Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,890
By This is the grave of Ernie Johnson.
Born in 1924 in Brattleboro, Vermont, Johnson grew up in a Swedish American household there. His father was a cabinetmaker who did not appreciate his young son’s love for the American game of baseball. But Johnson sure loved baseball and especially his hero Mel Ott. He was an excellent athlete, at least by the standards of Vermont in the early 40s, not exactly America’s athletic home. In fact, I believe Vermont remains the only state to never produce an NBA player. But it did give baseball Ernie Johnson.
The reason Johnson made the major leagues is that his baseball coach was determined that his young pitcher, for this was Johnson’s best position, was ready to play in the high minors almost immediately. He drove the kid to Boston for a workout with the Red Sox. The Sox agreed he had talent but wanted to see him in a year of semipro ball first. The coach wouldn’t accept that and so took him to the Boston Braves, who signed him and sent him to play for Hartford in the Eastern League. He did pretty well, but it was 1942 and he got drafted. Johnson was in the Marines for the next three years, including at Okinawa. Like a lot of soldiers, he was downed by malaria and spent much of the war recovering from that. In fact, while he survived the war, he didn’t really recover fully until 1947.
By that time, there was some question whether a now much older Johnson was really going to play in the majors. But he persevered and did well pitching for Hartford in AA in 1948 and then Denver in 1949. So the Braves brought him to spring training in 1950 and he made the team. It was a longshot; the Braves really didn’t see too much in him. But he had a nasty paintball, as he called it, which was a version of the knuckleball. He did well and made the roster.
Johnson didn’t stick around too long. He got into 16 games, starting 1, but was terrible, so he was sent back to AAA. But he was back to the majors in 1952 and became a solid contributor to the Braves bullpen through 1958. Generally he was a reliever in an era when they weren’t so valued, but he did have an occasional start in his first years. There’s not a ton to say about his playing career. According to Baseball Reference’s WAR stat, his best year was 1954, when he was worth 2.1 WAR, with a 2-1 record and a 2.81 ERA in 40 games, 4 of which were starts. Generally, that’s a tick better than most of his seasons. He really was the back of the bullpen option though.
In 1957, his manager didn’t even bring him into a game until May 5, even though he had been on the active roster for a month! But then he did get into three games that fall when the Braves, now in Milwaukee, played the Yankees in the World Series. He took the loss in Game 6, though it was just 1 run given up in 4 1/3 innings. Hank Bauer homered off him and that was enough. He did slip in 58 and had a pretty bad season. After that season, the Braves released him. He signed with the Baltimore Orioles, but he really had nothing left in the tank. He had another bad season and was released again. He tried to make the roster of the Cleveland Indians in 1960, but was released in spring training and retired. According to Baseball Reference, he was worth all of 4 WAR in his career, which means he is like a million unremembered relievers.
After his career ended, Johnson returned to Milwaukee and sold insurance. But he wanted to remain involved in the game and he soon was doing goodwill stuff for the Braves. This led him to becoming the team’s PR director and then to doing games on the radio and then television beginning in 1966. This is of course what everyone remembers Johnson for. If you lived in the southeast, where the now Atlanta Braves played, you might have heard him all the way back then. But it was Ted Turner’s brilliance at understanding the potential for televised sports every single day that brought Johnson to someone growing up in Oregon in the 80s, like me. The Braves were bad baseball in these years, but they were on every day and there was Johnson, providing the play by play with people such as Pete Van Wieren and Don Sutton also in the booth. I found him to be kind of a boring broadcaster when I was a kid, but it might have been my annoyance at watching the terrible Braves play instead of almost any other possible team (and my parents’ cable package did not include WGN like much of the nation, so I didn’t have the Cubs option, not that they were any better of a team).
Johnson evidently got sick of covering such horrible teams year in and year out and who could blame him. He retired in 1989, the last member of the organization with a connection to Milwaukee and even Boston. But then the Braves got good and he came back to work, just not every day. So he got to call a lot of games with Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine, and good hitters such as Chipper Jones. By this time, TNT/TBS had hired Johnson’s son, Ernie Jr., who is today the host of the much beloved Inside the NBA, merely the greatest studio show in the history of sports. So Johnson got work with son for a few years too. He retired for good in 1999.
Johnson died in 2011, at the age of 87. Heart failure did him in.
Ernie Johnson is buried in Green Lawn Cemetery, Roswell, Georgia.
If you would like this series to visit other baseball broadcasters, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Harry Caray is in Des Plaines, Illinois and Mel Allen is in Stamford, Connecticut. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.