Randy Johnson’s retirement leaves Pedro all by himself

As someone that came up in the early-90s, I have a special place in my heart for the top pitchers of that era: Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez and the now retired Randy Johnson. Sorry Roger Clemens fans (all three of you), but this is a douchebagless list I’m running here.

I’m not sure we’ll ever know if what we saw out of that group was “un-enhanced”, but all I do know is Randy Johnson led that group with some of the most ridiculous stats this game has ever seen, post-integration (and I say post-integration because I’m not impressed by what Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson did against a segregated population). And even if The Big Unit was roided out of his mind, the man struck out 372 equally roided-up guys in 2001 on the way to winning the World Series.

If it weren’t for the strike-shortened seasons of 1994-95 and battling injuries in 1996-97, Johnson could have had 10-straight years with 300+ strikeouts. As it stands, he still hit that mark in six of the those seasons and had 294 and 291 in two other seasons during that span. In other words, the man was a pitching god.

Of course, most folks in Philly will remember Johnson for making John Kruk shart in his pants a little during the 1993 All-Star Game. Just by watching that video again makes you think that standing in there against Johnson must have been like you or I standing in there against an average major leaguer. That’s just how dominating this guy was for most of his career: He turned major league hitters into bloggers.

It looks like Pedro’s all we have left, and it was a pretty nice treat to have him pitch in this town while he did, even if he couldn’t get us past the Yanks. I’d love to see him back here, but he’s definitely the last holdover from a time when pitchers were somehow putting up video game numbers on the mound against hitters with video game numbers at the plate.