The Curse Of Cy Young?

37 WINNERS of the Cy Young Award have paid the following season. They will give plenty of reasons, few of which include a jinx. Now, Randy Johnson's goal is to win again, whatever the cost.

When Seattle pitcher Randy Johnson goes to the mound tonight for the first start of the second part of his career, not only will he take on the Boston Red Sox, he also will try to recover from the Cy Young Jinx.

But while Mo Vaughn, John Valentin & Co. will be in uniform, the jinx could be in legend only. It could be fiction or fantasy, or it could be coincidence.

Rough research shows that of 71 winners of the Cy Young Award since it was instituted in 1956, only three followed with better years and 30 had comparable years. But in 37 cases, including what Johnson suffered through last year, the next season was worse. (For whatever it's worth, the two 1996 winners, Pat Hentgen of Toronto and John Smoltz of Atlanta, did not win their first starts this week.)

There are many reasons. Age, injury, bad luck.

Or, perhaps, a jinx.

"It wasn't any jinx, no voodoo," said Steve Stone, who went from a 25-7 record in his Cy season of 1980 with Baltimore to 4-7 his next, and final, year. "I had a chronic case of tendinitis and threw too many curveballs that year (1980)."

Stone, now a restaurateur in Scottsdale, Ariz., and a member of the Chicago Cubs' TV broadcast team, was a nice pitcher but not a great one before he rose to his Cy Young.

In 1980, Stone had the breaking ball of a lifetime. He described it as being "in a zone, where I couldn't miss with it, and the hitters couldn't hit it." He won 14 straight outings and recalled one against California in which he threw 73 curveballs, another against Milwaukee when he used 75.

He has said in the past he mortgaged his career to win the Cy Young. "But I was in my 12th year of my career in pro ball," said Stone, who started 37 games in 1980 and 12 in '81. "In my case, it was more age. In fact, if you look at this `jinx,' you'll see that a lot of times it happens to pitchers with a lot of years of work. It's not a jinx, it's natural failure."

The point, however, is that the Cy takes such a toll, that it creates the Jinx by the demands of winning games usually while embroiled in a pennant race.

Stone said Greg Maddux's historic run to four straight Cy Youngs for the Cubs and Atlanta, 1992-95, is proof against any jinx. But Doug Drabek, who won 22 games and the NL Cy Young in 1990 and hasn't won more than 15 since, said, "What Maddux did was unbelievable."

Orel Hershiser, who won the NL Cy Young for Los Angeles in a 1988 season that included a 23-8 record and a streak of 59 scoreless innings, debunks the jinx notion. He noted that he did not get hurt in 1990, the year his arm broke down. "I think it was wear and tear," the Cleveland right-hander said. "I came back in 1989 and really had a better year, but our offense stopped scoring in September and I went from 15-10 to 15-15."

Mike Flanagan, who won with Baltimore in 1979, thinks luck is as much a part of the Cy Young as a breaking ball for the ages. "The next year, I went 16-13 and I probably pitched as well as I did winning the Cy Young. But I didn't get the breaks I had the year before."

Yet Flanagan acknowledged the toll the award takes. Not only does your manager keep you in games a bit longer because you are pitching well, "but your success helps your team into the playoffs and you wind up pitching more. I did. . . . A lot of us did."

In 1979, Flanagan made three starts in the playoffs and World Series, then pitched relief in the Series.

Although Johnson's leading role in the 1995 Mariner magic was a typical Cy Young year, doctors cannot tell him if he paid for his award by missing most of the 1996 season with a back injury that could be career threatening. "There was no single incident to pinpoint my injury to," he said. "They tell me it was simply an accumulation of things, maybe my previous back trouble and maybe the stresses I went through pitching in 1995."

Going 7-0 with a 1.45 ERA in his last 10 starts that season, Johnson went through exactly what other winners have said about pitching for a winner and pitching more as the winning got more crucial - in postseason games that don't even count toward a Cy Young Award.

Starting on Oct. 2, when he beat California in the AL West playoff game, Johnson came back on three days' rest to beat the New York Yankees in Game 3 of the Division Series, then was back two days later to win Game 5 with three innings of relief. On the fifth day, he went eight four-hit innings of the ALCS Game 3 victory over Cleveland, then, after three days' rest, pitched into the eighth inning of a series-ending, 4-0 Game 6 loss.

In 15 days, Johnson had pitched five times, gone 3-1 while working more than 34 innings and allowing only 20 hits and striking out 39.

"I'd do it all over again," he said. "You may never be in that position again. Like the game I had 18 strikeouts in eight innings against Texas in 1992. I had thrown a lot of pitches, but you go out trying to do what Clemens did. I didn't make it, but I tried." His career best fell two shy of Roger Clemens' record 20 strikeouts for nine innings.

Would he repeat his 1995 efforts, even if he knew the anguish ahead?

"That's a heck of a second guess," Johnson said. "My mindset into last year was the same as 1995. I thought I picked up right where I left off, as if I was feeding off what I had done that year."

If he hadn't heard of the Cy Young Jinx before, it came to him that cold May day in Milwaukee. At age 31 and in his seventh year in the majors when he won his, he fit the general profile of Cy Young winners: 29.4 years old with 8.9 years of big-league experience.

And he also fell into the miasma of the Jinx.

"I don't know if I believe in a jinx," he said. "I only know what happened to me, happened . . . whether it was mystical or simply medical. I only know it hurt physically and mentally and I expect to show that it is over."

With a repaired back and reworked physical regimen that has rebuilt his body and his hopes, Johnson takes the mound at the Kingdome tonight with the simple goal of pitching well while trying to stay healthy.

"I'd like to win another Cy Young, whatever the cost," he said. "You have to have tangible goals, a direction to follow when you go to the mound. You shoot for the sky and maybe make it to the top of the mountain."

The 20 Cy Young winners jinxed in the early or middle stages of their careers went on to average nine more years in the majors. Five won at least 20 games again; three won the Cy again; and four, including Johnson, still are active.

Times staff reporter Larry Stone contributed to this article.