Chris Sale, back in All-Star form in Atlanta, honors his hero Randy Johnson with number change

PHOENIX − Atlanta All-Star pitcher Chris Sale, standing in front of his locker late one night, couldn’t stop talking about him, praising him, extolling every ounce of his being.

“Other than my dad and my grandparents,’’ Sale said, “he’s about as influential in my life as anybody.

“I just wanted to be like him.

“And pitch like him.’’

Sale was talking about 6-foot-10, Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson.

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So, how well do you know each other?

“I’ve never talked to him,’’ Sale said.

Oh, but you at least met him before, right?

“Never met.’’

Did you at least exchange messages with him though social media or have mutual friends?

“Nope.’’

Yet, here he was, talking about a 60-year-old legend and his uniform number 51.

The one that Johnson, a five-time Cy Young award winner, including four in a row with the Arizona Diamondbacks, winning the 2001 World Series championship wore when he came out of the bullpen for Game 7 against the New York Yankees on zero day’s rest.

“That’s why I changed my number, in honor of Randy,’’ said Sale, who wore No. 49 with the Chicago White Sox and No. 41 with the Boston Red Sox. “I wanted a clean slate here. It’s like starting over. So why not start with one of the greatest left-handers to ever do it?

“I grew up trying to be like him and now I get to wear his number.’’

Johnson, escaping the 116-degree heat in Arizona by staying in his summer home in Newport Beach, California, listened to the praise Wednesday and couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Sure, Johnson knows he was admired, even revered by fellow left-handed pitchers over the course of his 21-year career. Yet, to hear an eight-time All-Star who finished in the top six in the AL Cy Young balloting seven times, talking about him in sheer adulation, was a huge compliment.

“I’m flattered,’’ Johnson told USA TODAY Sports. “That’s unbelievable. To have such an influence on a young man, who I never met before, is pretty cool. I really wish I had met him back when I was playing.

“I really admire his work. Tell him not to have any regrets.

“You think you’re going to play forever, but there are injuries as you get older and the clock is ticking. The window is closing and you can’t get those lost years back. He’s not 25 years old anymore. He’s got to maximize these final few years.’’

Johnson, who is having difficulty recovering from knee replacement surgery last November, and has had too many surgeries on both knees to count, not to mention back surgery, knows what it’s like dealing with Father Time.

Johnson was the most dominant and feared pitchers in baseball. From 1997-2002, he averaged 20 victories, 340 strikeouts and 248 innings a year, with a combined 19 shutouts.  He had three more seasons of at least 16 victories, two 200-strikeout seasons, and finished 2^nd in the NL Cy Young balloting in 2004 at the age of 40, but then his body eventually gave way.

“Tell him he’s still a young pup,’’ Johnson said. “I know he’s been hurt, I know he’s had frustrations along the way, but there’s plenty of time. He just needs to do everything he can to stay healthy, staying on the mound instead of the trainer’s room.’’

Sale, 35, breaks into a wide grin when informed of the sentiments. He's doing everything possible to have his first healthy season since 2017 and is once again dominating going 12-3, with a 2.74 ERA. He leads the league in victories, first in strikeouts to walk ratio (6.18), second in WHIP (.094), third with 136 strikeouts and third with a .201 opposing batting average.

Yep, just like old times.

“It feels pretty good, well, real good to tell you the truth,’’ said Sale. “This is my eighth All-Star team, and they all feel pretty special, but obviously going through a tough time over the last few years with the injuries, I take a lot of satisfaction being able to be back.’’

But to suggest that Sale thought this day would come, uh, guess again.

“No, no way,’’ Sale said, laughing. “You kidding? Just playing baseball was satisfying enough, but being an All-Star, that’s an unbelievable honor.’’

Sale helped the Red Sox win the 2018 World Series, earning a five-year, $145 million contract extension, but then spent the next five years as human piñata in Boston. He was injured every year, averaging just four victories and 75 innings a season.

You name the body part, and Sale injured it.

There was the left-elbow inflammation in 2019. Tommy John elbow surgery in 2020. COVID in 2021. A rib stress fracture, a non-baseball medical issue, a broken pinkie and then a fractured wrist in a bicycle accident in 2022. And then a stress reaction in his left shoulder in 2023.

The Red Sox gave up on him, paid $17 million of his $27.5 million salary for him to go away and acquired shortstop Vaughn Grissom from Atlanta in exchange.

Sale could have stayed in Boston since he had a full no-trade clause, but why stay when you’re no longer wanted? Atlanta is a perennial power that has won six consecutive NL East titles. And they weren’t trading for him out of the goodness of their heart.

“It certainly would have been easy you know, to jump ship and write me off,’’ Sale said, “or say, 'This guy’s done.' You’ve seen it many times, right? It happens a lot. So, I’m just thankful and appreciated of the people that stayed with me and believed in me.

“Now I get to experience this with them.’’

The deal, considered a high-stakes gamble at the time, is perhaps the finest trade of the winter. Atlanta got an ace, signed Sale to a two-year, $38 million extension with the Red Sox paying $17 million of it.

“A lot of people throw the word 'competitiveness' around loosely,’’ Atlanta GM Alex Anthopoulos said, "but he’s the most authentic competitor I’ve ever been around. We thought we had a good handle on him as a person and a teammate, but this is even better than anything we expected. His performance has been phenomenal and his leadership has been incredible.’’

Certainly, Sale has matured. He’s not cutting up everyone’s uniforms like he did in Chicago when he hated their throwback uniforms. He’s not kicking the GM out of the locker room when the White Sox permanently banned first baseman Adam LaRoche’s 14-year-old son from the clubhouse.

He's still a fiery competitor, but a clubhouse leader, and sounding board for every pitcher on the team. His work ethic is second-to-none. When he got traded to Atlanta on Dec. 30, he spent the rest of the winter driving three hours a day, three times a week, from his Naples, Florida, home to Atlanta’s spring-training complex in North Fort, Florida. He did the same every single day in spring training, too.

“Hey, I got a new truck,’’ Sale said, “I needed to break it in.’’

Now, he’s back to being one of the nastiest, and one of the fiercest competitors in the game, reminding folks of Johnson.

Certainly, the dude is unique. Sale's teammates will tell you he’s the only guy they know who doesn’t bother with scouting reports or film. He completely trusts what pitch the catcher calls and throws it. You’ll never see him shake anyone off.

“The funny thing is he says he doesn’t even know who he’s facing until he steps up there on the mound,’’ Atlanta third baseman Austin Riley said. “Especially in today’s age, it’s a really cool way to go about it. He doesn’t complicate anything. It’s just my best stuff against your best stuff, here it is.’’

Says Atlanta veteran starter Charlie Morton: “It’s not like he doesn’t know what pitch to throw. I think it’s like, 'I know if I throw the ball the right way, and I throw it the way I can, my stuff and my execution will be good enough to get somebody out.’

“I don’t know what people think of that approach, like he just throws it, but I think he has that much trust and comfortability with who he is on the mound that when the catcher puts down the sign, it’s like, Ok, let’s go.’’

When you still have an overpowering 98-mph, a devastating slider and a sneaky changeup, and have hitters chasing a major-league leading 35% of his pitches outside the strike zone, it’s easy to trust you stuff. Who can argue when you have the highest strikeout-rate per nine innings (11.09) in baseball history with 84 career games of 10 or more strikeouts, tied with Hall of Famer Steve Carlton for eighth place on the all-time strikeout list?

It’s too late for Sale to become a 300-game winner like Johnson, and he won’t come close to Johnson’s 4,875 strikeouts, but if he wanted motivation as he grows older, Johnson can remind him that he won 17 games and struck out 207 batters at the age of 42.

“Oh man, I’m not going to play that long,’’ Sale said. “That’s just unbelievable. I’m not Randy Johnson.’’

No, but he’s Chris Sale, who’s showing the baseball world what they’ve missed while he was away, resurrecting memories of the days when few were better.

“For me, being at the tail end here, I’m going to miss him,’’ said Morton, 40, who’s contemplating retirement after the season. “I was really lucky I was here when he came here. Before that, I was a fan, just watching him across the way. He was the guy. He was that dude. He was one of the best pitchers in the game. And then I got to be his teammate.

“Now, to get to know him, and to understand how good of a person he is, how incredible he is to watch, I’m going to be a fan of his for as long as he goes.’’

Who knows, maybe one day, too, hopefully before he retires Sale said, he’ll even get to cross another item off his bucket list.

“I really want to meet Randy,’’ Sale said. “One day. One day. That would be so cool to meet him.’’

Says Johnson: “You know what, I want to meet him too. I’m a fan of his.

“And tell him, I’m rooting for him to stay healthy, showing everybody what he can still do.’’

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