When my family moved to the Kansas City area when I was in elementary school, I wasn’t yet a Royals fan. But as an avid reader of the Saturday sports section and watcher of Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter, I was a fan of a few players. One of them was towering left-handed pitcher Randy Johnson—The Big Unit.

One of my earliest memories of Kauffman Stadium was therefore watching The Big Unit pitch for the Arizona Diamondbacks. That day, I picked up a purple Diamondbacks hat and witnessed Johnson strike out 11 Royals across seven innings of work. The Big Unit would go on to win the World Series and become co-World Series MVP that year, eventually getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. His mound presence and nickname were part of his lore.

Johnson wasn’t the only recent player with a nota

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