No Pain, No Gain

Ninety two in the shade of home plate and Brian McRae, swinging mightily at a breaking ball, misses most of it and sends a nubber weakly in the direction of first base.

It’s Randy Johnson’s play.

Off the mound he comes, unraveling more than running. He folds his 6-foot-10 body to snatch the ball off the grass, and twists back to make the throw to Paul Sorrento at first base. It’s an awkward play made even more so by the severe angles of runner, ball, basepath and Johnson’s own left-handedness.

But the throw beats McRae to the bag.

And Johnson reaches for his back.

Uh-oh.

Get lathered, rinse and repeat this scene, or facsimiles thereof, throughout who knows how much of the 1997 baseball season.

The communal taking of Randy Johnson’s temperature has evolved into the Northwest’s summer pastime - perhaps even neurotically so in this, the year the Seattle Mariners have been ordained by mags, rags and wags to win it all.

So the least we can do is allay the fears fanned by Johnson’s Thursday brush with wrench.

“It’s nothing serious,” Johnson reported. “There was a little twinge. It scared me a little bit. But my therapist is here and said that’s reassuring. It shows how durable my back is now.”

That must go for the Mariner fan’s heart, as well.

The Big Unit is not back, but he does seem to be en route - and a little farther down the road given the evidence in Seattle’s 6-4 victory over the Cubs Thursday afternoon at HoHoKam Park.

We’ll give you the full treatment in a minute, but first this bulletin:

Randy Johnson walks!

And this: Randy Johnson scores!

It happened in the top of the fifth, the M’s down 3-0. Dan Wilson and Brent Gates had sandwiched singles between two ground-ball outs, which brought Johnson to the plate for the second time - this being a National League park where extremely obese male spectators with no shirts are welcome but the designated hitter is not.

His first at-bat resulted in a lunging hack and a fly ball to center. That must have sent a jolt of fear through Cubs starter Kevin Foster, because with the end of the inning at hand he walked the man with the largest strike zone in baseball to load the bases.

Which Joey Cora promptly cleared with a grand slam into the bullpen beyond the right-field fence.

“I felt like I was the one who hit it,” said Johnson. “I was going around the bases saying, ‘Yeah!’ doing my home-run trot.”

For the record, Johnson got his walk with a John Marzano model bat - switching from a Cora model that produced the fly ball. Marzano would later homer, too, so draw your own conclusions.

“I’m putting together a hitting tips tape for the kids,” Johnson cracked.

Fun and games. Fun and game-to-game, actually.

“We’re just going to pitch him, and when he says he’s fine, he’s fine,” said M’s pitching coach Nardi Contreras. “If there’s something wrong, we’ll have pitching ready. <That’s all we can do.”

That and hope.

But the 69 pitches he threw in 4-2/3 innings represented a Johnson-sized step for the man who - more than Ken Griffey Jr. or Edgar Martinez or Alex Rodriguez - is the best barometer of just how successful the Mariners will be.

“I only have two more outings left (in Arizona),” Johnson said. “I need to make the most of my outings, and the way you do that is to go out and get deep into the game. There’s no benefit to the team if I can’t pitch five or six innings from the get-go.

“Every time I get deeper into a game, it’s encouraging. And to not have any aches or pains that don’t go away that evening or the next day is also encouraging.”

It has been six months now since Dr. Larry Watkins performed a micro endoscopic discecktomy - and you thought it was a new stereo system - to correct a herniation in Johnson’s back that turned the 1996 Mariners season into a can-he-pitch-or-can’t-he version of the old water torture.

Whatever Watkins cut out, he seems to have left Johnson’s fastball pretty much intact. Remember, the high, hard one that beaned J.T. Snow 10 days ago was doing 97 mph.

Johnson is by no means sharp, of course, though he didn’t surrender a hit to the Cubs until the fourth. He seemed to waver and lose concentration whenever something went against the M’s - a stolen base, for instance, on an 0-2 count that eventually led to a walk.

But of the three runs he gave up in the fourth, two were unearned. And all three could have been but for the scorer’s odd reasoning that he couldn’t assume the ground ball Gates booted could have been a force out at second, rather than at first.

And speaking of assumptions, it’s probably prudent for Mariners fans to park theirs - the one that says Randy will make everything all better this season.

No, he has not lost a game since Aug. 1, 1995. Yes, the M’s are 34-4 in his starts the past two years.

But it’s unlikely Johnson will ever be the Herculean presence he was in ‘95 - dominating on short rest, winning all the games that had to be won to keep a magical season alive.

Nor should he have to be. Not with Jeff Fassero, Jamie Moyer and Scott Sanders now on board, three quality starters who weren’t here a year ago. Not with his back now damaged goods.

So the M’s will suffer through every tweak and twinge. They know that the average numbers from a healthy Unit would have translated into another American League West championship last fall. They’ll clench their teeth every time Johnson reaches for a ground ball, or makes an off-balance throw.

“Of course we will,” Contreras admitted. “That’s the most dominant pitcher in baseball and we need him healthy.

“But he’s not going to take precautions on plays like that. He’s an athlete out there making a play. He wants to get the out. He needs to do that, because it’s going to happen during the season and we may as well find out now.”

Out here, where it’s 92 degrees in the shade of home plate, but it might as well be the heat of a pennant race.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review