Teams:
As a player:
Washinton Senators (1907-1927)
As a manager:
Washinton Senators (1929-1932)
Cleveland Indians (1933-1935)
Career Statistics:
Win-loss: 417-279
W-L%: .599
Earned Run Average: 2.17
Strikeouts: 3,508
Base-on-Balls: 1,363
Complete Games: 531
Shutouts: 110
Innings Pitched: 5,914.1
Walks Plus Hits Per Innings Pitched: 1.061
Walter Perry Johnson was born on a rural farm near Humboldt, Kansas. When he was fourteen, his family moved to Orange County, California. When he was young, he busied himself playing baseball, working the oil fields, and riding horses. He attended Fullerton High School, where he managed to strike out 27 batters during a 15-inning game against Santa Ana High School. Later, he moved to Idaho where he worked for the local telephone company and pitched in the Idaho State League. In 1907, at the age of nineteen, he was spotted by a scout and soon signed a contract with the Washington Senators.
The surly Ty Cobb remembered him from his rookie season thusly: "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 (a name the Senators were sometimes known by) 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 ballpark."
At the time, there was no reliable radar equipment to clock the speed of Walter Johnson's fastball. In 1917, a Connecticut munitions lab recorded his fastball at 134 feet per second (about 91.36 mph). This would've been an amazing speed at this point in baseball history, as weight training and conditioning didn't play the significant part in players' development as they do today. He also pitched with a submarine-style delivery, which made things especially difficult for right-handed batters, as the ball often looked to be coming from third base.
Johnson held the record for most career strikeouts for 55 years until Nolan Ryan finally claimed the top spot. He currently ranks ninth on the all-time strikeouts list. This is also impressive considering only two other pre-World War II pitchers ever fanned more than 1,000 batters in a career: Cy Young and Tim Keefe. Johnson is also only one of two pitchers to have ever won more than 400 games in a career (along with Cy Young, who won 511). Johnson managed to accumulate twelve 20-win seasons during his 21 year career, ten of which were consecutive. His stats also include 110 shutouts, which remains a record to this day. Sixty-five of the games he lost were due to the fact that his team failed to score a run.
In 1913, 1918, and 1924, Walter Johnson won the pitcher's Triple Crown, and twice (1913 and 1924) won the American League Most Valuable Player Award.
In 1913, Johnson won 36 games. In April and May of that year, he pitched 55.2 consecutive scoreless innings.
Though he often played on a losing team, Johnson finally led his team to the 1924 World Series. He lost the first and fifth games of the Series, but later pitched four scoreless innings in relief during Game Seven, winning the Series for the Senators. Walter led them to the Series once again the following year, but his experience was the opposite: wins in the first two games, and a loss in the seventh game.
Johnson was also a fairly accomplished hitter with a career batting average of .235, including a .433 average in 1925. He also made thirteen appearances in the outfield during his career. In 13 of his 21 seasons, he hit over .200, hit three homers in 1914, and 12 doubles and a triple in 1917. For his career, he had 23 home runs, which remains the ninth-highest total for a pitcher.
He began his managerial career in 1928, managing the Newark, New Jersey team of the International League. He later moved up to the majors, managing the Washington Nationals/Senators (1929-1932) and the Cleveland Indians (1933-1935).
Johnson was one of the first five players to be elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1938, he served as a commissioner in Montgomery County, Maryland. In 1939, Johnson worked as a radio announcer for the Senators. In 1940, he ran for Maryland's 6th district Congressional seat, but ultimately lost to William D. Byron. On Tuesday, December 10, 1946, Johnson died of a brain tumor at the age of 59.
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