“A young blond bull born to apparently waffle a baseball.”
Deron Johnson’s story is about expectations. He was touted as the second coming of a legend but his career progression ended up defying common convention.
“Maybe we won’t play him at all.”
Read this article from the February 19, 1958 edition of the St. Petersburg Times and be amazed at how effusively Yankees skipper Casey Stengel speaks of 19-year-old Deron Johnson. Johnson himself sounds supremely confident, if not outright cocky, about his abilities and future with the team. Johnson backed up all the talk by setting records and collecting MVP awards in the Yankees farm system, so it’s not a stretch that Johnson garnered comparison to Mickey Mantle1.
Johnson debuted with the Yankees in 1960. His career stat line for the team was four hits in twenty-six plate appearances, no home runs, and two RBI.
Then read this article, which was written about three years after Johnson’s departure from the Yankees. The first sentence lays the blame for Johnson not-being-the-next-Mantle squarely at the feet of the “Yankee propaganda bureau.” And if that sounds vaguely familiar in a v-Club context, the Yankees had similar overtures about Dixie Walker being an heir apparent to Babe Ruth.
Deron Johnson did not meet the expectations of the Yankees. They traded him to Kansas City in June 1961.
Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey(-Hey)
Johnson’s first year in Kansas City showed no signs of the potential he had previously exhibited. He batted a meager .216 and hit eight home runs, five of which were ledgers.
LEDGER ONE: June 30, 1961 vs Minnesota Twins
LEDGER TWO: July 23, 1961 (Game 2) vs Detroit Tigers
LEDGER THREE: August 13, 1961 at Chicago White Sox
LEDGER FOUR: August 24, 1961 vs Baltimore Orioles
LEDGER FIVE: September 1, 1961 at Los Angeles Angels
Johnson’s baseball tour of duty for the Athletics was interrupted by an Army call of duty, effectively erasing his 1962 season entirely. Ultimately, Johnson’s time with the Athletics could be reduced to a mere unremarkable footnote. He was purchased by the Reds in 1963.
A Big Red Machine
Cincinnati sent their new acquisition to Triple-A San Diego. Johnson, a native of San Diego, certainly seemed to benefit from some home cooking. He put up a season reminiscent of those with the Yankees farm earned him All-Star honors. With a renewed vigor, Johnson made the most of his call up to the bigs in 1964.
In his first Reds season, Johnson belted 21 home runs and almost maxed out his National League opponents in the process, missing only the Pirates. Remember, by this time we are firmly in v20 Club territory.
LEDGER SIX: April 17, 1964 at Los Angeles Dodgers
LEDGER SEVEN: May 23, 1964 vs Chicago Cubs
LEDGER EIGHT: June 7, 1964 vs St. Louis Cardinals
LEDGER NINE: June 15, 1964 at San Francisco Giants
LEDGER TEN: July 10, 1964 at Philadelphia Phillies
LEDGER ELEVEN: July 12, 1964 (Game 2) at New York Mets2
LEDGER TWELVE: July 27, 1964 at Milwaukee Braves
LEDGER THIRTEEN: August 29, 1964 (Game 2) vs Houston Colt .45s
Johnson followed up his solid 1964 with an MVP-caliber 1965 in which he smashed 32 home runs with 130 RBI. He captured his ledger against the Pirates in May.
LEDGER FOURTEEN: May 8, 1965 at Pittsburgh Pirates
Now Johnson had a maxed out ledger against the National League. He had a fine 1966 season but production began to dwindle in 1967 which really fits into a v-Club archetype. He was dealt to Atlanta for the 1968 season where he still had low production and missed opportunities to collect a ledger against his former team.
Expansion 2: Electric Boogaloo
The book officially closed on the v20 Club upon the first pitch of 1969. Players now had an additional four teams they would need to ledger against to join the v24 Club. Half of those teams were a Deron Johnson This is Your Life segment with the addition of a team in his home town of San Diego and the former home of his former team, the Athletics, in Kansas City3.
Johnson was also expanding his team list as he was purchased by the Phillies in the winter of 1969 where he had another change-of-scenery stats swell. In his first four seasons in Philadelphia he hit 87 home runs and also maxed out his NL ledger again.
LEDGER FIFTEEN: June 14, 1969 at San Diego Padres
LEDGER SIXTEEN: August 2, 1969 vs Cincinnati Reds
LEDGER SEVENTEEN: May 27, 1970 at Montreal Expos
Johnson started the 1973 season in Philadelphia but would soon be on the move again, counter to expectations of career progression.
Breaking the Mold
All five of the previous Club inductees followed a similar pattern – they would play the first part of their career in a single league then play the last part in the other league; there was no back-and-forth. Dixie Walker was in the American League first and the other four started in the National League. All five inductees played for four or five teams in their career4. Johnson was about to make his sixth stop and go back to the American League.
Oakland / Hey-Hey-Hey Doesn’t Have the Same Ring to It
On May 3, 1963, Johnson was traded back to the Athletics who had moved from Kansas City to Oakland in the interim. He again seemed get a good boost from a change of scenery in addition to becoming a regular designated hitter. He collected all the needed ledgers to max out against the American League.
LEDGER EIGHTEEN: May 6, 1973 (Game 2) at Cleveland Indians
LEDGER NINETEEN: May 10, 1973 at Texas Rangers
LEDGER TWENTY: May 21, 1973 vs Kansas City Royals
LEDGER TWENTY-ONE: June 6, 1973 vs Milwaukee Brewers
LEDGER TWENTY-TWO: August 10, 1973 at New York Yankees
LEDGER TWENTY-THREE: August 27, 1973 vs Boston Red Sox
Johnson hit nineteen home runs in the 1973 season and his SABR bio makes an interesting claim:
Johnson entered baseball history as the first player to hit 20 home runs in a season divided between both leagues.
As written, this is not technically true. Charley Smith moved from the White Sox to the Mets in 1964 and John Briggs went from the Phillies to the Brewers in 1971. They both hit twenty home runs with their second team and zero with their first. Deron Johnson was the first player to split 20+ home runs between two leagues in the same season (he had hit one in Philadelphia before being dealt)5.
Breaking the Mold (More)
In mid-1974 Johnson was traded to Milwaukee but failed to hit a ledger against Oakland while there. Later in 1974 he was purchased by Boston but failed to get his Oakland ledger there too.
In 1975 he signed as a free agent with the White Sox and in a decent late-career season, he hit 18 home runs including his last ledger.
LEDGER TWENTY-FOUR: June 30, 1971 vs Oakland Athletics
Johnson spent two more very short, inconsequential seasons in Boston before retiring prior to the 1977 season. Unlike the members before him, Johnson had made nine team moves before joining the club switching from the AL to the NL then back to the AL. This journeyman-type ledger would make more appearances later, but for now, it was unique.
From being tabbed as a Mickey Mantle protege to being the first to capture a v24 Club induction, Deron Johnson shows yet again that perseverance and luck are both necessary components to any baseball journey.
Read More and Sources
Johnson’s SABR bio notes, “The Big Apple sports media had tagged him as a replacement for Mickey Mantle,” which strikes me as slightly hyperbolic. Yes, Mantle had injury concerns but in 1960 Mantle was only two seasons off back-to-back MVP seasons and still had one more to go in addition to finishing second twice more. A “replacement” for Mantle wouldn’t realistically be needed for several years. Certainly you tout an outfield with both Mantle and Johnson. Suffice it to say if the “Yankees propaganda machine” was selling a product the papers were buying it all.
This is first instance where we note two v-Club members hitting a ledger on the same day – Don Demeter also hit his #14 ledger against Baltimore.
The two other teams were placed in Montreal and Seattle (for the one season of the Seattle Pilots before moving to Milwaukee and becoming the Brewers).
This pattern is observable and very common across MLB for its first sixty years. Before 1960, forty-six players had more than 1,000 games total between both leagues. Only nine of them switched leagues more than once in their career and several of those nine were a short and final stop in their career.
Cliff Johnson would be the next to split 20+ home runs between leagues on September 9, 1977. Four days later Dave Kingman accomplished the same feat and finished the season hitting 26 home runs with at least one with four unique teams.
