A lot of the negatives from that era were thrown away during one of the many moves—from Montreal to Seattle to Phoenix to New York to San Francisco and back to the desert again. But that Mini Cooper one survived. “It was in black and white,” he says. “Kind of timeless.”
The second photo is from the early ’90s, when he was just getting going in Seattle. “I was single and on my own walking the streets at night during the offseason,” he remembers. It was snowing near Pike’s Place, and he was right by an old bookstand with his Pentax 67 film camera. “I got my back up against a wall with a wide-angle lens,” he continues. “You can see the guy stocking the magazine rack and that’s about three quarters of the viewfinder. Then the other bit is the sidewalk, the background outside, and a light pole.” Another man walked towards him in a trench coat and a big hat, and the slow shutter speed cloaks him in an eerie blur.
Both pictures come from before the first of his five Cy Youngs, before his life forever changed. Still, at 6’10”, even then it was a rare luxury to disappear. But with camera in hand in a dark alleyway or pressed against a wall on a snowy night, Johnson could be unseen.
The camera is a mirror, but it’s also a spotlight. Johnson tells me it’s changed the way he sees the world. Now, when he watches movies, he finds himself noticing every angle the cinematographer chooses. When he travels, or bikes, or hikes, or walks around town, he’s always scanning, looking for a perfect shot. “My eyes are a little bit more open,” he says.
He’d long been a subject, of stares and flashbulbs, of adulation and hate. He’d had to move more quickly then. His dinners would be interrupted; in New York, he’d be trailed by photographers hoping to sell a shot. These days, he can stand alone, focused on a job, hidden behind his camera. Hidden, at least, as much as a giant can ever hide.
I’ve spoken with athletes who explain retirement like a first small death. Johnson, though, says leaving the game wasn’t so hard for him. He misses the camaraderie and the competition, sure. He loved that you could put all of yourself into something and then let it go, because you had to do it over again five days later. “I mean, I played 22 years. The gamut. Four years in the minor leagues. Three years in college. I got my fill. Do I miss it? Yeah, there’s certain things I miss,” he says. “But my body… you know, I just had full knee replacement. I have a torn left rotator cuff that I hurt the last year of my career that’s probably just scarred over now. I had three back surgeries. So, it ran its course. My body broke down because of the demands. But I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
But he doesn’t view life in the past tense. He’s got more to see, more photographs to take. “As soon as my knee heals, I’m not too old to pack a bag,” he says. “If I could live over in Africa in a village and be where I want to be for a month, I would do it.” Backpacking across Europe, maybe. Picture it: the Big Eurail Pass. “Maybe for a year go do that. I mean, that’s living the life. That’s seeing the world,” he continues. Johnson leans back in his chair. Now he’s smiling again. “And I would like to do that with a camera.”
Read the full article here
