ajnrules: June 2019

Randy Johnson 300th Win 10th Anniversary Special Part V: The Future

The day is coming to a close, and unfortunately this means our celebration of Randy Johnson's 300th win must come to a close too. With this last part we will focus on a question that many people probably have: what exactly is the future of the 300 Win Club?

Part I: The 300 Win Club

Part II: The Player

Part III: The Game

Part IV: The Other Games

Part V: The Future (of the 300 Win Club) (you are here)

Welcome to Part IV of my celebration of Randy Johnson's 300th win. Back in 2009 I used Part III and Part IV to tell my personal story about getting interested in the 300 Win Club and the events that led to my being at Nationals Park on that historic day. I don't see a need to revisit all of that. You can go back to the posts in December 2009. Instead, I am going to do something a little bit different (and ultimately probably very boring, but bear with me here.) The Nationals-Giants game that started ten years ago the moment this posts went up wasn't the only sports game that happened on June 4, 2009. Heck, it wasn't even the only game at Nationals Park on June 4, 2009. Every sports game tells a story, and what I am trying to do here (who knows how successful I will be) is to tell the story of each sports game that also happened on June 4, 2009. I suppose this was largely inspired by the 30 for 30 documentary June 17th, 1994 about the sports landscape on the day of the O.J. Simpson chase. There is nothing quite as dramatic on June 4, 2009, but it was still a very strong sports day. Most of them will be in baseball, but there were also games in soccer, hockey, and basketball. I'll talk about the play-by-play but will go down certain rabbit holes. Some of them will probably be fascinating, others will end up being boring. Anyways I hope to show that June 4, 2009 was a pretty big day in sports history.

Part I: The 300 Win Club

Part II: The Player

Part III: The Game

Part IV: The Other Games (you are here)

Part V: The Future (of the 300 Win Club)

Well here we are. At this point right now ten years ago Brian Wilson just struck out Wil Nieves to put the finishing touches on Randy Johnson's 300th win, and we have moved on to Part IV of the celebration of this milestone win. What else can I say about this 300th win? Back in December 2009 I did a narrative play by play of the game, and you can easily find the play by play on the boxscore on Baseball Reference or Retrosheet. Five years ago I posted the transcript of the CSN Bay Area broadcast featuring Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow. I've been working on the same for the MASN broadcast between Bob Carpenter and Rob Dibble, but I decided that maybe I should save it for the 10th anniversary. I admit I prefer the Kuip and Kruk broadcast, but since I got that out of the way five years ago there isn't any point to posting it again. So here is the broadcast between Bob and Rob, with special guests Johnny Holliday, Ray Knight, Debbi Taylor, and Chartese Burnett.

Part I: The 300 Win Club

Part II: The Player

Part III: The Game (you are here)

Part IV: The Other Games

Part V: The Future (of the 300 Win Club)

Our celebration of Randy Johnson's 300th win continues with Part II. If you remember Part I that went up just a few hours ago, we had some quick biographies of the 24 members of the 300 win club. However, Randy Johnson is the central figure of the festivities and he will get a full biography in this post. I wrote a short biography back in 2009 (if you can call 7,000 words short), but there were a lot of elements of his life that I glossed over. I'm going to try to get into more depth in this one. And to add more excitement I'm planning on writing 300 words about each of his wins! I'll probably come to regret it by the time I'm done, but this is a big celebration!

Part I: The 300 Win Club
Part II: The Player (you are here)
Part III: The Game
Part IV: The Other Games
Part V: The Future (of the 300 Win Club)

Randy Johnson 300th Win 10th Anniversary Special Part I: The 300 Win Club

It's June 4, 2019. (Well, not really. I'm writing this on October 21 but let's just pretend that it's June 4, 2019 because that's when this post is scheduled to be posted.) For most people it's just going to be another Tuesday, and it's probably going to be just another workday for me. However, this day carries a bit of historical significance, not because of anything that would happen today, but of what happened on this date ten years ago, on June 4, 2009. That's right, ten years has passed since the most historical moment that I had witnessed in a baseball field. Ten years has passed since Randall David Johnson joined 23 other members in the illustrious 300 win club. And I can't let this day go by without commemorating it in some way. Nine years ago I wrote up a set of six posts to celebrate the six-month and the one-year anniversary. Since the 10-year anniversary is a fairly significant anniversary, I've decided to come up with another series of posts to put this milestone in a historical perspective.

My posts nine years ago were done on a somewhat last-minute basis. It opened with a brief introduction of the 300-win club, then it delved into a simple biography of Randy Johnson. Following that, I told my personal story regarding watching the milestone, starting from my introduction to baseball in the mid-1990s to my growing fascination with the 300-win milestone in the mid-2000s. It included the days leading up to the game, as well as the day we went to the ballpark expecting a game but getting a rainout instead. And finally it included a play by play of the game itself. Since I wrote those five posts in five days, I didn't get into the amount of detail that I really wanted to, and I was so worn out that I decided to wait six months before writing about what had transpired on the first anniversary. After that I came back every June 4 and wrote some more about the milestone, from posting pictures from that day to posting pictures of the other 300 win members (including their graves) to posting the whole transcript of the MASN broadcast (including pre-game and post-game) to posting the perspectives of other people that were present.

Having dedicated so much of my time and effort over the past ten years I'm kind of running out of things to post. I've thought about just taking my original posts and adding to them, but that would seem kind of cheap. However, because this is mid-October I realized I could get more detail that I couldn't nine years ago. I could write more in-depth about the other members of the 300 win club. I could write more about the turbulent life and times of Randy Johnson. Heck, I can even write about the other games that happened on that date. And they can all be made ready to go online today. So here it is: the schedule of the 10th Anniversary Special of Randy Johnson's 300th Win

Part I: The 300 Win Club (you are here)

Part II: The Player

Part III: The Game

Part IV: The Other Games

Part V: The Future of the 300 Win Club