WHY THE 'A' MATTERS

Does a logo on a hat matter when someone goes into the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Yup. No doubt about it.

In the case of Randy Johnson, a.k.a. “The Big Unit”, it mattered more to me than many things that have happened to the Arizona Diamondbacks these past few seasons. I'm an Arizona native after all.

Look, I hope it isn't just me, but it would physically bother me if Johnson entered Cooperstown with any other logo on his hat than that ‘rattlesnake A’ we so proudly sport here in the Grand Canyon State.

I would have also accepted that rattlesnake in the shape of a "D" logo we rocked on those black hats in ’01.

But I wouldn’t have accepted a Montreal ‘M,’ which I barely figured out was a stylized ‘M’ 3 years ago, or even that Houston star.

And while the Yankees interlocking ‘NY’ looks good on most, it just didn’t fit the 6’10” Cy Young icon. 

Oh yeah... and I could NOT live with the Seattle Mariners ‘S’ adorning his brow.  They gave up on him before his prime.  His real PRIME!  I know he was there ten years, but he was only celebrated for a short time in the great northwest.

The man is a Diamondback! He was a large rattlesnake who breathed fire on the mound!  He made the organization, and all his moments, his glory, it all happened when he wore purple or black.

Randy Johnson was the hometown hero; he lived here in the off-season.  We needed him... and it’s only fair that the Arizona fan base gets him as their first Hall of Famer.

It bugs me that Yogi Berra has no Yankees logo on his hat, probably a product of what he felt when he was disrespected by the organization he became synonymous with. The DBacks almost did the same thing to Johnson, depriving him of finishing his career and reaching 300 wins in Arizona and forcing him to call San Francisco his home for a year.

But the past is the past, and I take pride knowing that a man who slightly looks like my uncle Roy, but never went to prison, is going to the Hall of Fame and he’s sporting my home team’s colors and logo!

Sorry Seattle, you’ve got Pearl Jam, you have Nirvana and you should get Griffey Jr. too. But “The Big Unit” is our hero and our champion!

Thank you Randy Johnson for putting Arizona on the sports map. Congratulations on the Hall of Fame.

Wolfgang Von Bunt
BYB Staff Writer
Twitter: @WVBunt

 

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