YouTube Gold: The Terrifying Power Of Randy Johnson Pitch

One of the strangest events in baseball history and that’s saying a lot.

Randy Johnson’s MLB career ran from 1988 to 2009 and was extraordinary.

At 6-10, Johnson had tremendous power and control and was one of the most intimidating pitchers of his era. If you think baseball is easy, you never tried to hit a Randy Johnson pitch. He was unbelievable.

Despite his many accomplishments and records, The Big Unit is best known for a freak episode that happened in 2001 when he was in spring training with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Before we go any further, what follows is an NSFW for sensitive readers. Consider yourself warned.

Johnson was throwing a fastball to Calvin Murray of the San Francisco Giants when a dove, minding is own business, flew into the path of the ball.

Keep in mind that Johnson threw as fast as 102 MPH. He was a devastating pitcher.

And he was certainly devastating to that bird: when the pitch hit it, all you saw was an explosion of feathers.

You don't really think about a baseball as being a deadly weapon, but of course it can be. If you got hit in the head with a 102 MPH fastball, you’d probably be dead too. Certainly you’d be in the hospital for quite some time.

All that said, it was obviously an accident. However, for Johnson, it became a defining event in his career. He says he’s asked about that as often as anything. It started as a routine pitch and ended up as a notorious baseball legend.