Big Unit: Randy Johnson Takes Dominance to Historic Level.(baseball player)

Over the last two seasons, Arizona left-hander has captured two Cy Young Awards, won 36 games, fanned 711 batters and posted 10 or more strikeouts in 46 outings

WHEN RANDY JOHNSON STRIDES to the mound, you don't just see the most dominating and intimidating pitcher of his generation.

Johnson's latest guise--and this is the true wonder of the latter-day "Big Unit"--is as a master craftsman, a cerebral sharpshooter, all wrapped in the same intimidating package that he has carried since becoming a consistent winner with Seattle in the mid-1990s.

"It sounds crazy, but he's become a control pitcher," said Todd Stottlemyre, a teammate of Johnson's with the Arizona Diamondbacks. "He throws 98 miles an hour right where he wants to. When you think about that, it's scary."

And when you think about how far he has come to get to that point, it's mind-boggling. Johnson's early control struggles are achingly familiar as he took the long, hard road to overnight success. In 1991, his second full season with the Mariners, Johnson walked 152 batters, the most in baseball over the past 23 years.

That was the second of three straight seasons Johnson led the majors in walks, and at the time it seemed possible he would never completely master the unique mechanical challenges of being a 6-foot-10 left-hander.

But fast forward to 1999, when Johnson's ratio of strikeouts to walks--5.2 to 1 (364 strikeouts, 70 walks)--was in a range that before 1997 had been visited this century, among pitchers with 300 or more strikeouts in a season, only by Sandy Koufax.