2 MUCH

Through the ages there have been quite a few great pitching tandems in baseball, but we may be witnessing the best ever in Arizona when Schilling and Johnson bring the heat.

When you think about it—or, more likely, if you think about it—we haven't been treated to a memorable baseball poem for quite some time. Not since 1912, probably, and the rollicking goofiness of "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," which includes this famous line: "Tinker to Evers to Chance." But now, just as you were considering abandoning hope, we discover that Diamondbacks pitching coach Bob Welch is composing a poem about Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

The contents are a secret. Welch won't reveal a thing, not title, not theme, not even one line. He says pitcher Miguel Batista is serving as his editorial assistant, but as for the rest? "In-house," Welch says. "Got to stay here. It's something everyone will get in their Christmas card."

Asked if it might channel the simplistic minimalism of "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain," Welch looks hurt, almost stricken. A conversation with Welch takes place on many different wavelengths, and it is your job to keep track. Apparently any insinuation that his poem might be of only modest literary reach is a serious miscalculation of the present wavelength. "No," he says. "There are pages. Pages." And then, as if to discount the very possibility of anything different, he says, "It's an epic."

Of course it is. It has to be. How ridiculous to consider otherwise. After all, there is no limerick, no haiku, no sonnet that could encapsulate the scope of the accomplishments of baseball's best starting combination.

In fact, a look at the material Welch has at his disposal changes the question from "Why a poem?" to "Why not more poems?" From the general, season-long accomplishments to the specific, single-game achievements, there's inspiration enough for a Johnson/Schilling iambic pentameter for every man, woman and pitching coach.

The general:
·Most strikeouts by a duo in big-league history, breaking the mark of 624 set by Nolan Ryan and Bill Singer of the Angels during Ryan's record-setting (383) season of 1973.
· With two weeks remaining in the regular season, Schilling and Johnson had combined for a remarkable 48% of Arizona's 84 victories.
·Johnson entered his last two starts of the season needing 18 strikeouts to break Ryan's single-season record.

The specific:
· On May 8 against Cincinnati, Johnson tied the single-game strikeout mark of 20, leaving after nine innings of a game that went 11.
· Schilling's most dominant performance came against the Padres on May 26, when he took a perfect game into the eighth inning before it was broken up by Ben Davis' controversial bunt single.
· In his one relief appearance of the season, replacing Schilling to resume a suspended game on July 19 in San Diego, Johnson set a single-game strikeout mark for a reliever with 16—in seven innings.

The two have pitched so well, so consistently and so much in unison that it's tempting to consider them one entity. Schilling and Johnson are the reason(s) the Diamondbacks sit atop the National League West despite being among the most inconsistent, maddening teams in baseball. (Schilling says, "We've won more games that we should have lost and lost more games that we should have won than any team I've ever been around.") They are also the reason(s) the Diamondbacks—again, despite that inconsistency—are a looming, unattractive opponent for other NL playoff teams.

In a five-game series, a playoff opponent will face Schilling once and Johnson twice. In a seven-game series, the Diamondbacks could advance using the same inconsistent formula they have used all year—with Johnson (twice, and maybe three times) and Schilling (twice) winning, and everybody else losing. "If you put yourself in their shoes," Diamondbacks catcher Damian Miller says of a potential playoff opponent, "you're getting Randy one night and Schilling the next—and that's happening twice. That's got to be a downer before you even take the field."

Given the material and his proximity to it, Welch is right to be indignant at any underestimation of the scope of his work. It's an epic that's called for, so an epic it is. A little contemplation would have made it apparent that "It's Johnson and Schillin'/Then three days of fill-in" just wouldn't carry the right tone for the moment.

Johnson has always been an epic unto himself, the way he wears the responsibility of 25 men across the deep worry lines of his long face. He's always been weighed down by the act of keeping everybody else up. Nothing about him betrays his 38 years on earth, except his psyche. This is one old psyche. It might be eligible to collect Social Security.

When Schilling arrived from Philadelphia in the second half of last season, Johnson, who has never had anyone close to his equal in the same rotation, saw a potential collaborator. He wanted Schilling to feel what he feels. More than anything, he wanted him to feel the corrosive power of success, how it gets inside you and demands your full and undivided attention.

Johnson felt: Schilling has the talent to be every bit as miserable as I am. He wanted Schilling to reach not only the level where he felt good when he did well, but also the level where he felt bad—devastatingly, hole-in-the-soul bad—when he didn't. It's not a subtle difference. To Johnson, it's the difference between being a guy who has a good year here and there, a guy who is better known for his stuff than his stats, and a guy who regularly rules the mound like a medieval
corrections officer.

In other words, the difference between the guy Johnson used to be and the guy Johnson has become. Or, if this season is any indication, the difference between the guy Schilling used to be and the guy Schilling has become. Because it wasn't that long ago that both of them began to approach pitching as if it were math class: If 94 is good, 98 must be better.

"He has to understand that the expectations are much higher for him now than they ever were," Johnson says. "He has reached a point where he's expected to win. I think he can understand where I'm coming from a little better now."

In Johnson's words, where he's coming from sounds like this: "On the day you pitch you're supposed to win, and when you don't everybody wants to know why. When you succeed, it's not as enjoyable as you'd like it to be. Everybody takes it for granted, even your teammates. I struck out 20 batters in a game this season, but I didn't enjoy it. People look at you and wonder why you can't enjoy it, but when I left, the game was tied. I hadn't really done my job. I hadn't lived up to the expectations."

Schilling had a similar moment on Sept. 18 in Denver, when he recorded the 2,000th strikeout of his career one start after reaching 20 wins for the first time. Number 2,000 came in one of the Diamondbacks' most ridiculous games of the season, a 10-9 loss that saw Schilling blow a 6-0 lead and the bullpen blow a 9-6 lead. "I don't even remember who No. 2000 was or when I got it," Schilling says. "I was horrible that night, and I let the team down. It's easy to be selfish when you're a pitcher. If I go out and win, we win. The flip side of that is obvious. The starter dictates the outcome of the game, one way or the other."

Perhaps the best way to exemplify the responsibility Schilling and Johnson face is to concentrate on the days they don't pitch, the days a less accomplished poet than Welch might consider the three days of fill-in. Through Sept. 27, Johnson and Schilling had combined for a 41-12 record; the rest of the Diamondbacks starters were a combined 22-36.

"When you haven't reached that level, you strive to see if you're capable of it," Johnson says. "Then, when you reach it, it becomes expected of you and the challenge is to stay there. It drives you to be competitive, and sometimes it drives you to the brink of madness."

He is not smiling. The words were not random or meant to be ironic. The brink of madness. Strong stuff. Is he standing on that brink right now?

"Yeah," he says. "I've been there for about the past six years. I take what I do very seriously, probably too seriously. But I believe that's what's gotten me to this point. I don't know any other way. Do I wish I could enjoy it more? Sure, but I know I won't." A typical Johnson year over that span covers 19 wins, 330 strikeouts and a few strides closer to the brink. Someday, though, when the numbers are on a plaque in Cooperstown, the memories will center on the batter's box. It is there you'll find the true testament to Johnson's dominance.

For instance, take the case of San Diego's Phil Nevin, an accomplished hitter. Earlier this season, Nevin found himself swinging at a Johnson slider that was headed directly for his back foot. He was swinging at the ball while simultaneously attempting to keep from being hit by it, which produced an awkward strike and an ugly landing in the box.

"Don't feel bad," Miller told Nevin. "That's not the first time that's happened."

And then, in a sequence that led Welch to ask himself the poetic question, What rhymes with humiliation?, Nevin got back into the box, looked down at Miller with half a smile and said, "That's not the first time it's happened to me."

Johnson's résumé also includes minimal success beyond the regular season. In a lower-decibel version of the howls directed at Barry Bonds' October failings, there is skepticism of Johnson's ability to dominate in the postseason. His 2-6, 3.71 postseason record is mostly a reflection of two poor starts—one for Seattle, against the Orioles in the '97 AL divisional series; one against the Mets in the '99 NL divisional series.

In any epic worth its ink, Johnson would be the tortured perfectionist. Schilling, on the other hand, would be the comic relief, a 34-year-old 7-year-old, a raging extrovert who never met a hitter he couldn't fool or a reporter's notebook he couldn't fill. And if there's no notebook around, he's been known to take it upon himself, as he did when he wrote his own personal letter to America's baseball fans in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

"Schilling's got a great vocabulary," Johnson says sarcastically. "He knows what to say and how to get it out there. But I think Curt now realizes that when you go out and pitch at the level we do, it's not as much fun as it should be, for one reason: You're supposed to be doing it."

If Johnson has imposed a portion of his professional will on Schilling, has Schilling transferred some of his buoyancy to Johnson? "Oh, he can be a jerk," Schilling says, laughing. "He definitely can, but I've been around him a lot in social settings, and I see what he goes through. It's amazing: People actually think 'Boy, you're tall' is still funny."

They might be equal parts of the same epic, but they don't follow the same muse. Schilling comes to work on his day to pitch with the tools of his trade: a laptop and notebooks with scouting reports on opposing hitters. Johnson comes with a headset and some Metallica.

"Randy prepares, don't get me wrong, but Curt is something else," Miller says. "When we meet before a game, he does all the talking. He knows everything that's ever happened against every hitter. He knows who's going to be the home plate umpire five starts from now."

Johnson has become the mad scientist of pitching. Last year he added a two-seam fastball that runs in on righthanded hitters at about 90 mph—changeup speed for the Big Unit. This year, due in part to Schilling's influence, he has begun to mess around with a split-finger. He would not like this fact to gain wide circulation, but hitters have noticed. They view it as the baseball equivalent of a shark growing another row of teeth. Diamondbacks third baseman Matt Williams rolls his eyes and says, "Like Randy needs a split-finger. What, he doesn't have enough stuff already?"

Theirs is a relationship that started on a golf course. Both of them have something of a golf jones, and shortly after Schilling joined the Diamondbacks, they began playing not-so-friendly rounds, with the loser buying the winner a shirt from the pro shop.

"You have to understand, we don't play because we're competitors and we like to compete," Schilling says. "We play because we're competitors and we want to win."

Schilling says he wins roughly 80% of the matches. "Last time out I shot a 73—and he didn't," he says. "Randy has maybe enough golf shirts to last him through a three-game road trip. I have enough for one of those long two-week jobs."

The conversation is taking place in the claustrophobic visitors clubhouse in Dodger Stadium. Johnson is sitting across the room, maybe two of his arm lengths' away, and to this point he has taken no interest in the conversation. Now he gets up, unfolding slowly, and walks toward Schilling. He is looming—there is no other word for it—as he looks down and says, "There were words my mother said when I was young that I took to heart. She said, 'If you always beat someone, they're never going to want to play again.' So occasionally I have to let him win."

"Don't even think about believing that," Schilling says.

Johnson, undeterred, continues: "Look, I don't want something as silly as my superior golf game to come between us and our relationship."

Maybe it's not the most conventional arrangement, but it fits their purposes. Johnson, after all, is generous enough to pass along the greatest gift he knows—his burden. And Schilling has proved himself to be good enough to adopt the misery, and happy enough to survive it.

An enterprising soul might find that sufficient to inspire something epic.

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