Walter Johnson - Additional Facts and Details

Additional Facts and Details

• Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, is named for him. The monument to him that once stood outside Griffith Stadium has been moved to the school's campus. The school's yearbook is called The Windup and its newspaper is called The Pitch.

• A baseball field in Rockville, Maryland, is named for him.

• A large recreation park (Walter Johnson Park) is named after him in Coffeyville, Kansas, where he maintained a part-time residence for several years.

• The baseball field in Memorial Park, in Weiser, Idaho, is called Walter Johnson Field.

• Johnson was the first American League pitcher to strike out four batters in one inning.

• Johnson holds the record for most three-pitch innings by any major league pitcher with four.

• A team in the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League in Bethesda is named the "Big Train" in honor of him.

• In 1985, rock musician Jonathan Richman wrote and dedicated a song to Johnson entitled "Walter Johnson", performed with The Modern Lovers on the album Rockin' and Romance.

• In 2009, a statue of Johnson was installed inside the center field gate of Nationals Park along with ones of Frank Howard and Josh Gibson.

• The Walter Johnson baseball field in Humboldt, Kansas.

He was also called "Sir Walter", "the White Knight", and "The Gentle Johnson" because of his gentlemanly sportsmanship, and "Barney" after auto racer Barney Oldfield (he got out of a traffic ticket when a teammate in the car told the policeman Johnson was Barney Oldfield).

In 1999, The Sporting News ranked Johnson number 4 on its list of Baseball's 100 Greatest Players, the highest-ranked pitcher. Later that year, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

Johnson's gentle nature was legendary, and to this day he is held up as an example of good sportsmanship, while his name has become synonymous with friendly competition. This attribute worked to Johnson's disadvantage in the case of fellow Hall of Famer Ty Cobb. Virtually all batters were concerned about being hit by Johnson's fastball, and many would not "dig in" at the plate because of that concern. Cobb realized that the good-hearted Johnson was privately nervous about the possibility of seriously injuring a batter. Almost alone among his peers, Cobb would actually stand closer to the plate than usual when facing Johnson.

Johnson's rookie season was Cobb's third, and Johnson retired one year before Cobb. Cobb faced Johnson at bat more times in their overlapping careers than any other hitter-pitcher combination in major league history.

Johnson was mentioned in the poem Line-Up for Yesterday by Ogden Nash:

J is for Johnson
The Big Train in his prime
Was so fast he could throw
Three strikes at a time.