Dear Mr. Unit,
You have been my favorite sports player of all sports since I went to my first baseball game. A little ballerina who played no “real sports”, my love of all things football, basketball, baseball and sometimes soccer began, and still begin, with you. I still own a scrapbook that I made of all the best newspaper articles written about you during my Jr. High & High School years. I hung a poster of you (your scary mug staring out over your mitt) in my room next to pictures of ballerinas in arabesque and my point shoes. You were my sports hero for your fastball and your size and your heart. I loved your genuine apologies while you rushed to the batter’s box when you would hit a guy – arms reaching out to him in apology after you hit him with a crazy, wild, Randy Johnson fastball that you couldn’t yet control.
I fell out of touch with baseball after I moved to San Diego for college (no Dave Niehaus on the radio there!), only going to the inter-league game to watch you hit (amazingly awkward!) when you were still a Mariner. Yet, I was heartbroken when you left the Mariners for the Astros, but I decided that I must now follow the Astros’ stats (though I had never heard of them prior, really), and then the Diamondbacks. By then I was heading to start grad school in Boston, living just across the Charles river from Fenway. I could hear Sweet Caroline from my window. My first week in Boston, I went to a Red Sox game (against the Mariners!) and once again my love of baseball was ignited.
You broke my heart again when you shot down any talk of playing for Boston, saying the only way you would ever play in Fenway was wearing pinstripes! By now I hated the Yankees with the best of them. So much so that for the 2001 Diamondbacks/Yankees World Series I drove down to Manhattan to watch Game 7 in the NYC bars just to root against the Yankees and root for you! My friend and I had to change to a new bar every inning so we didn’t make too many enemies. It was amazing! My sports hero fighting my most despised team! I just knew you would come in to close like you did for the Mariners winning the ALDS final game in 1995 against the Yankees! It was magical for this little girl. Even when you did end up in pinstripes for awhile there, I logically plotted a way to root for you – as long as you weren’t playing the Sox. Thank you, Big Unit, for opening my eyes to the wondrous world of sports. I have loved following you and your accomplishments as my sports awareness has expanded from my little girl world. My most treasured, childhood sports memories will always be of the Kingdome – you pitching to Dan Wilson, with Edgar, Buhner, Junior there and Lou having a conniption. Thank you for everything, Randy.
Always your fan,
Jeannette