Yankee writer hates Randy Johnson already

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ian O'Conner

Most things Yankees unsettling to Johnson
NEW YORK — Randy Johnson does not want to be here, never make any mistake about that. He has no love for the Yankees, Yankee tradition, Yankee Stadium, or anything else Yankee that counted for every ounce of Derek Jeter's singular backyard dream.

He does not embrace you, Yankee fans, or anything else about your pastime loyalties. Johnson comes to the Bronx as a fireballing mercenary with a heart as stone-cold as Roger Clemens'.

You remember Clemens, right? The out-of-towner who pledged an everlasting commitment to the Yankees on retirement, a commitment that lasted all of eight minutes.

Johnson passed on the Yankees in his prime just like Clemens had passed on them in his. If you were listening closely Tuesday, in between his apologies for hitting New York like a clueless amateur, Johnson made it all as clear as the long arm of his own warped law.

You know, the giant hand of his that reached for your television screen on the Monday night news, reaching as if he was going through that screen, into your living room, and straight for your throat.

"A lot of people were saying that this is something that I wanted all along," Johnson said in his Stadium news conference. "Well if that was the case, I could have been here in '98. Instead I signed with the Diamondbacks — just something, food for thought.

"It's worked out in this situation (with the Yankees) for a few reasons, contract extension, what have you."

Yes, a contract extension. What have you? How about a $32 million contract extension? Johnson is 41, he wants one more championship ring, and he wants to pocket a whole lot of cash pursuing it.

But he also wants to keep that Do Not Disturb sign dangling from his neck.


WCBS-TV
Randy Johnson failed to get a grip on his emotions during Monday's scuffle with a New York cameraman.


"Don't get in my face," he told that cameraman from New York station WCBS-TV doing his job on a midtown street.

"Don't talk back to me," Johnson barked.

Finally, he warned, "Or you'll see what I'm like."

Don't worry, pal. We already have.

Johnson called himself "unprofessional" and "embarrassed" and "foolish," three states of being that fit him like a glove. He started that dugout confrontation with Luis Gonzalez after the left fielder had the nerve to drop a fly ball. This was the same Gonzalez who was playing hurt, who reeks of professionalism, and who only won Game 7 of the 2001 World Series for Johnson with a hit off the greatest postseason closer of all time, the Yankees' Mariano Rivera.

But Yankees general manager Brian Cashman dismissed the possibility that Johnson's makeup wouldn't jibe with the pressures of playing for this team in this market. Of course, Cashman dismissed the same questions about Kevin Brown, who imploded in the presence of a clubhouse wall long before he punched the Red Sox' ticket to ride in a forever parade.

Now Cashman employs two brooding loners in Brown and Johnson, an honorary member of the same club in Mike Mussina, and a man stranded on his own island in Jason Giambi. The clubhouse could've used the feel-good aura radiating about Carlos Beltran, who sure seems to get it.

"You're really going to enjoy having him in New York," Allan Baird, Kansas City GM, promised by phone. "Carlos is just a real good kid."

Johnson isn't a kid, and he makes Barry Bonds seem as benign as your next door neighbor. But he's one of the all-time left-handed greats, and he swears that his knee isn't as quite so bad and that his elbow and shoulder belong to a man half his age.

"If you have the means and the opportunity to have him come here," Cashman said, "you jump at it."

Cashman kept calling Johnson a man who cost the Yankees two rings, even if Johnson only cost them one (they weren't going to win it all in '95 when Johnson's Seattle Mariners rallied to beat the Yankees in a first-round series). Either way, the GM was saying he wanted to join a pitcher he couldn't beat.

And that's fine. Only let's not have Cashman or anyone else kid you: The pitcher is here for his own self-absorbed pursuits. Johnson gets to cash George Steinbrenner's silly-sized checks, and gets to take the surest road to 300 wins.

He called the process of landing in New York "an ordeal," as if he'd just flown in from Sri Lanka. What a perilous road a multimillionaire athlete has to travel to another multimillion-dollar deal.

He kept saying he was sorry for Monday's altercation when he meant he was sorry it was caught on video. Johnson never directly steered the apology toward the cameraman, and betrayed his true feelings Tuesday when he pulled back a big unit of his reponsibility — Johnson testily debated the Channel 2 sportscaster present at the scene of his crime, Duke Castiglione, over who prodded whom.

All in all, Johnson looked about as thrilled to be in New York as Mike Piazza did his first month in town.

"Surliness," he said, "is a good label for me the day that I pitch." And when he's not pitching? "On the other days, I'm all about peace."

Johnson wasn't on the mound when he started a fight with his Seattle teammate, David Segui. He wasn't scheduled to pitch the day he turned a good-natured discussion with reporters at the All-Star Game into a hostile directive for one to immediately leave his locker.

So only believe Johnson's claim that he'll be kinder, gentler and more accessible when you see it in action. One Letterman appearance doesn't a new man make. Who's the last tiger you knew who changed his stripes at 41?

In the end, Johnson the pitcher will have to overcome Johnson the person. "I feel like I have a lot to give," he said.

He'd better. The fans know an opportunist, and a tourist, when they see one, and Johnson has already exposed himself as both.

If he doesn't deliver in October, he'll have no chance to tell the fans to get out of his face.

They'll be too busy talking back to him, booing that Do Not Disturb sign right off his privileged little world.