What is Randy Johnson doing now?
FORMER MLB star Randy Johnson is one of the most successful pitchers to have played the field.
His ability to throw a baseball across home plate at 100 mph earned him acclaim in the sports world.
Who is Randy Johnson?
Randy Johnson pitched for six Major League Baseball teams over 22 seasons, from 1988 to 1999.
He was first drafted as a fourth-round pick by the Atlanta Braves in 1982 but turned it down to accept a baseball and basketball scholarship at the University of California.
However, he accepted a position with the Montreal Expos three years later. The team traded him to the Seattle Mariners midway through the 1989 season and he stayed with the team until 1998.
He played for one season with the Houston Astros, before moving to the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1999 through 2004.
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Johnson left the Diamondbacks for the following two seasons to play for the New York Yankees.
He then reverted back and played two more seasons with the Diamondbacks before finishing his career in 2009 with the San Francisco Giants.
Over the course of his career, Johnson won 303 games across 22 seasons and was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015.
“I’m so honored and privileged to be here,” Johnson said in his Hall of Fame speech. “I never thought I would be on this stage of baseball’s greatest fraternity.”
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Johnson was voted into the Hall of Fame with 97.3 percent of the votes, the highest received for any MLB inductee.
What is he doing now?
Johnson retired from the MLB after the 2009 season and turned to his love of photography.
Being a photographer interested him since he attended college when he worked for the Daily Trojan but baseball took his primary focus after he was drafted by the Expos.
Following his retirement, Johnson opened his own photography company in 2010, using an image of a dead bird as his logo.
Although he does occasionally take photos of his old sport, Johnson told WTOP News in 2015 that he prefers motorsports.
“Baseball is great," he said, "but I did that my whole life. I can’t see myself sitting in a photo pit taking photos.”
He said it is the fast movement of the cars and the bright colors which make for better photos.
“I’m not sure really why, but motorsports are the ones that really excite me,” he said. “It’s just so fast, there’s so much going on.”
Speaking about his switch to photography from MLB, Johnson told the outlet: "I have as much of a passion for this as I did for baseball.
“It’s great to be driven just as much. I know I won’t get burnt out on photography.”
Why is a dead bird his logo?
Johnson was pitching for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001 when an unexpected bird derailed his pitch.
As he threw his fastball at home plate, a dove flew directly in the ball's path before spraying feathers on the field as the ball collided with its body. The dove died on impact.
The baseball's speed was not documented because it didn't make it across home plate, but the Cronkite News in Arizona reported it was going approximately 100 mph.
Then-catcher Rod Barajas was standing behind home plate and told Cronkite News: “It was an explosion. I don’t know any other way to put it.”
Johnson told Fox Sports Arizona, according to Cronkite News, that the bird was “a blur going across home plate and the ball simultaneously hitting that blur.
"It’s just hard to really put that into perspective. It happened so quick."
Second baseman Jeff Kent picked up the bird and smiled as he pointed it at Johnson who later said he wasn't amused by the way it was handled.
After the dove was hit, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), considered pressing animal cruelty charges against Johnson on behalf of the dove.
“I was considered a bird killer,” Johnson said in the Fox Sports Arizona interview. “What became kind of funny actually became a very serious moment.”
Over time, Johnson's perception of the incident has softened and he appears to have taken a comedic outlook by creating the dead bird logo for his photography company.
“A lot of people didn’t know what that stood for,” Johnson told Fox Sports Arizona.
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“Those are the people that I probably want to talk to about my baseball because they have no idea what the bird stood for."
He continued: "But everyone that wants to talk about baseball first talks about the bird.”