Perpetual Heat

In December 1992, he and Lisa, then his fiancée, traveled from Seattle to the Bay Area to spend Christmas with Johnson's family. Johnson's father had had bypass surgery around Thanksgiving and was recuperating well. When Johnson and Lisa finished breakfast on their first day in the Oakland area, the phone rang: Johnson's father, who lived near Sacramento, had been taken to the hospital with blood clots in his legs.

Johnson and his siblings piled into a car for the two-hour drive from Oakland to the hospital in Sacramento. But when they got there, Johnson recalls, "My mom walked out of the room and I could tell by her face that my dad hadn't made it."

Johnson was crushed. As the youngest child, he'd been doted on, and he felt a strong bond with his father. They would frequently talk after games, and even as a major leaguer, his dad would take him to task if he had walked any batters.

"I said my goodbyes to him -- which were kind of difficult when you see your dad dead right there," he says, his voice cracking with the memory. "But I made a promise to him and a promise to myself that I'd work harder and do whatever it took to make him proud of me."

At first he wasn't sure if that would involve baseball. He thought of quitting, but after talking with his mother, he decided to keep playing. And he ended the year a more serious man and a more serious competitor.

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The 1993 season was a breakthrough year for Johnson. He led both leagues in strikeouts and finished second in the Cy Young balloting. The next two years went just as well, and in 1995 he won the Cy Young. But he blew out his back in 1996 and lost most of the season to the injury and the subsequent surgery.By then, Johnson was increasingly being labeled a griper and a grudge-holder, especially by the press.

"Randy has got that prima donna complex and needs to feel good all the time," says Art Thiel, a sports columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "His numbers speak eloquently about him, but Randy is insecure."

And, according to Thiel, the Seattle Mariners couldn't deal with that.

Johnson didn't help matters. He was reportedly jealous of the attention lavished on Seattle's other superstar, Ken Griffey Jr. He repeatedly brought up a perceived slight -- when the team president asked him how his father was, after his father had died. If a reporter made an unfavorable remark about him in print, Johnson would refuse to speak to that reporter.

When the Mariners first threatened to trade Johnson, Thiel wrote a column saying, as he paraphrases, "Sure he's a whiner, sure he's eccentric, but don't trade the guy."

It was a favorable column, but the next time Johnson saw Thiel in the clubhouse, he said, "So, I'm a complainer?"

One beat writer accused Johnson of being a quitter because he was babying his back after surgery. After that, Johnson would not talk to anyone if that reporter was in the room.

The accusation cut deep.

"I have never questioned Randy's heart or desire," Thiel continues, and he recalls a crucial series against the New York Yankees in 1995 when Johnson, a starter, and not yet rested from his last start, volunteered to do duty as a reliever.

"I remember Randy walking in gunslinger-style in the ninth inning to do battle," Thiel says. "It was absolutely spine-tingling."

Johnson had won more games and thrown more strikes than any Seattle pitcher, but talk of trading him continued into the 1998 season, and it took its toll on Johnson's performance. Finally, the Houston Astros took over payments on the last of Johnson's contract. He was set free and returned to pitching like a superstar in Houston.

"I was 35 years old, was coming off back surgery, and then maybe I was in a downside of my career," he says. "So a lot of things just motivate me to prove people wrong."

His friends and family felt the same way.

"That kind of stuff makes him want to excel even more," says Lisa Johnson.

"I think he really felt cheated that he'd given his whole body and soul to that team," says his friend and former neighbor Pat Birkel. "He referred to it as a marriage, and they ended up getting divorced. It really bothered him because he thought his career was going to be there. He noticed a big difference going to Houston."

Carol Johnson calls his departure from Seattle "a great day of sadness, almost like a bereavement."

Before the 1999 season, Johnson signed on with the Arizona Diamondbacks for a reported $52.4 million over four years. His annual salary is second only to Kevin Brown's of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"I said shortly after I signed my contract that I was grossly overpaid," he says. "Pat Birkel [a firefighter] saves lives. He pulls people from burning buildings. He rescues drowning children. You can't put a price on that, and yet I get paid more than him."