitcher would not retaliate. Despite his restraint, Johnson still hit 205 batters over his career, among the highest totals in baseball history, a consequence of sheer velocity rather than intent.

Shirley Povich of the Washington Post, who covered Johnson for years, wrote that he "more than any other ballplayer, probably more than any other athlete, became the symbol of gentlemanly conduct in the heat of battle."

October, Finally

The Senators were rarely good enough to reach the World Series, and Johnson spent 17 seasons without a postseason appearance. In 1924, at age 36, he finally got one.

He lost Game 1 in 12 innings. He lost Game 5. Washington trailed the New York Giants three games to two heading into Game 6. The Senators won that game to force a Game 7, and manager Bucky Harris called Johnson out of the bullpen in the ninth inning.

Johnson pitched four scoreless innings of relief. He worked out of jams in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, striking out George Kelly with the go-ahead run in scoring position. In the bottom of the twelfth, with the score tied 3-3, Earl McNeely hit a grounder toward Giants third baseman Fred Lindstrom. The ball took a bad hop over Lindstrom's head and bounced into left field. Muddy Ruel scored the winning run. Washington had its first and only championship.

The following October, Johnson returned to the World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He won Games 1 and 4, both complete games. In Game 7, played on a field that the grounds crew had set on fire to dry, Johnson carried a 6-4 lead into the seventh inning. Roger Peckinpaugh committed two errors. Kiki Cuyler drove in two runs with a controversial ground-rule double. The Pirates won 9-7, and Johnson absorbed the loss in steady rain and thickening fog.

After the Mound

Johnson managed the Senators from 1929 to 1932, compiling a winning record but no pennants. He managed the Cleveland Indians from 1933 to 1935 with similar results. Critics said he was too gentle for the job. He ran for Congress in Maryland in 1940 as a Republican and lost, having barely campaigned. His opponent reportedly said, "I never met an opponent like Walter. He never said one unkind or uncomplimentary thing about me."

His wife, Hazel, had died of heatstroke in 1930 at age 36, leaving Johnson to raise five children alone. He spent his later years on his farm in Germantown, Maryland, doing radio broadcasts and occasional public appearances.

Johnson died of a brain tumor on December 10, 1946, in Washington. He was 59. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1936 as part of the inaugural class, receiving 189 of 226 votes, fifth among the first five inductees behind Cobb, Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Christy Mathewson.

Povich wrote his epitaph in the Post. "He's referred to as a legend. A legend, according to Webster, is a bit mythical. There's nothing mythical about Walter Johnson. He existed, and he was probably the greatest pitcher who ever lived."