from the New York Daily News

Want to get inside Randy Johnson's head? It used to be easy. In fact, back when Johnson was a lanky, leggy, limber lefthander at Livermore High School in California, it was the best way to beat him.

The plan was simple: Rattle him. Shake him up. Make him question his abilities. Throw him off. Get him confused or angry or frustrated. Stare at him.

Rick Steen, the longtime coach at nearby San Ramon Valley High, says one of the things he remembers most about the young Unit is the line scores from the games he'd pitch in the East Bay Athletic League. It would always be something like no runs and five hits for Livermore, while the other team would have three runs but only two hits.

"And then you'd realize that there were six wild pitches, seven walks and two hit batters," Steen says with a laugh. "And you'd say, 'Oh, that's how it happened.'"

Getting to Johnson wasn't tough then. As a junior in high school in 1981, he was about 6-9 and looked like a lamppost with a long mane, Steen says, making him an easy target for ribbing. And while Johnson's mental shell on the mound right now might as well be made of Kevlar, as a teenager it was closer to tin foil.

"We'd bunt on him, then have the runner dance off first a bit, steal second and bunt again," Steen says. "That would rile him pretty good. We'd crowd the plate, too, and take pitches till he got heated that no one was swinging. Then, if that didn't work, we'd tell him to tuck his shirt in."

Tuck his shirt in?

"Well, he's so tall," Steen continues, "that there wasn't a shirt in Alameda County big enough for him to tuck into his baseball pants. But we'd complain to the umpire that he was breaking the rules anyway by not having his shirt in, and he'd go nuts over that, too, since there wasn't anything he could do about it. His shirt came out all the time, so he got ruffled all the time."

Johnson's high school coach, Ed Hoff, says, "It was kind of bush, if you ask me, but that was his junior year. During his senior season, we got new uniforms and I made sure to get an extra-long shirt for Randy so it wouldn't be a problem."

Steen laughs when he's asked about Johnson now. "Looking back," he says, "it's hard to believe he's the same person."

Of course, he isn't. That kid who "wasn't mentally all there" on the mound, according to former Amador Valley coach Larry Brabbin, will take the ball against the Red Sox tonight at the Stadium known as much for his impenetrable psyche as for his unhittable fastball.

On the days Johnson is scheduled to pitch, his world shrinks around him as he moves toward game time, with other details of his life slowly flickering away until there is nothing left but the rubber, home plate and a catcher's mitt. It wasn't always that way, but personal tragedy, a conversation with a legend and the simple passage of time helped narrow his focus.

Johnson now has one of the most intense game-day personas in baseball.

"My wife (Mary) is good friends with his wife, Lisa," says Scott Bradley, who caught Johnson when he was with the Mariners. "If she wanted to call Lisa, she'd always come to me first and say, 'Randy's not pitching today, is he?' Because if he was, she didn't even want to call their house."

The slow process

These things never happen all at once. Johnson didn't suddenly wake up one morning and think to himself, "From now on, I'm not going to let a couple of walks bother me." He didn't suddenly decide to tune out the world every five days. But Bradley says there are a few "defining moments" in Johnson's mental progression, starting with the way he was viewed as a young major leaguer.

"We'd all be sitting around and talking about the other team, looking at scouting reports, discussing where to pitch guys," Bradley says, "and the coaches - probably because of how hard Randy threw and his problems with control back then - wouldn't go over the same stuff with him. They'd just tell him to throw it over the plate. And that bothered him. I think he wanted to be more of a pitcher, not just a guy who could throw hard."

However, that frustration, that anger was still driving Johnson. Bradley caught Johnson's first no-hitter, against the Tigers on June 2, 1990, but also recalls games which Johnson would simply melt down like he was still in high school.

"I remember one where we played Milwaukee and he walked like 10 guys in 3-1/3 innings," Bradley says. "He just lost it. As a catcher you'd be thinking, 'I hope we've got someone else up throwing now, because he's not going to get through this.' But then, as time went on, that changed."

An impromptu chat with fellow power pitcher Nolan Ryan near the end of the 1992 season (the third straight year Johnson led the majors in free passes) was another benchmark. Because of his stature, perhaps, or the timing of the situation, Ryan - who later wrote the forward in Johnson's instructional book, "Randy Johnson's Power Pitching" - was able to get through to Johnson about the importance of the mental game.

In his book's introduction, Johnson lists the things he's going to help young pitchers learn and puts "mental toughness" first, before other more obvious lessons such as "proper mechanics" or "pitch location."

"Pitchers that I've talked to at one time or another always mention the mental part of it," Johnson says. "You can be as physically prepared as anyone and now all of a sudden something could stir into the equation you weren't expecting and you have to deal with it. How do you react? How do you handle it? I think a lot of times younger kids don't realize it's as much a mental game as a physical one."

He included himself in that group. Johnson readily admits the cerebral aspect of his game was lacking when he was younger and, according to Bradley, Johnson had no visible game-day routine early in his career. "When it was his turn to pitch, they kind of just flipped him the ball and his personality was the same as the days when he wasn't pitching," says Bradley, who is the baseball coach at Princeton and has remained friends with Johnson.

Ask Johnson about his routine now, and he offers a taut smile. He does not like to discuss specifics about his game, lest he give away information that might be valuable to an opposing hitter. "I would say it's intense and we'll leave it at that," he says, before joking, "Anything more and I'd have to kill you. That's a restricted zone there."

Suffice it to say, there's a lot of preparation. Johnson admits to using imagery, conjuring up a visual in his head of how he'd like to attack certain hitters and picturing the outcomes he desires. He rarely talks to anyone but his catcher or pitching coach before taking the mound, and Bradley says there are times when he'll appear to ignore someone, when in reality he simply hasn't heard them.

"That's how locked in he can get," Bradley says. "It's not personal. He's just that locked in."

A popular comparison, particularly now that Johnson is a Yankee, has been to Roger Clemens, a right handed power pitcher also known for fanatical preparation and mental resiliency. But on game days, the two hurlers are actually as different as the sides of the mound from which they throw.

"With Roger, you could talk to him right up until he was getting ready to head out to the bullpen for his warm up," says Mike Mussina. "He was focused, but he was still open. Everybody has their own different way of preparing and Randy is pretty ornery."

Turning the corner

Those who know him say the final epiphany for Johnson came later in 1992, when his father, Bud, passed away on Christmas Day after suffering an aortic aneurysm. "I think that was the biggest turning point," Bradley says, "because then he decided that he was going to do everything he could to live up to his potential. He was going to be the best he could possibly be, and it's impossible to do that without working on the mental side of it."

He won 19 games in 1993, walking only 99 batters in 255-1/3 innings. Then he captured his first Cy Young award two years later and showed an iron resolve in throwing a complete game, helping the Mariners win the AL West in a one-game playoff, followed by a victory over the Yanks in Game 3 of the division series and a relief stint two days later to win the series clincher.

So what changed? Again, Johnson doesn't like to get into specifics, but it's obvious he had discovered a better perspective.

"I don't see anything in this game as a pressure," he says. "I see it as a challenge and I've overcome a lot of challenges before. I don't put that added burden on me of 'pressure.' Getting three outs isn't always easy, but I don't see it as being that hard.

"Off the field, sure, that's pressure. Family matters. That's pressure. When I step over the lines, though, it's a baseball game. I'm not going to die from this. It doesn't mean I want to fail, but pressure is life-and-death situations with your family members or friends. Pitching in a World Series game is not pressure, it's a challenge. I've got no problem pitching seven innings tonight and then coming back and pitching another inning and two-thirds tomorrow if I have to. I know I can handle that."

He knows because he's done it. After shutting down the Bombers in Game 6 of the 2001 World Series, the Arizona ace was asked if he'd be available to pitch the next night in Game 7. It's not uncommon for starting pitchers to throw on three days' rest in the playoffs and certainly not unheard of for a manager to call on his ace in a crucial spot with only two days between outings.

But zero days rest was something different. Johnson immediately began focusing again, knowing that there was a good chance he'd be needed. After 249-2/3 regular-season innings and 40 more in the playoffs, it was the ultimate test of his will.

"I mean, my body was worn down about as much as it possibly could have been worn down," he says. "But this was more about mental than physical."

A day later, Johnson had champagne running down his neck as he celebrated in the Diamondbacks' clubhouse. He believes his performance out of the bullpen that night was the greatest example of mind over body.

"You're talking about a muscle," he says simply. "You're talking about the brain, instead of the bicep or the leg. It can fail you just like the other muscles can. But if you work on it like you work on the other muscles, it can be the most important. In reality, it can be your greatest weapon."