Walter Johnson Reflects on His Amazing 21-Year MLB Career
Baseball’s pitching legend learned a lot during his lengthy tenure on the mound
When discussing the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball, any conversation must have right-hander Walter Johnson on the short list. Although he last threw an official pitch nearly a century ago, “Big Train” remains one of the most dominant hurlers to have ever played the game. In addition to his talent, he was a well-regarded and reflective man, who according to an interview he gave towards the end of his playing days came to have important reflections and insight from his time as a big leaguer.
Johnson spent his entire career (1907–1927) with the Washington Senators. He accumulated a record of 417–279 with a 2.17 ERA and an all-time record of 110 shutouts. His win total is second, his ERA is 12th and he is third in innings (5,914.1). In addition to two MVPs, he led the American League in wins six times, ERA five times and strikeouts a whopping 12 times. It was little surprise when he became part of the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame class in 1936.
Speaking to Lillian Barker of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Johnson reflected at length about his career and baseball in an interview that appeared in the January 18, 1925 issue of the paper, including emphasizing his belief of how important pitching is to a team’s success:
“It has been said that pitching strength is 50 percent of a ball club’s effectiveness. I’ll even go further than that. It is my opinion that pitching constitutes two-thirds or three-quarters of baseball. From this it follows that it takes great pitchers to make a great ball team.”
While Johnson believed in the importance of pitching above all else, he wasn’t so vain that he didn’t recognize that success was found in other places on a team:
“Mathewson helped to make the Giants great. Bender helped to make the Athletics great, Cy Young made his teams great. But as important as they are to a ball club, pitchers cannot make a good team all by themselves.
“Good support is always essential. The team that relies wholly on a pitcher to pull it out of a hole isn’t the kind of a team that I would want to be on. The greatest of pitchers — and I not exclude anyone — could not win a game without proper support. To do so he would have to strike out every batter on the other side.”
The early days of professional baseball garnered a reputation of being played by uncouth and rough men. Johnson, a high school graduate, believed that had wholly changed during the course of his career.
“It takes intelligence to play ball. The class of men who play professional baseball now is far superior to those who played the game years ago. On the average there are more intelligent men in the game than there has ever been before.
“College men are to be found in almost every team in professional baseball. There are, of course, many men who have never been to college who are engaged in the game and who are highly intelligent. What draws these men nowadays is not only the money that can be earned in the profession, but the cleanliness of the game and the high standards to which the game has been raised. Young men who in the past would frown upon a baseball career, no longer view it as anything else than a profitable as well as an enjoyable and worthy vocation.”
Johnson also believed that baseball had taken important steps to remove dishonesty from its rank and file. This primarily was addressed by taking on gambling and players throwing games for money,
“The indignation with which the public reacted to the Chicago scandal in connection with the World’s Series of 1919 testified to the public’s sentiment in respect to the national game. It certainly made it clear that crookedness in baseball would not be tolerated…
“In my opinion one of the outstanding acts in connection with these scandals was when Charles Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox , got rid of the undesirable members of his club and unhesitatingly took heavy losses in an effort to wipe out the stain on the record placed there by no fault of his own.”
Naturally, Johnson was a lover of baseball. His ideals of the game reflected his belief that it was a perfect sport and was where dreams could possibly come true with dedication and hard work:
“Love of the game will not permit any player to flag in his play, to excuse his errors or to be content with the record he has made. The real ball player is never satisfied with his work. He constantly strives to cover more ground, to field more cleanly, to run faster, to throw more quickly, to pitch more effectively, to hit harder.
“I remember in my kid days when it seemed that fate had placed me in a mood to like baseball how all the boys used to gather at every opportunity to practice doing all kinds of stunts on the ball field.
“Those who wanted to become pitchers would make a mark about the size of a catcher’s mitt against the side of a barn and standing away from it the regulation distance we would keep throwing and throwing at the mark until we could hit it and hit it often.”
One of the more wholesome and likeable figures in the history of the game, Johnson was also among the most successful. Yet, his demure style has somewhat placed him in the shadows as the years continue to pass from when he last played. However, make no mistake about it, he is a crown jewel of baseball and will forever be an all-time great.
