‘Leave no question,’ Chris Sale has competitive fire that defined his idol Randy Johnson

SAN DIEGO – Chris Sale was in Little League when he began to idolize Randy Johnson. Sale wore No. 51 in honor of Johnson. He was probably 10 or 11 years old when he first started watching Johnson pitch. Like Johnson – aptly named the Big Unit – Sale was a skinny left-handed pitcher, so it made sense to adore Johnson.

“He’s the best left-handed pitcher that’s ever walked the planet, right?” Sale said. “Dominant and just fierce. I just loved watching this guy – he’s standing on a mound and he’s just foaming at the mouth. It looked like he never wanted to come out, he never backed down from anybody. It was just kind of all gas, no brakes. And I just was like, ‘Hey, that looks like somebody I want to be like.’”

Does that description sound familiar?

Fierce. Foaming at the mouth. Never wanting to come out. Never backing down.

It sounds … a lot like Sale.

Sale is super, super, super competitive. (Get the point? Or do we need one more “super” in there?) He hates losing. He enjoys battling. He relishes the toughness and grit it takes to win in this sport. He is talented, but his best attribute might be his strong will. At all costs, he will keep pounding.

“The more I’m around the game and the more I see athletes and just people in general, I think that (competitiveness is) the difference-maker,” Sale said. “That’s just what I believe. People have different opinions, but I think that it’s, how much do you want it? If you’re out there and you have doubt or you’re scared at all – you can be nervous, nerves are part of it – but to stand out there and just kind of look like you’re scared of what’s going on or have doubt in what you’re trying to do, I never saw that from him. And I was like, ‘That’s really cool.’

“And I think that a lot of times even now, that’s the difference. Everybody here has talent, right? You got guys that throw 90 to 92 (miles per hour) that are All-Stars in the big leagues, and then you got 98 to 100 that never make it out of Double A. What’s the difference? It can’t be physical. It can’t be. I saw a lot of that from him, and that’s kind of how I’m wired a little bit, too, when I’m in between the lines.”

Speaking on a recent phone interview, Johnson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he’s flattered “someone else out there even remembers who I was.” He cannot be serious: The Big Unit himself, a Hall of Famer, won five Cy Young Awards, four ERA titles, a World Series and World Series MVP. He was an All-Star 10 times. He won a pitching triple crown, which is when a pitcher leads the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts.

Johnson, now 60, no longer follows baseball closely. He still works for the Diamondbacks as a special assistant to the president and CEO, and is a managing partner. He knows about Sale, who debuted the year after he retired. But he isn’t aware of specifics on Sale’s season. But he can speak in generalities about Sale, who is one of the best lefties of his own generation.

“He has a lot of experience and has the ability to dominate games,” Johnson said. “How much he will continue to do that really will depend on his mindset and obviously the health of his body.”

Johnson, of course, was from a different era. When he pitched, starters went deep into games. They valued pitching wins and pitching every fifth day. They wanted to log as many innings as possible.

Here’s the thing: Sale has this in him, too.

In nine of 19 starts this season, Sale has pitched seven innings. The Braves have given him extra rest before most of his starts because he’s spent much of the last few seasons out with injuries, but he’s been unbelievable. Sale posted a 2.70 ERA over 110 innings in the first half. He was named an All-Star – though he won’t pitch in the game because he started for the Braves on Sunday in San Diego.

Sale, Johnson said, is part of a group of old-school starters. He also named Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw.

“These are all people that played toward the end of my career, so they were groomed, if you will, by the organization in their pitching philosophies about going out there and pitching seven innings and working hard and earning that win,” Johnson said. “That’s old-school. Those are the old-school pitchers that are still in today’s game. But someone that has two or three years of service time in today’s game doesn’t really know much about going seven or eight innings every five days, because that’s not really what they talk about in today’s game in a pitchers meeting. That’s not really what they expect out of a starting pitcher in today’s game. It’s, ‘Hey, you give us five good innings, and then we’ll let the bullpen take over.’”

That Johnson named HIM as a part of this group of old-school bulldogs?

“It’s very humbling, honestly,” Sale said. “This is a guy that I grew up wanting to be like. My nickname, my throwing style, the number I wore. Even maybe at times when I was a kid, just faking it a little bit, just to be like that. I definitely appreciate it. It’s a weird thing where you grow up watching this guy and you kind of idolize him professionally and as a baseball player. That guy had no idea who I was, ever, and I never expected him to. It’s kind of surreal that he’s talking about me in the same ways that I talked about him.”

Asked his opinion on the most impressive part of Johnson’s career, Sale gives two things.

“The fierceness and the way that he competed. I mean, this guy literally was like foaming at the mouth,” Sale said. “And the punchouts. Just punching tickets.”

The game has changed, though. In Johnson’s day, starters regularly threw over 100 pitches. Zero question.

Now? Not so much. They might be out after five or six innings and 100 pitches. It’s different. Whether it’s bad or good depends on who you ask.

But you don’t see as many starters going seven innings consistently nowadays.

“How could you go seven, eight innings if you’re only allowed to turn over a lineup three times and throw 100 pitches?” Johnson said. “You have to manage 100 pitches. I wasn’t even warmed up until I threw 100 pitches in a game. I was throwing 135 pitches in a game.”

Johnson isn’t complaining – he’s simply explaining the changes between eras. And he’s praising Sale, who might be one of the last of a dying breed of throwbacks.

Told about Johnson’s comment regarding not feeling warmed up until he reached 100 pitches, Sale said that, in his own career, he’s had times where he’s at, say, 108 pitches through six or seven innings and it wasn’t a question of whether he’d go back out. He was going back out.

Has this shift in the game been weird to endure?

Yes and no, Sale said.

“The shift came when I started getting hurt a lot, so I didn’t really have a whole lot of say,” he said. “Who am I to go up to (Braves manager Brian Snitker) or to go up to (Red Sox manager Alex Cora) after I’ve had surgery after surgery and injury after injury and say, ‘No, I’m going back out there?’ I’ve always had too much respect for my manager to do that, and I’ve been just in a weird time in my career.

“It’s just different. I caught the back end of the old school and I was at the very beginning of this new-school way. I don’t know. But it’s different, too, because you’ve got seven closers out there now. It’s not like you got your setup guy and your closer and you got a bunch of failed starters. I’m sorry, but we got guys throwing in the sixth, seventh inning that potentially are closers on other teams. Right? It’s different that way, too, of just how important each game is. You can’t just throw away games like that.”

That answer is why it’s easy to appreciate Sale. He’s brutally honest. He faces reality.

And if you ever doubt the 35-year-old Sale’s competitiveness or fire, then post this quote to a wall – if you haven’t run through that wall first.

“You can be in the third inning giving up eight runs and the guy that steps into the box has no chance. Every pitch is a new pitch. I don’t care if you’re throwing eight no-hit innings or if you’re in the third inning, bases loaded, nobody out and you’ve already given up five – the mentality has to maintain the same. It has to be the same. I’ve had it described to me by people as being in a fight. You’re gonna get hit. It’s going to happen. If you’re in a fistfight, you’re gonna get hit. When you get hit, do you go ball up in the corner and just kind of brace for impact? Or do you just kind of dig your heels in the ground and say, ‘Listen, I’m either gonna win this or I’m gonna lose this, but I’m going down competitively?’

“And that’s kind of how I view pitching. You’re gonna give up a run here and there, you might walk a guy and you might get screwed a little bit, right? But how do you react to that? Are you gonna get and kind of ease off? I’d rather suck and get beat going hard, competing with everything I have – because then that leaves no question. It leaves no question. ‘Well, if I would’ve done this.’ It’s like, well, no, sometimes you go out and you get beat. Get over it, get your work done and show up five, six days from then and go after it again.”

Sale’s competitive attitude had to carry him through the last few years. When he came back from the injuries, he had teammates in Boston come up to him and say, “Hey, you don’t look the same out there right now.” Sale was trying to figure out his delivery and where to throw his pitches “as opposed to just doing what I’ve always done, which is not caring about anything other than just competing.”

Dealing with injuries isn’t easy. It can create doubt. Sale said he wondered if he’d ever be good again. (He’s answered that question.)

“I was out of it for a long time, so those juices get flowing again, it’s like a car that sits for a while,” Sale said. “It might not act right for a little bit.”

And now, Sale is back to being himself. He’s staring down, and then mowing down, lineups. He’s going deep into games.

“When someone like a Chris Sale is healthy, he’s capable of doing these things,” Johnson said. “He doesn’t know any other way, I guess is what I’m saying.”

Sale grew up in the era when starting pitchers carried their teams as far as they humanly could. The game has changed – and Sale is fine with that – but he’s still the fearless bulldog we’ve all watched since he debuted.

And now, Sale is at the point in his career where young pitchers look up to him just as he idolized Johnson.

“It’s special,” Sale said. “It’s kind of like you realize that, but it’s still weird. You just never feel like you’re ever gonna be in that position. I grew up playing baseball, I’ve only ever wanted to play baseball, I’m here playing baseball. I tell my wife (Brianne) all the time, and other people: I stand on a mound, (and) there are some times I just completely lose track that this place is packed.’ I don’t hear anything, I don’t really see anything. I’m hitting myself in the head with the baseball, screaming and stuff, and I just completely lose track of the fact that there’s 40-plus thousand people just watching this whole thing. You don’t really realize it when you’re doing it.”

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