Tom Singer
MLB.com
No 297th win. No evident love from his former fans. Randy Johnson came home Saturday and essentially had the door slammed in his face.
The Big Unit turned out to be a small subplot to a terrific see-saw game, with Randy Winn's two-run tiebreaking homer in the fifth the key blow of the Giants' 5-3 win over the Diamondbacks.
The Giants' fifth straight win pulled them up to the .500 level at 8-8.
"Everything was good about today," Johnson said after the 600th appearance of his career, "except for the fact I didn't show up."
Johnson notched only 10 outs -- and needed 81 pitches for them -- while walking seven, his most in 247 appearances since July 25, 2000, when he also walked seven in St. Louis.
He apparently went 80 pitches past the point his manager realized it wouldn't be a good night for him.
"I could tell right away he was off," said Bruce Bochy. "I'm sure he was a little hyped up. But at 45 you're going to have days like that, when your command is off. He battled himself to get the ball where he wanted. He was fighting himself from the first pitch."
Johnson took the mound in the bottom of the first to surprisingly sparse applause, as if the fans felt no emotional link to the greatest pitcher in their team's brief history. The cheers came soon enough -- not in Johnson's support but at his expense.
They reached a crescendo when Justin Upton launched a two-run homer in the fourth, for a brief 2-0 Arizona lead.
Impressively, despite 10 of the 19 batters who faced him reaching base, those were the only runs Johnson allowed.
"I put the team in a bind. But I'm glad they didn't have such a tremendous lead that we couldn't come back," Johnson said.
Johnson was out of the game by the time the Giants answered loudly with two outs in the fifth, on Edgar Renteria's tying two-run double then Winn's go-ahead homer to chase D-backs starter Max Scherzer.
"We have to win in all sorts of ways," said Winn, who yanked a 3-and-1 fastball from Scherzer over the fence in the left-field corner. "Our pitching has been so strong, but when a starting pitcher struggles, you have to pick him up.
"It was our turn," added Winn, referring to an offense that ranks near the bottom among the 16 National League teams.
That leaf may be turning. On Friday, the Giants piled up 12 hits, only their fourth double-digit effort of the season. On Saturday, the four-run fifth matched their most productive inning of the young season.
"Guys are starting to relax," Winn said. "You come out of Spring Training into big stadiums and under the lights, and guys become so anxious.
"A lot of guys are short on patience. It's a function of people getting comfortable and focusing on doing things the way they did in Spring Training."
Justin Miller (1-0), who followed Johnson, earned the victory despite surrendering a solo homer to Eric Byrnes in his 1 2/3 innings.
Miller was the second of five relievers who held the D-backs to four hits and the one run over the final 5 2/3 innings. Bringing up the rear, Brian Wilson earned his third save -- although Bochy wanted to slice that up into fifths.
"The bullpen saved us today," the manager said. "They all came through."
Miller and Wilson -- and the arms between them, Jonathan Sanchez, Bob Howry and Jeremy Affeldt -- may not have been the ones the Chase Field crowd of 37,253 had come to see.
But from the moment Augie Ojeda broke up Johnson's no-hitter for the second straight time -- albeit on this occasion with one out in the first, not leading off the seventh, as the shortstop had done on Sunday in San Francisco -- the Big Unit was on the ropes.
Any resemblance between this Unit and the one of Sunday was strictly physical. But even at 6-foot-10, Johnson was made to feel small by the D-backs.
"It was frustrating not being able to get the ball where I wanted," he said after throwing 42 balls among those 81 pitches. "It was one of those games ... part of baseball. I've pitched a long time, so I've had a lot of bad games."
Possibly trying to get in Johnson's head, D-backs management had chosen to open both the roof and outfield panels of Chase Field. While the weather was ideal, Johnson had been an outspoken critic of opened-roof conditions during his Arizona incumbency, feeling the ball carried so much better and farther than with the top closed.
Johnson shook off any concerns over that ... as well as the possibility, if not likelihood, that he would be on the verge of those coveted 300 wins when the Giants return here on June 10.
"I don't think like that. Just one start at a time," said Johnson, following one start he will not think about at all.
From: MLB.com
 San Francisco (8-8) Won 5 | San Francisco 5, Arizona 3 |  Arizona (6-11) Lost 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Standings thru 4/25/09 | Recap: SF | ARI | Wrap | Gameday |
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