Ex-pitcher zooms in on drivers
Johnson indulges his passion for photography at COTA race.
Had Randy Johnson not been able to zoom 100 miles-per-hour fastballs by hopeless batters, he would have been content earning a living zooming in and out with his camera lens.
A photojournalism major at USC, Johnson was not your typical jock. He got as much satisfaction developing a photo in a dark room as developing his slider on the baseball diamond.
“Didn’t really know when I was 19 years old what I wanted to do or where my life would take me,” Johnson said.
On Sunday, it took him to Circuit of the Americas where Johnson, a world traveler and photographer in his life’s second act, was more famous, at least domestically, than any of the subjects he captured at the U.S. Grand Prix.
Like his photo-snapping peers, Johnson, bundled in a sweatshirt, soldiered through rainy conditions to document the 56-lap race won by Lewis Hamilton.
There was no need to ask the 6-feet, 10-inch Johnson, “How’s the weather up there?” It was a dreary mess throughout his stay in Austin, conditions not conducive to photographing cars racing at speed that far exceed Johnson’s fastballs.
“I wish it was nicer,” Johnson said of his first F1 event. “I just love the cars.”
Johnson, 52, a five-time Cy Young winner, played 22 seasons in the major leagues before retiring and making a trade in 2010 from Rawlings to Canon. His work has been featured in several magazines, including Rolling Stone. A fan of the rock scene from his days in Seattle with the Mariners, Johnson has aimed his lens at everyone from Pearl Jam to Soundgarden to U2.
Imagine Bono sitting in the stands and charting pitch counts in 2001 when Johnson fired a fastball that destroyed a bird during spring training.
Johnson’s website — rj51photos.com — features an array of impressive pictures of wild animals and extreme sports, but the best part of all is a digital image of a bird lying upside down that greets visitors to the homepage. The Big Unit’s got jokes. Johnson writes “as much as I enjoyed the thrill of pitching a perfect game and winning a World Series, I get similar satisfaction from using my photography skills to try and capture that defining moment in time.”
Johnson, who resides in Arizona, helped the Diamondbacks win the 2001 World Series, notching three wins against the New York Yankees and sharing MVP honors with Curt Schilling.
This past summer, Johnson was inducted into the Hall of Fame on his first try, garnering 534 of 549 votes. The 97.3 percent is the eighth highest in the history of the vote. Yet Johnson said he doesn’t watch much baseball these days, which is probably a bit of an exaggeration considering he’s employed as special assistant to Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall.
As for shooting baseball, Johnson said, “not much interest in that.”
But he does see some parallels between his new and old professions.
“Tunnel vision,” he said. “And kind of thinking a little bit ahead. Quickly thinking ahead of the pitch and ahead of the shot.”