by Kirby Arnold
Griffin told Ryan about the issues Johnson was facing, and he asked if Ryan might be able to talk with him when the Mariners played at Texas during the 1992 season. Ryan said he’d be glad to and, on the Mariners’ first trip there in June, he didn’t forget his promise.
“Bring him over and we can talk for about 15 minutes,” he told Griffin.
Griffin introduced Johnson to Ryan about 6:15 p.m. and went back to the Mariners’ clubhouse to prepare for the game, which started at about 7:00.
“They were only going to talk for 15 minutes, but Randy didn’t come back to our clubhouse until the fourth inning,” Griffin said. “It was about eight o’clock, and he’d been talking with Nolan all that time.”
Ryan told Johnson about his off-day throwing program, and how he doesn’t always throw off the mound between starts in order to take the stress off his arm. They talked about how much Ryan runs and lifts between starts. They talked about pitching mechanics, and Ryan said he’d noticed Johnson landing on his heel instead of the ball of his right foot when he delivered a pitch.
“Randy started doing all that stuff they talked about, and all of a sudden he just took off,” Griffin said. “That was a turning point.”
The following season, Johnson’s walks went down and his strikeouts went up. He went 19–8 the next season and pitched an impressive 255⅓ innings.
Johnson became the cornerstone of the Mariners’ rise to their first division championship. He won 13 games in the strike-shortened 1994 season, then went 18–2 with a league-best 2.48 earned run average and won the American League Cy Young Award in 1995, when the Mariners made their incredible late-season surge to win the American League West title.
“If we’d lost three or four in a row, the Unit would pitch and he would stop the streak,” said Lee Elia, the hitting coach under manager Lou Piniella in the mid-1990s. “And if we’d won four or five in a row, the Unit would keep it going for another four or five.”
That once-erratic left-hander also shucked his wild side, never again walking more than 99 in a season. He still hit batters, but that could have been as much intimidation as wildness.
Yes, Johnson got into the heads of hitters.
“He’s the most fiercely competitive person I know,” Griffin said. “He will intimidate you and do what he’s got to do in order to win. He brings the same intensity to a baseball game that you would find in a football player.”
That intensity would begin long before Johnson took the mound. For a whole day before his starts, it was best to avoid him. Henry Genzale, the Mariners’ clubhouse manager, once asked Johnson—on the day he was to pitch—if he needed a new pair of socks.
“It’s not my day to talk,” Johnson barked. “Don’t bother me.”
There was another incident when the Mariners were on a cross-country flight. Johnson, who’d had a tough day, was in the back of the plane playing cards when a flight attendant spilled a drink on him.
“Randy got pissed, stood up and hit his head on a bulkhead,” Krueger said. “That really set him off and he came storming up the aisle, then he punched the emergency exit sign right off the ceiling of the plane. For a while we thought we would have to make an emergency landing, but it turned out one of the crew on the plane knew how to fix it.”
Johnson, never the best-liked ballplayer, had run-ins with the media and conflicts with teammates, including one that escalated into a clubhouse fight in 1998. Johnson became upset when Mariners teammate David Segui turned up the volume on the clubhouse stereo. The confrontation got physical, and media reports said Segui shoved Johnson into his locker. Segui suffered a sprained right wrist and missed a game.
When reporters asked Segui how he was injured, he wasn’t apologetic.
“I hurt it on a 6-foot-10 piece of sh—,” Segui said.
Maybe some teammates had that opinion of Johnson, but it was far from universal. Krueger got to know him as a good person who worried about things he shouldn’t have.
“He be asking, ‘How many walks do I have?’ and ‘Where’s my ERA now?’” Krueger said. “He could be a pain in the ass. Some days when Randy was in a bad mood, he could brush you off with the best of them.
“But Randy has a good heart. He cares about other people. A lot of things happened in his life. He was self-absorbed to a degree and some of that changed. His father passing was a huge blow in his life and to meet [his wife] Lisa in a short window of time changed his life. His priorities changed and he was able to direct his energy and commitment and the rage that was inside of him to become a great pitcher.”
As the years went by, Johnson felt less and less appreciated by the Mariners. He’d never gotten over an incident before the 1993 season when he was in the team offices just after the Christmas break. Team president Chuck Armstrong innocently asked Johnson how his holidays had been. Unknown to Armstrong, Johnson’s father had died of an aneurism during the holidays.
Johnson’s relationship with the Mariners soured significantly in 1998 when the club refused to offer a contract extension beyond that year. He became a frequent subject of trade rumors and grew tired of the increasing number of questions about his future.
Johnson, a 20-game winner in 1997, was just 9–10 after 23 starts in ’98 and the widespread speculation was that he had intentionally tanked the season. Those who knew Johnson well believed he took just as much desire to the mound as always, but the distraction over his future undermined his effort to win.
Just minutes before the July 31 trade deadline, Mariners general manager Woody Woodward completed a deal with the Houston Astros, who needed pitching help to make a late-season push in their division. The Mariners got two of the Astros’ top minor-league prospects, pitcher Freddy Garcia and shortstop Carlos Guillen, plus a player to be named later (pitcher John Halama).
With the Astros, Johnson was nearly unbeatable the rest of the season. He made 11 more starts, going 10–1 with a 1.48 ERA. The sudden surge to Johnson’s old form further infuriated Mariners fans who believed he gave up on the club in his final Seattle season.
Johnson went on to play for the Diamondbacks (pitching them to the 2001 World Series title), Yankees, and Giants before retiring after the 2009 season. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015.
“A lot of people, for whatever reason, don’t like him, they don’t understand him or they choose to think he’s a terrible guy,” Griffin said. “Randy is an extremely complex individual who nobody is going to completely figure out. But … he’s one of my favorites.”
Edgar Martinez: The Game’s Greatest DH
Benny Looper, the Mariners’ longtime director of player development, had a personal policy when it came to handling minor leaguers: Never give up on a kid after one season, no matter how badly he struggles. He may develop into a productive player capable of propelling a losing team into contention. He might become an All-Star.
Or, in the case of Edgar Martinez, he could become a player whose tireless work ethic would transform him into one of the most-feared hitters of his era and achieve baseball’s highest honor—a place in the Hall of Fame.
Edgar Martinez. Photo by Joe Nicholson/The Herald of Everett, Washington
In 1983, Martinez was a 20-year-old from Puerto Rico who struggled like few who’d ever make it beyond the Class-A level in the Mariners’ organization. He batted .173 that year for the Bellingham Mariners, getting 18 hits in 104 at-bats, with just two extra-base hits.
Martinez was worried.
“Every year that I played since Little League, I was the best hitter on the team,” he said. “In all the leagues I played, I was the batting champion of the team or the best player. Then I got to Bellingham, and I was shocked that I couldn’t hit. I was concerned, but deep down I knew that I could hit.”
Martinez did hit, and it didn’t take him much longer to get started. He batted .303 the next year at Wausau, when he showed his first signs of power with 15 home runs and 66 RBIs.
Three years later, in 1987, Martinez
batted .329 at Triple-A Calgary and earned a September call-up to the Mariners. The next year, back at Calgary, he led the Pacific Coast League with a .363 average.
“That was the first time that I thought I could play in the big leagues,” he said. “I remember thinking that what I was doing there, I could do in the big leagues. I knew I could hit.”
By 1989, Martinez was the Mariners’ starting third baseman and on his way to becoming one of baseball’s all-time best right-handed hitters. Over 18 seasons, he won batting championships in 1992 and 1995, played in seven All-Star Games, and finished his career with 2,247 hits (including 514 doubles), 309 home runs, a .313 batting average, .418 on-base percentage, and .515 slugging percentage.
No at-bat is remembered as fondly as the moment Martinez dug into the batter’s box in the 11th inning at the Kingdome on October 8, 1995. The Mariners trailed the New York Yankees 5–4 in the fifth and deciding game of the American League Division Series, and Martinez came to bat with Joey Cora on third base and Ken Griffey Jr. on first with nobody out.
Facing Yankees right-hander Jack McDowell, Martinez stroked a line drive into the left-field corner, scoring both Cora and Griffey to beat the Yankees 6–5 and send the Mariners into the American League Championship Series against the Cleveland Indians.
“The Double” is considered one of the best moments in Seattle sports history.
“I’ve seen the replay of that so many times, that is the picture of it that’s in my mind now,” Martinez said. “I remember going to the plate thinking of it as just another at-bat. A very important at-bat, though.”
Get this: Martinez says it wasn’t the biggest performance of his career.
That occurred the previous night, when the Yankees jumped to a 5–0 lead over the Mariners and seemed on their way to clinching the series. Then, in one of the great individual performances in postseason history, Martinez took over.
He hit a three-run homer in the third inning to cut the Yankees’ lead to 5–3, then belted a grand slam off John Wetteland in the eighth inning to put the Mariners ahead 10–6 in a game they won 11–8.
“I see that game as the biggest in my career, because we had to come from so far behind in such a critical game,” Martinez said.
He was the first player in postseason history to drive home seven runs in a game and finished with a .521 average in the series.
For all Martinez did with the bat, he was a leader in the clubhouse who made those around him better players. Bret Boone credits Martinez with helping restore his career in 2001.
Boone had batted over .300 only once in his career, .320 with the Reds in 1994, but wanted badly to resurrect his stroke after signing with the Mariners as a free agent before the 2001 season. He remembers a talk with Martinez at spring training that changed his approach to hitting.
“I know I can hit .280 and drive in 90 runs and hit 20 home runs,” Boone told Martinez. “But I can do better than that. I want to hit .300.”
“Why are you settling for .300?” Martinez told him. “Why not aim for .340?”
“But my career average says I’m a .280 hitter,” Boone said. “Although I did hit .320 one year.”
“Does that mean you can’t do it again?” Martinez asked. “You should shoot for .340.”
The discussion got deeper, delving into the mental approach to hitting and how Martinez separated his thought process from the mechanical aspects of his swing.
Boone went on to have the best season of his career, batting .331 with 37 home runs and 141 RBIs.
“That was a big turning point for me,” Boone said. “I came with a lot of experience and I was in the best shape of my life, and I had one of the greatest hitters of our era at my side to pick his brain. Edgar didn’t have the natural ability of guys like Barry Bonds or Ken Griffey Jr., but he was a gifted hitter, and he was one of the greatest players I’d ever seen in his heyday.”
Martinez retired after the 2004 season, went into business in the Seattle area, and spent more time with his family. He was the Mariners’ hitting coach in 2015 and kept that job through 2018, then became a hitting advisor for the organization in a position that allowed more family time.
When he retired, only one question remained about Martinez’s phenomenal career: Is he a Hall of Famer?
By the long-held Hall of Fame standards, Martinez didn’t quite reach the traditional measuring sticks of 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, and there also was considerable sentiment that a DH shouldn’t be considered a fulltime player, no matter his offensive numbers.
His first year on the ballot, Martinez received only 36 percent of the vote by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, with 75 percent needed for enshrinement. He dipped to 25 percent in 2014, even though it had become clear when looking deeper into his statistics that Martinez had produced Hall-worthy numbers beyond hits and home runs. He was one of only 10 players in major league history with at least 300 home runs, 500 doubles, 1,000 walks, an on-base percentage better than .400, and a career batting average better than .300.
Whether because of greater awareness of advanced statistics, a changing electorate more willing to look past traditional standards (the BBWAA instituted rules that eliminated voters who hadn’t covered the game regularly the previous 10 years), or a combination of both, Martinez gained momentum in his final years of eligibility. He was named on 59 percent of ballots in 2017 and 70 percent in 2018.
In 2019, his 10th and final year of eligibility, he received 85 percent to become the third Mariner to gain enshrinement, along with Griffey and broadcaster Dave Niehaus.
Interestingly, the others in the Hall’s class of 2019 were pitchers who Martinez dominated in his career—Mariano Rivera, the late Roy Halladay, and Mike Mussina. He batted .579 with a .652 on-base percentage and 1.053 slugging percentage against Rivera, the Yankees closer who became the Hall’s first unanimous selection. Martinez batted .444/.474/.722 against Halladay and .307/.337/.627 against Mussina.
“One key for me, I didn’t try to do too much against [Rivera],” Martinez said. “If I did, even ahead in the count, I would fail. So I had to simplify and just try to make contact and whatever happens happens.”
That approach turned Martinez into one of Seattle’s greatest sports heroes.
Jay Buhner: Power at the Plate, Strength in the Clubhouse
In right field, nobody had a stronger arm than Jay Buhner. At the plate, when he’d get on a hot streak, no ballpark could contain him for weeks at a time. In the clubhouse, no Mariner was so instrumental in instilling the desire, confidence, and work ethic to get the most out of his teammates as Buhner.
The Mariners of the mid- and late-1990s featured some of the game’s all-time greats—Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Alex Rodriguez, Lou Piniella—and they won division championships in 1995 and 1997. One by one, the stars left Seattle. But even though Johnson, Griffey, and Rodriguez were gone, the Mariners continued to play well and reached the playoffs in 2000 and 2001. A common thread to all those teams was Buhner.
He brought a passion to the clubhouse. He made himself accountable; he made his teammates accountable. He would chew them out, then take them to dinner.
“Jay would get in guys’ faces, in the clubhouse or on the bench,” said head athletic trainer Rick Griffin, who became one of Buhner’s best friends. “He would say, ‘What are you doing? That’s not how you play ball. That’s not how you win.’ Nobody ever challenged Jay.”
At the same time, Buhner was a friend who everybody cherished.
“Jay was the most generous player I’ve seen in my life,” Griffin said. “For seven or eight years, every time we went into another city after a day game, he would grab the young players and some of the veterans, eight or 10 guys, and he would take them to dinner at a nice restaurant. And I mean a nice restaurant, and he would pay for it every time. They would offer to pay and he wouldn’t let them. Do that 10 or 15 times a year for seven or eight years, that’s a lot of money.”
“What can we do to get better?” he would ask his teammates. “What can we do to win? We’re facing the Red Sox the next three days, so how do we beat them?”
Buhner learned that when he was a rookie with the Yankees, when Don Mattingly and the veterans would take the young players to dinner and imprint them with the mark of a winner.
He played his first major-league game with the Yankees on September 11, 1987, but came to the Mariners the following July in a trade that sent slugging first baseman Ken Phelps to New York. The trade was a blessing to the Mariners.
Buhner’s best years were 1995, ’96, and ’97, when he hit at least 40 home runs and drove in 100 runs each time. During that three-year stretch, he hit 124 homers and drove in 368, and in 1996 Buhner finally was rewarded for his defense with a Gold Glove. It wasn’t a coincidence that the Mariners won two division championships during Buhner’s most productive years.
“Those were fun years because we were having fun and winning games,” Buhner said. “It was a blast, getting a chance to come into my own, putting up some power numbers and being surrounded by a great group of guys.”
Jay Buhner hits a home run in 2001. Photo by Stephanie S. Corde/The Herald of Everett, Washington
Buhner also established a record of injuries that no Mariner may beat. His hard-charging style was hell on his wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, and feet. Griffin had a human anatomy chart in the training room at Safeco Field, and during one offseason he decided to log all of Buhner’s injuries on it. There were 89.
“The players [would] come in and see that and think, ‘There’s no way somebody could have that many injuries and still play,’” Griffin said.
Probably the strangest injury occurred after a game when Buhner was wrestling with a tape cutter, trying to free his heavily wrapped ankle. The cutter slipped and Buhner stabbed himself in the forehead.