MLB power rankings: Top 30 nicknames of all-time
By John Buhler
12. Randy Johnson: The Big Unit
It’s sad. There may never be another player quite like the fireballing southpaw Randy Johnson. The guy was 6-foot-10 and could sling a fastball at over 100 miles per hour. Where that ball was going half the time was totally debatable.
Johnson was a 10-time All-Star, a five-time Cy Young award winner and a World Series Champion with the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks. He finished with 303 career wins, 4,875 strikeouts and once turned a bird into a 1,000 pieces with a fastball.
His nickname was also one of a kind: The Big Unit. Johnson was coined this by another future Hall of Famer Tim “Rock” Raines during 1988 Montreal Expos spring training. In a brief moment of supreme greatness, they collided in practice and Raines would say, “you’re a big unit!”.
The nickname stuck and Johnson would eventually harness control of his fastball with the Seattle Mariners in the 1990s. Johnson was enshrined in Cooperstown in 2015 in his first year of eligibility, being the first member to wear a Diamondbacks cap.