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If Mitchell Johnson wasn’t spearheading Australia’s pace attack in the Ashes, chances are he could be standing on the mound as a Major League Baseball pitcher.
According to Australian fielding coach and acclaimed former baseball mentor, Mike Young, Johnson had the potential to enjoy an even more handsome career as a baseballer.
Young, who made his coaching switch a decade ago, rates cricket’s latest star as the best athlete he’s seen in the game, ahead of Andrew Symonds.
The American-born coach said Johnson’s natural ability and strong left arm would have seen him pitch in the high-90mph (150kph) to make him a certainty to gain a pro-contract.
In an episode that would make Ricky Ponting and Cricket Australia’s senior officials breathe a huge sigh of relief now, Young went close to offering a young, injury-plagued Johnson the chance to follow another sporting path.
He befriended the left-arm speedster when he was 21, battling continual back injuries and in danger of being cut from Queensland’s contract list.
Young, who coached with the Baltimore Orioles and Cleveland Indians in the 1980s and ’90s, actually warned Queensland officials in 2002 his American friends would love to have Johnson on their books.
“I said ‘look it’s not my job to do this, although I work for you, but I’m telling you now if you release this kid I believe it will massively come back to frikkin’ haunt you’,” Young told AAP.
“I said ‘this is the best athlete I’ve seen in cricket to date’. For me, that included Andrew Symonds.
“I said ‘if that happens and he doesn’t get picked up by some other (state), I will immediately make a phone call because this kid can not get lost’.
“He would have got a large amount of money to sign for professional baseball.”
In the end, Queensland took a “calculated risk” to dump Johnson from their list after the 2002-03 season but kept him close and monitored his return to cricket after almost a year without bowling.
During that time, while the American was helping Australia to the 2003 World Cup, Johnson drove a plumbing supplies van to make ends meet.
Young, the only man to be twice named International Baseball Association coach of the year, said he would have trained him for six months before sending him to the US as a free agent.
He has no doubts Johnson would have been on the right track for a Major League career.
“Talent-wise and signability, not even a question,” he said.
“What he would have been able to do with a baseball if he stayed healthy and learned the game … he would have thrown definitely mid to upper 90s.
“He would have got signed and he would have got a lot of money.”
Young isn’t surprised by the 27-year-old’s transformation into Australia’s most-feared paceman and believes the burgeoning all-rounder can bat in the middle-order.
“I believe he has every tool possible to be what he wants to be.”
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