Randy Johnson's Power Pitching The Big Unit's Secrets to Domination, Intimidation, and Winning

Chapter 1 The Education of a power Pitcher The goal of this book is to teach you how to be a complete pitcher. I want to share my experience to help you fulfill your full potential. Many people assume that success came easy to me. After all, I'm a power pitcher with pinpoint control, four Cy Young Awards, and a World Series ring. The plain truth is that I struggled at every level. I was wild and inconsistent for much of my high school, college, and minor-league pitching career. Sure, there were fifteen-strikeout games and one-hit shutouts to keep me going. But I was just as likely to walk seven or eight batters and give up five or six runs. My mechanics were a mess. I was all over the place when I pitched, never landing in the same spot twice. My height and extremely long arms and legs made it very difficult to be compact in my delivery. The odd thing is that no one ever taught me to be consistent with my mechanics until I was a big-league pitcher. Once I corrected a mechanical flaw in my delivery, I suddenly went from an out-of-control thrower to the control pitcher. My whole career has been a progression. I never took success for granted. I've had to work hard for everything. And I took my lumps like everyone else. I'm going to teach you the keys to becoming a complete pitcher-mental toughness, proper mechanics, pitch location, and proper grips and physical conditioning. But it will be up to you to put the advice into practice and turn your potential into the intangibles that make a winning pitcher. Playing to win has always been a way of life for me. My entire career has been an ongoing process of staying focused on maximum performance. But I want to stress right from the beginning that you cannot be successful in baseball unless your interest springs from playing the game just for the fun of it. I've conducted many Little League clinics, and my key message to parents is to let their child enjoy the game. Let him or her progress at a natural and comfortable pace, with help from the coaches along the way. Do not put pressure on kids to take the game too seriously. Pushing kids too hard is not going to ensure success. In fact, that's often the biggest barrier that kids face. I realize that the motives are usually positive. After all, every parent wants the best for his or her kids, but in the earliest stages of a pitcher's life, the bottom line is having fun. My son and daughter play baseball and soccer, and I'm supportive of them in every way. But how I can evaluate whether my six-year-old son will ever play in the major leagues? For that matter, how do I know my son is even going to want to play baseball? It's not my position to push him in that direction. My dad was a police officer, not a professional athlete. He just wanted to be supportive of my interest and passion for baseball. My mom was there to help me, too. A supportive environment will make a big difference right from the beginning. My baseball career began at the age of seven in Livermore, California, about forty-five minutes east of Oakland. Like a lot of kids, I played imaginary baseball games, throwing a tennis ball against the garage door with tape on it in the shape of a box to simulate home plate. It took about 200 fastballs for the nails holding the garage door in place to come undone. My dad arrived with a hammer just before the door fell off its hinges, and we both understood that it was my responsibility to pound the nails back in so I could start my imaginary game all over again. When I played catch with my dad, he was incredibly patient and generous with his time. My control was terrible. I'd throw five or six pitches over his head, and he'd tell me, "You start getting those balls, Randy." His insistence that I do the work to retrieve those wild throws forced me to focus on improving my location. I threw harder thanJohnson, Randy is the author of 'Randy Johnson's Power Pitching The Big Unit's Secrets to Domination, Intimidation, and Winning', published 2003 under ISBN 9781400047390 and ISBN 1400047390.