RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Johnson was at the center of what is certainly one of the great elements of the human drama in the history of Baseball. At the age of 38 (he looked like a 75 year-old coal miner), everyone, but his manager considered him to be a dried up old loser (as in "what have you done for us lately?"). He had lost the 1st and 5th game of the '24 World Series. But, when it came to the moment of truth, when The Big Train was sitting in the dirt out in the bullpen, feeling all washed up, he was called in to close the deal and pitched four scoreless innings to clinch the title. Hero-to-zero-to-hero within hours. I saw this on Burn's "Baseball" set and it was truly moving.

This is the man that Cobb called "...most threatening sight I ever saw in the ball field..." His HOF plaque reads, 'for many years with a losing team'...

Arguably the best pitcher of the first half of the 20th century (I'd put Mathewson, Alexander and Grove in the equation) and equally arguably the best right hander of all time (with Mathewson and Alexander again, together with Clemens)

Johnson was one of the first pitchers to throw hard all the time, instead of just bearing down when he needed to, as was the practice of most pitchers in the dead ball era. He had an unusual sidearm motion, that in the jerky films of the era looks like his arm should have fallen off by the sixth inning of his first game.

Still the career leader in shutouts with 110, a record that looks likely to stand another century.

The Senators actually won 3 pennants, were a good team in the 20's until 1933 and although they had some clubs that were just as bad, they had more big names than the Browns, whose only player who was ever considered to be a superstar while a Brown was Sisler. Johnson is often thought to have played for horrendous teams, but thats mostly only true for the first 5 or so years of his career. This guy is arguably the greatest pitcher of all time relative to his era, a 400 game winner who was practically unhittable. Easily the greatest player to ever play in the country's capital, played exclusively in D.C from 1907-27.Tons of career shutouts, and was the all time leader in strikeouts for a long time. Part of the very first Hall of Fame class, and deservedly so.