All-Star Chris Sale Pays Tribute to Hall of Fame Hero Randy Johnson

PHOENIX — Atlanta All-Star pitcher Chris Sale stood at his locker late one night and couldn’t stop talking about himself, praising him, extolling every ounce of his being.

“Other than my dad and my grandparents,” Sale said, “he’s about as influential in my life as anybody else.

“I just wanted to be like him.

“And throw like him.”

Sale was talking about 6-foot-10 Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson.

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So how well do you know each other?

“I never spoke to him,” Sale said.

Oh, but at least you’ve already met him, right?

“Never met.”

Have you at least exchanged messages with him via social networks? or have mutual friends?

“No.”

And yet there he was, talking about a 60-year-old legend and his uniform number, 51.

The one Johnson, a five-time Cy Young Award winner, including four straight with the Arizona Diamondbacks and winning the 2001 World Series championship, wore when he came out of the bullpen for Game 7 against the New York Yankees on zero days’ rest.

“That’s why I changed my number, in honor of Randy,” said Sale, who wore No. 49 with the Chicago White Sox and No. 41 with the Boston Red Sox. “I wanted to start fresh. It’s like starting over. So why not start with one of the greatest lefties of all time?”

“I grew up trying to be like him and now I get to wear his number.”

Johnson, who was escaping the 116-degree heat in Arizona by staying at his summer home in Newport Beach, Calif., listened to the praise Wednesday and couldn’t believe his ears.

Of course, Johnson knows he’s been admired, even revered, by his fellow left-handed pitchers over his 21-year career. Still, to hear an eight-time All-Star, who finished in the top six of the American League Cy Young voting seven times, speak of him with pure adulation was an immense compliment.

“I’m flattered,” Johnson told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s unbelievable. To have that kind of influence on a young guy that I’ve never met before, it’s pretty cool. I really wish I could have met him when I was playing.”

“I really admire his work. Tell him not to have any regrets.

“You think you’re going to play your whole life, but injuries happen as you get older and time is running out. The window is closing and you can’t get those lost years back. He’s not 25 anymore. He has to maximize those last years.”

Johnson, who is struggling to recover from knee replacement surgery last November and has had too many surgeries on both knees to count, not to mention back surgeries, knows what it’s like to deal with time.

Johnson was one of the most dominant and feared pitchers in baseball. From 1997 to 2002, he on average 20 wins, 340 strikeouts and 248 innings pitched per year, with a combined total of 19 shutouts. He had three other seasons of at least 16 wins, two seasons of 200 strikeouts and finished 2^nd in the 2004 National League Cy Young voting at age 40, but his body eventually gave out.

“Tell him he’s still a young pup,” Johnson said. “I know he’s been hurt, I know he’s had some frustrations along the way, but he’s got plenty of time. He’s just got to do everything he can to stay healthy, stay on the mound instead of in the training room.”

Sale, 35, flashes a wide smile when asked about his feelings. He’s doing everything he can to have his first healthy season since 2017 and is dominating once again with a 12-3 record and a 2.74 ERA. He leads the league in wins, first in strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.18), second in WHIP (.094), third with 136 strikeouts and third with an opponent’s batting average of .201.

Yeah, just like old times.

“I feel pretty good, really good to be honest,” Sale said. “This is my eighth All-Star team, and they all feel pretty special, but obviously after going through a tough time the last few years with injuries, I’m really pleased to be able to be back.”

But to suggest that Sale thought that day would come, uh, think again.

“No, that’s impossible,” Sale said with a laugh. “Are you kidding me? Playing baseball was satisfying enough, but to be an All-Star is an incredible honor.”

Sale helped the Red Sox win the 2018 World Series, earning a five-year, $145 million contract extension, but then spent the next five years as a human piñata in Boston. He was injured every year, averaging just four wins and 75 innings per season.

You name the body part and Sale injured it.

There was the left elbow inflammation in 2019. Tommy John elbow surgery in 2020. COVID in 2021. A stress fracture in his ribs, a non-baseball medical issue, a broken pinky, then a fractured wrist in a bicycle accident in 2022. And then a stress reaction in his left shoulder in 2023.

The Red Sox traded him back, paying $17 million of his $27.5 million salary to get him out and acquiring shortstop Vaughn Grissom from Atlanta in exchange.

Sale could have stayed in Boston since he had a full no-trade clause, but why stay when you’re no longer wanted? Atlanta is a perennial powerhouse that has won six straight NL East titles. And they didn’t trade him out of the goodness of their hearts.

“It would have been easy to jump ship and throw myself out,” Sale said, “or say, ‘This guy is done.’ You’ve seen that a lot, right? It happens a lot. So I’m just grateful and thankful for the people who stuck by me and believed in me.”

“Now I can experience this with them.”

The deal, considered a gamble at the time, may have been the best trade of the winter. Atlanta got an ace, signing Sale to a two-year, $38 million extension, with the Red Sox paying $17 million of that.

“A lot of people use the word ‘competitive’ loosely,” Atlanta general manager Alex Anthopoulos said, “but he’s the most genuine competitor I’ve ever met. We thought we had a good sense of him as a person and as a teammate, but this is better than we ever expected. His performance has been phenomenal and his leadership has been incredible.”

Sure, Sale has matured. He doesn’t cut up everyone’s uniforms like he did in Chicago when he hated their old uniforms. He doesn’t throw the general manager out of the locker room when the White Sox permanently banned first baseman Adam LaRoche’s 14-year-old son from the locker room.

He’s still a fierce competitor, but a leader in the clubhouse and a sounding board for every pitcher on the team. His work ethic is unmatched. When he was traded to Atlanta on Dec. 30, he spent the rest of the winter driving three hours a day, three times a week, from his home in Naples, Fla., to Atlanta’s spring training complex in North Fort, Fla. He did the same thing every day during spring training.

“Hey, I got a new truck,” Sale said, “I needed to break it in.”

Today, he’s back as one of the game’s meanest and fiercest competitors, reminding people of Johnson.

Sure, this guy is unique. Sale’s teammates will tell you he’s the only guy they know who doesn’t bother with scouting reports or tape. He trusts the pitch the receiver calls and throws it. You’ll never see him get rid of anyone.

“The funny thing is, he says he doesn’t even know who he’s facing until he gets on the mound,” Atlanta third baseman Austin Riley said. “Especially in this day and age, it’s a really cool way to do it. He doesn’t overcomplicate anything. It’s just my best game against your best game, that’s it.”

Atlanta Red Sox veteran Charlie Morton said: “It’s not like he doesn’t know what pitch to throw. I think it’s like he’s saying, ‘I know if I throw the ball the right way and throw it the way I can, my play and my execution will be enough to put someone out.'”

“I don’t know what people think about that approach, like he’s just throwing it, but I think he’s so confident and comfortable with who he is on the mound that when the catcher puts the sign down, it’s like, Okay, let’s go.”

When you still have a 98-mph top speed, a devastating slider and a sneaky changeup, and you have hitters chasing a major league leader who throws 35 percent of his pitches outside the strike zone, it’s easy to trust you. Who can argue that you have the highest strikeout rate per nine innings in baseball history (11.09) with 84 career games of 10 or more strikeouts, tied with Hall of Famer Steve Carlton for eighth on the all-time strikeout list?

It’s too late for Sale to become a 300-game winner like Johnson, and he won’t come close to Johnson’s 4,875 strikeouts, but if he wants motivation as he ages, Johnson can remind him that he won 17 games and struck out 207 batters at age 42.

“Oh man, I’m not going to play that long,” Sale said. “It’s just unbelievable. I’m not Randy Johnson.”

No, but it’s Chris Sale, showing the baseball world what it’s been missing while he’s been gone, rekindling memories of a time when few were better.

“For me, being here at the end of the season, I’m going to miss him,” said Morton, 40, who plans to retire after the season. “I was really fortunate to be here when he came in. Before that, I was a fan, just watching him from across the street. He was the guy. He was that guy. He was one of the best pitchers in the game. And then I got to be his teammate.”

“Now, to get to know him and understand what a good person he is, how incredible he is to watch, I’m going to be a fan of his for as long as he lives.”

Who knows, maybe one day, hopefully before he retires, Sale said, he can even cross another item off his bucket list.

“I would really like to meet Randy,” Sale said. “Someday. Someday. It would be so cool to meet him.”

Johnson says: “You know what, I want to meet him too. I’m a fan of his.

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