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Walter Johnson
Pitcher
Born: November 6, 1887(1887-11-06) Humboldt, Kansas
Died: December 10, 1946 (aged 59) Washington, D.C.
Batted: Right	Threw: Right
MLB debut
August 2, 1907 for the Washington Senators
Last MLB appearance
September 30, 1927 for the Washington Senators
Career statistics
Win-Loss record	417-279
Earned run average	2.17
Strikeouts	3,508
Shutouts	110
Teams
As Player Washington Senators (1907-1927) As Manager Washington Senators (1929-1932) Cleveland Indians (1933-1935)
Career highlights and awards
2× AL MVP (1913, 1924) World Series champion (1924) All-time major league leader in shutouts (110) Major League Baseball All-Century Team
Member of the National
Baseball Hall of Fame
Induction	1936
Vote	83.63

Walter Perry Johnson (November 6, 1887–December 10, 1946), nicknamed "The Big Train," was a right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball between 1907 and 1927. One of the most celebrated players in baseball history, Johnson established several pitching records, some of which remained unbroken for nearly a century.

[edit] Early life

Walter Johnson was the second of six children born to Frank and Minnie (Perry) Johnson on a rural farm four miles west of Humboldt, Kansas.^[1] Although sometimes said to be of Swedish ancestry and referred to by sportwriters as the "The Big Swede", Johnson's ancestors came from the British Isles^[2].

Soon after he reached his fourteenth birthday, his family moved to California's Orange County in 1902. The Johnsons settled in the town of Olinda, a small oil boomtown located just east of Brea. ^[3] In his youth, the young Walter Johnson split his time between playing baseball, working in the nearby oil fields, and going horseback riding.^[3] Johnson later attended Fullerton High School where he struck out 27 batters during a 15-inning game against Santa Ana High School.^[3] He later moved to Idaho where he doubled as a telephone company employee and a pitcher for a local Weiser, Idaho-based baseball team in the Idaho State League. Johnson was spotted by a talent scout and eventually signed a contract with the Washington Senators on July 1907 at the age of nineteen.

[edit] Baseball career

Johnson won renown as the premier power pitcher of his era. Ty Cobb recalled his first encounter with the rookie fastballer:

"On August 2, 1907, I encountered the most threatening sight I ever saw in the ball field. He was a rookie, and we licked our lips as we warmed up for the first game of a doubleheader in Washington. Evidently, manager Pongo Joe Cantillon of the Nats had picked a rube out of the cornfields of the deepest bushes to pitch against us... He was a tall, shambling galoot of about twenty, with arms so long they hung far out of his sleeves, and with a sidearm delivery that looked unimpressive at first glance... One of the Tigers imitated a cow mooing, and we hollered at Cantillon: 'Get the pitchfork ready, Joe-- your hayseed's on his way back to the barn.'

...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. We couldn't touch him... every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park."^[4]

Although a lack of precision instruments prevented accurate measurement of his fastball, in 1917, a Bridgeport (Conn.) arms laboratory recorded Johnson's fastball at 134 feet per second, which is equal to 91.36 miles per hour (147.03 km/h). This speed is not unheard of today, but it was virtually unique in Johnson's day, with the possible exception of Smoky Joe Wood. Unusually, Johnson pitched with a sidearm motion, whereas power pitchers are normally associated with a straight-overhand delivery.

The overpowering fastball was the primary reason for Johnson's exceptional statistics, especially his fabled strikeout totals. Johnson's record total of 3,508^[5] strikeouts stood for more than 55 years until Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, and Gaylord Perry (in that order) all surpassed it in 1983. Johnson is now 9th on the all-time strikeout list, but his total must be understood in its proper context. Among his pre-World War II contemporaries, only two men were within a thousand strikeouts of Johnson: runner-up Cy Young with 2,803 (706 strikeouts behind) and Tim Keefe at 2,562. Bob Feller, whose war-shortened career began in 1936, later ended up with 2,581.

Walter Johnson on a 1909-1911 American Tobacco Company baseball card (White Borders (T206)).

As a right-handed pitcher for the Washington Nationals/Senators, Walter Johnson won 417 games, the second most by any pitcher in history (after Cy Young, who won 511). He and Young are the only pitchers to have won 400 games.

In a 21-year career, Johnson had twelve 20-win seasons, including ten in a row. Twice, he topped thirty wins (33 in 1912 and 36 in 1913). Johnson's record includes 110 shutouts, the most in baseball history. Johnson had a 38-26 record in games decided by a 1-0 score; both his win total and his losses in these games are major league records. On September 4, 5 and 7, 1908, he shut out the New York Yankees (then known as the New York Highlanders) in three consecutive games.

Three times, Johnson won the triple crown for pitchers (1913, 1918 and 1924). Johnson twice won the American League Most Valuable Player Award (1913, 1924), a feat accomplished since by only two other pitchers, Carl Hubbell in 1933 and 1936 and Hal Newhouser in 1944 and 1945.

His earned run average of 1.14 in 1913 was the fourth lowest ever at the time he recorded it; it remains the sixth-lowest today, despite having been surpassed by Bob Gibson in 1968 (1.12) for lowest ERA ever by a 300+ inning pitcher. It could have been lower if not for one of manager Clark Griffith's traditions. For the last game of the season, Griffith often treated the fans to a farce game. Johnson actually played center field that game until he was brought in to pitch. He allowed two hits before he was taken out of the game. The next pitcher - who was actually a career catcher - allowed both runners to score. The official scorekeeper ignored the game, but later, Johnson was charged with those two runs, raising his ERA from 1.09 to 1.14.

In 1913, also, Johnson won 36 games. The entire team won 90, so Walter finished with 40% of the team's total wins for the season.

Although he usually pitched for losing teams during his career, Johnson finally led the Washington Nationals/Senators to the World Series in 1924, his 18th year in the American League. Johnson lost the first and fifth game of the 1924 World Series, but became the hero by pitching four scoreless innings of relief in the seventh and deciding game, winning in the 12th inning. Washington returned to the World Series the following season, but Johnson's experience was close to the inverse: two early wins, followed by a Game Seven loss.

President Calvin Coolidge (left) and Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson (right) shake hands.

Although his Hall of Fame plaque reads that he pitched 'for many years with a losing team,' during his career the Senators finished in the first division 11 times, and the second division 10 times. In Johnson's first five seasons, Washington finished last twice and next-to-last three times. But they came close to winning the pennant in 1912 as well as the following year, which were Johnson's two 30-win seasons. Then, for the next decade, they typically finished in the middle of the pack before their back-to-back pennants.

Johnson was a good hitter for a pitcher, compiling a career batting average of .235, including a record .433 average in 1925. He also made 13 appearances in the outfield during his career. He hit over .200 in 13 of his 21 seasons as a hitter, hit three home runs in 1914, and hit 12 doubles and a triple in 130 at bats in 1917. Johnson finished his career with 23 home runs, the ninth-highest total for a pitcher in Major League history.

Johnson had a reputation as a kindly person, and made many friends in baseball. As reported in The Glory of Their Times, Sam Crawford was one of Johnson's good friends, and sometimes in non-critical situations, Johnson would ease up so Crawford would hit well against him. This would vex Crawford's teammate, Ty Cobb, who could not understand how Crawford could hit the great Johnson so well. Johnson was also friendly with Babe Ruth, despite Ruth's having hit some of his longest home runs off him at Griffith Stadium.

In 1928, he began his career as a manager in the minor leagues, taking up residence at 32 Maple Terrace, Millburn, New Jersey, and managing the Newark team of the International League. He continued on to the major leagues, managing the Washington Nationals/Senators (1929-1932), and finally the Cleveland Indians (1933-1935). Johnson also served as a radio announcer for the Senators during the 1939 season.

One of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, Walter Johnson retired to Germantown, Maryland. A life-long Republican and friend of President Calvin Coolidge, Johnson was elected as a Montgomery County commissioner in 1938. In 1940 he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives seat in Maryland's 6th district, but came up short against the incumbent Democrat, William D. Byron, by a total of 60,037 (53%) to 52,258 (47%).^[6]

At 7:00 PM, Tuesday, December 10, 1946^[7] Johnson died of a brain tumor in Washington, D.C., five weeks after his 59th birthday, and was interred at Rockville Union Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland^[8].

[edit] Additional facts and details

• Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland has been named for him. The monument to him that once stood outside Griffith Stadium has been moved to the school's campus. The school's yearbook is called "The Windup" and the newspaper is called "The Pitch."

• The baseball field in Memorial Park, in Weiser, Idaho, is called Walter Johnson Field.

• Johnson was the first American League pitcher to strike out four batters in one inning.

• A team in the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League in Bethesda is named the "Big Train" in honor of him.

He was also called "Sir Walter", "the White Knight", and "The Gentle Johnson" because of his gentlemanly gamesmanship, and "Barney" after auto racer Barney Oldfield (he got out of a traffic ticket when a teammate in the car told the policeman Johnson was Barney Oldfield)^[8]. In 1985, the rock musician Jonathan Richman recorded a song entitled "Walter Johnson" that celebrated Johnson's kindness.

In 1999, The Sporting News ranked Johnson number 4 on its list of Baseball's 100 Greatest Players, the highest-ranked pitcher.^[9] Later that year, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

Johnson's gentle nature was legendary, and to this day he is held up as an example of good sportsmanship while his name has become synonymous with friendly competition. This attribute worked to Johnson's disadvantage in the case of fellow Hall of Famer Ty Cobb. Virtually all batters were concerned about being hit by Johnson's fastball, and many would not "dig in" at the plate because of that concern. Cobb realized that the good-hearted Johnson was privately nervous about the possibility of seriously injuring a batsman. Almost alone among his peers, Cobb would actually stand closer to the plate than usual when facing Johnson.^[10]

Johnson's rookie season was Cobb's third, and Johnson retired one year before Cobb. He faced Johnson at bat more times in their overlapping careers than any other hitter-pitcher combination in major league history.

Johnson was mentioned in the poem "Line-Up for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:

[edit] Statistics

Career Statistics:

Pitching

Hitting

* Strikeouts not counted for batters until 1913 in the AL, 1910 in the NL.

[edit] See also

• 300 win club
• 3000 strikeout club
• List of Major League Baseball leaders in career wins
• List of Major League Baseball ERA champions
• List of Major League Baseball no-hitters
• Triple Crown
• List of Major League Baseball strikeout champions
• List of Major League Baseball wins champions
• MLB All-Time Hit Batsmen List
• Top 100 strikeout pitchers of all time
• MLB all-time leaders in home runs by pitchers
• Major League Baseball titles leaders

[edit] References

[edit] Other Sources

• Thomas, Henry W. (1995). Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train (Washington, D.C.: Phenom Press) ISBN 0-9645439-0-7
• Povich, Henry W. and Shirley Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train Thomas (Bison Books. April 1998)
• Kavanagh, Jack Walter Johnson: A Life (Diamond Communications. March 25, 1995))
• Robison, Robert S. Walter Johnson King of the Pitchers (New York: Julian Messner, 1961)

[edit] Related reading

• Burns, Ken Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred A. Knope. 1994)) ISBN 0-679-40459-7

[edit] External links

• Baseball Hall of Fame – Member biography
• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference
• Baseball Hall of Fame: Washington's 'Big Train' first to 3,000 strike
• Find-A-Grave
• virginia.edu - Walter Johnson play-by-play for the Washington Senators game on September 21, 1939
• Walter Johnson at the Internet Movie Database
• Baseball Almanac