From ESPN Insider: Bonds vs. Big Unit: When it all started by Alan Schwarz Friday, September 21 One is going after the single-season home run record. The other is within striking distance of the one for whiffs. With just two weeks left Barry Bonds and Randy Johnson are approaching records on the opposite ends of baseball's spectrum, the ability to hit balls over the fence and the ability to keep the batter from even making contact. When they face each other, it's like yin vs. yang, fire vs. water, Oscar vs. Felix. And they've been doing it longer than you'd think. Of course, Bonds and Johnson have been duking it out for the Giants and Diamondbacks for the last three years. And though it's easy to forget, Johnson pitched in 11 games for the Expos in 1988 and '89, making his big-league debut against Bonds' Pirates. Despite being eighth on the all-time home run list, Barry Bonds has yet to hit one off of Randy Johnson in his career.But their ties go back even farther. Before they wore minor-league uniforms. Before they were paid to play (heaven forbid). When they were just college punks -- 558 home runs, 3,382 strikeouts and two decades away from their current stations among the all-time greats. They went to Bay Area high schools just 30 minutes apart, Bonds at Serra High in San Mateo and Johnson at Livermore. And when they went off to college in 1982, they chose archrival powerhouses -- Arizona State for Bonds and Southern California for Johnson. While records are somewhat sketchy, they did face each other several times. Neither was anywhere near the player he is today. Arriving on campus, Johnson was a 6-foot-10, flailing bundle of arms and legs; Bonds a cocky kid with quick feet and a quicker bat. Don Wakamatsu, the future big-league catcher and now field coordinator for the Anaheim Angels, was a fellow freshman at Arizona State and remembers, "Barry was a much better player than Randy was a pitcher. Barry was ultra-confident but was only 165-170 pounds, max. Randy threw extremely hard for an 18-year-old, but he had no command at all." Both made immediate impacts in college. Bonds batted .306 his freshman year with a team-leading 11 home runs while playing right field for the third-ranked Sun Devils. Johnson pitched out of the Trojans' bullpen and went 5-0 with three saves. They faced each other once -- and Johnson won out, holding Bonds to an 0-for-2 with a strikeout. On March 13, 1984, newly moved to the rotation as a sophomore, Johnson started against Arizona State and got shelled, letting the first five batters reach base. The next hitter? Barry Bonds. USC coach Rod Dedeaux got Johnson out of there. "They were just blasting him," Dedeaux recalls. "He was at the point where another base hit would be disastrous. I didn't want anything to hurt his confidence." Adds Wakamatsu, "You weren't going to sit around and wait with the powerhouse we had. Barry would have finished him off." One additional note: A certain USC first baseman went 4-for-5 with two doubles in that game. Name of McGwire. Considering Dedeaux had recruited Bonds to go to USC but couldn't get him admitted, it was possible that Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Randy Johnson could have been college teammates. In 1985, both knowing they would be highly drafted following their junior seasons, Johnson and Bonds faced each other for the final times as amateurs. Johnson would finish the season a wobbly 6-9 with a 5.32 ERA, walking 104 and striking out 99 in 118 innings. Bonds, meanwhile, was establishing himself as one of the top players in the nation, batting .368 with 23 home runs. (He already had established himself as an All-American pain in the butt: Tired of his strutting around, refusing to carry his own bags and the like, his own teammates voted Bonds off the team, only to be overruled by head coach Jim Brock.) On March 24, though play-by-play data was unavailable, it's known that Bonds went 3-for-7 (all singles) with a strikeout while Johnson's line read: 5 1/3 innings, 5 hits, 6 runs, 5 earned, 7 walks, 6 strikeouts. So Bonds probably got at least one or two of those hits against Johnson. He wasn't so lucky the next time. On April 13, Johnson gave up six runs (all earned) on eight hits and seven walks in 8 1/3 innings in a wild win against Arizona State. But Bonds went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. "That was quite a ballgame for Randy," Dedeaux says. "He was just starting to mature." Bonds wound up getting drafted by the Pirates with the sixth overall pick in the 1985 draft and reached Pittsburgh to stay the following summer. Johnson spent three years in the Expos farm system before getting traded to Seattle along with two others for Mark Langston in 1989. (The Expos trading prospects for a stud veteran! Those were the days ... ) They have faced each other 31 times in the majors, and it's fair to say the lefty-lefty thing is holding pretty good. Bonds has six hits in 27 at-bats (.182) with four RBI, four walks and five strikeouts. And no home runs. Yet. Either way, they will always be intertwined, one the best player and the other the best left-hander of their generations. And some 30 years after meeting each other on a college ballfield, Barry Bonds and Randy Johnson will wind up together forever, in Cooperstown. I had no idea that The Big Unit and McGwire played on the same college team. The two most visible larger-than-life active players honed their skills on the same college diamond. Who would of thunk it?
I wanna say McGwire even pitched with Randy in college, too. But that may have been high school and he stopped when he got to college. And Johnson better not break Ryan's record!!
