You don't have to know or care anything about baseball to appreciate this story. Like in all professional sports, this is no country for old men. In baseball, a 45-year-old pitcher is a rarity.
The San Francisco Giants have one, Randy Johnson. He's also the tallest player, at 6'10", in Major League Baseball. Well, yesterday, during a steady downpour in Washington, D.C., Johnson became the 24th pitcher in history to win his 300th game.
Baseball is about numbers and statistics much more than other sports, and always has been. For over a century, careful records have been kept of the results of game after game. Starting in April, there are 162 regular season games involving the 30 Major League teams every year, plus playoffs that last far into October.
Of the thousands of pitchers to appear in games since baseball's beginnings, only two dozen have persevered long enough and played on good enough teams to rack up so many victories.
Baseball is also a game of rituals, none of which is more revered than the relationships between fathers and sons (and daughters too!) playing catch and going to games together. Yesterday, the Giants' bat boy was Johnson's young son. He wore an official team uniform with his Dad's number (51) and "Johnson" on the back. He stood at the top step of the dugout for the entire game.
When the game was finally over, and the outcome no longer in doubt, father and son appeared together on the field, arms around each other, to acknowledge the crowd roaring "Randy! Randy!"
Watching this on TV, I got chills. What a fantasy for a man and his child! I've never paid too much attention to Johnson's career, other to observe that he's been a remarkable competitor, and still is, long after age and surgeries have taken away what was once his greatest weapon -- a 99 mph fastball.
But yesterday, as a father, and also once a son, I was proud of him.
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