Sugar Ray Leonard is under siege. He is standing near home plate at Bank One Ballpark during pregame warmups, cool and easy in a green silk sweater and matching linen pants. All around him, Diamondbacks swarm, hands extended, heads ticking up and down in admiration. "You're the best," says manager Bob Brenly. Leonard is flattered, really, but he is distracted, too, looking past his fans, straining to see if maybe there, in the shadow, that is him, the one, the genetic hiccup who launches pitches 100 mph from a 6'10" frame in a heaving contortion of will and hate. "Is that Randy Johnson?" Leonard asks eagerly, tilting his chin toward leftfield as he signs an autograph. "Nah," Brenly offers. "He's inside. Alone."

"I'm not a baseball guy," Leonard says later. "But I've followed Randy Johnson for years. He does with baseball what I wanted to do with boxing: take it to the next level. He's one of a kind."

When Johnson hears this back in the clubhouse, he says nothing for a full minute. Then: "I've made my name as a dominating pitcher, striking people out, winning ball games. People have come to expect that. And so do I. Working hard is something I take great pride in."

Let it be said that no one works harder than Randy Johnson. The man works hard at working hard. He is from the no-excuses school, a throwback bound to the obsessive professionalism of '50s dads, first-generation immigrants and other folks with the good graces not to take opportunity for granted. He possesses an elemental drive and old-fashioned determinism, a rigor and single-mindedness that sometimes inspires but more often creeps out other players, because it makes them feel subpar, lazy, less than.

"I'm accountable," he says. "And that's a word most people shy away from. If I don't pitch well, I say so. Beyond that, I don't much care what anybody thinks. I can't make everybody happy."

Least of all himself. Pitching is his job. And jobs are meant to be work and work is meant to be hard and hard is what life is and any fool who can't see that better go waste someone else's time, because there's nothing Johnson likes less than hearing about his greatness. "I don't really think about my accomplishments," Johnson says. "The times I think about what I've done in the past are when I'm not doing them in the present. You know, 'What am I doing wrong?'"

The Randy Johnson of lore has never impressed the Randy Johnson of flesh. "I'm a perfectionist," he says, not bragging. Fact is, while the rest of baseball sees Johnson as something otherworldly, something almost mythical, Johnson views his ability as a sentence, as if God said, "Better make good on that left arm." And so he pitches with fury -- at batters, at life, but mostly at himself: "As soon as you're content, it's saying, 'That's good enough. I'll just do the same thing again.' Well, the next time it may not be good enough. Maybe you won't get away with that pitch. Maybe you won't get away with giving up only one run."

He takes a breath. Stretches his neck. "I pitch with a lot of anger," he says. "It's not right or wrong. But it's the best way for me to go about my business."

Or, as his coaches might say, "Whatever works." Johnson collects Cy Youngs and has struck out more batters per nine innings (11.2 through the All-Star break) than any other pitcher in history. He shatters records and bats, and if he has to throw angry, well, by all means, someone piss the man off. "With some pitchers, you can't tell if they're losing by seven runs or winning by seven runs," Johnson says. "I'm envious of that. I'm not an even-keel person. My emotions tend to be multiplied by 10 all the time."

There are times, of course, when he is nearly flawless, as he was in '99 when he joined the D-Backs and gave up five runs in four games. "But we still lost," he says dejectedly, three years later. "A run a game I was giving up. And this may not be the most typical way of looking at this, but why did I give up any runs, you know? I'm always looking for a good game. A complete good game." He shrugs, then delicately drains some spent Copenhagen into a cup. "That's one reason why I'm not ever satisfied with anything I do."

Sounds like a tough way to live: "Uh, yeah."

***

When he was on the Cubs, Mark Grace peed blood for two days after Johnson hit him with an errant pitch. When the first baseman signed with the D-Backs, he said it was so he wouldn't have to face Johnson again. He was only half joking.

"He does intimidate," says Brenly. "But personally, I find him engaging." He spits, then clarifies. "On the days he's not pitching."

On those days, Johnson retreats into his shack of madness, twisting in on himself until he's knotted so tight he vibrates. "On the day he starts, we let him do his thing," says Lisa Johnson, Randy's wife of seven years. "He gets very quiet. You can tell he's someplace else. He's a bit of a grump."

If Roger Clemens is the model, Johnson resembles anything but a pitcher. His chest is barn broad and improbably whittled into a tiny waist and even leaner legs. He has forearms like a wrestler and an ass like a white girl. When he throws, he is everything you don't expect, a mesmerizing, roiling torment that blinds you with ugliness before releasing the ball inches from your face. The veins in his throat look like pencils beneath his skin. The creases in his neck cut so deep they stay white even in the unremitting Phoenix sun. He snarls and pumps his fists, a one-man army pulling the pin on his own grenade.

"Intimidation is something I'm constantly working on," he says. Once, when Johnson pitched for Seattle, Colorado's Larry Walker, the eventual NL MVP, was encouraged to take the day off rather than face him. The whole world called Walker a coward, a big puss. Nobody talked about his remarkable season, just about how he didn't even bother swinging against the best.

Nowadays, such lefty ducking is so routine no one even mentions it. "Lineups change mysteriously when Johnson is up," says D-Backs PR man Mike Swanson. "He has such impact. He gets into their heads days before he plays." As he should. Johnson has given up 256 home runs in his 15-year career -- 13 to lefthanded batters.

On the mound, Johnson is ticky. He wipes his left hand on his hip after each pitch. He ducks his head. His shoulders twitch. His neck telescopes. He thumbs his nose, swipes his feet, pops his wrists, grits his jaw bloodless, snaps his gum, glares at the bottoms of his cleats. Even if he's just thrown nine invisible strikes, he skulks off the field, a bony cloud of disappointment, his gift inextricably wedded to guilt.

He isn't good enough.

He will never be good enough.

Count on that. That and the fact that Kevin Costner will never play him in a movie. Johnson is too much of an original, shaped by his Gumby body and his withering expectations, a habit he learned early on. "I remember throwing my no-hitter in 1990 against Detroit, and I called my dad and he goes, 'How come you had so many walks?'" Did that bother you?

"I didn't mind. Not at all ... uh ... that's the way ... uh ... I've ... you know ... I mean, honestly, that may not be the best way to focus, on the negative in something that's so positive. But ... that's what's gotten me to where I'm at. So ... "

Johnson is his own higher power.

Bud Johnson was a World War II vet and a police officer in Northern California. He raised Randy and his three sisters and two brothers to know that there was right and there was wrong, good and bad, success and failure. No blurring. No in-between. "He was a disciplinarian," Johnson says. "Sneaking out of the house, driving under age -- exciting things, but I learned quick not to do them."

There's something else. "I don't believe it's just me out there. I've been blessed with ability. I've developed it, but when I was born, I believe everything was planned out." This is not normal God bothering. What Johnson believes, what he feels in his belly, is a debt. His is a self-imposed state of penance, flagellating himself for every base hit he surrenders as if he were disappointing not only his team and his fans and his father, but also Our Lord in heaven, the Lord who set him down this path in the first place when He wired his left arm like a slingshot. "My dad taught me that some things you'll only have the opportunity to do once, so you better do it the best you can. I have the opportunity to throw a pitch one time. I'm not going to get it back once I let go of it, you know?"

It's this self-seriousness that gives rise to the work ethic. As Brenly explains, "Before one start against the Dodgers, Randy felt he needed to make adjustments because they'd had some success against him. Now we're talking about a tall guy who must have taken an awfully long time to get his mechanics right, and all of a sudden he decides he needs to change his delivery. And, between one start and the next, he does. I've seen him strike out 20, I've seen him pitch relief in Game 7 of the Series after starting the day before. But I've never seen anything more impressive than that."

***

On a sweltering night in June, Johnson is pitching against the Astros at home. It's 20 minutes to gametime, but the Pepsi miniblimp already whirs overhead. The crowd fills in. Old men with comb-overs wear purple Johnson shirts. So do their crew-cutted grandsons. So do the pit-stained rednecks and the baseball babes and the Mexicans. Johnson transcends demographics. The only people not wearing his jersey are clean-cut preppy boys, all five of them. They wear Schilling jerseys. Soon the stadium roof retracts. Baseball clips flicker on the big screen, many featuring Johnson throwing to the tune of "Rock You Like a Hurricane." The lineup is introduced, and when the announcer says his name, "Ran-Dee Johnnn-Sonnnn!" the crowd goes predictably berserk.

Johnson takes the field, already miserable, head slung to his collarbone, shoulders dropped, stomping the grass with each step. On the mound, he toes the dirt, swipes his foot back and forth. He locks his knees, tucks his bum, stands like a fat man. Then he squats, splays his legs, says his prayer, blesses his father who kept him in line and rises to face the first batter, who is already sweating.

The crowd talks the whole time. "He'll strike [CF Brian] Hunter out," says a man with a Coors Light and a soggy hot dog. "Oh yeah, and [SS Julio] Lugo, too," says his friend. They talk like they're discussing the weather. Above first base, another group of fans endeavor to come up with a drinking game centered on Johnson's K's. "We're going to be so wasted," laughs a twentysomething in baggy hipster shorts. "Dude," agrees his friend.

Johnson doesn't disappoint. He dismisses batter after batter, the only tension being how many pitches it will take. It's akin to watching a tennis player serve one ace after another: initially exciting, then tedious and, finally, unfair. "Watching Randy pitch is like having the script to a movie in your hand while you're watching the movie," says Brenly. "Before the game, he'll say he's going to start this guy with a two-seam fastball. If he goes strike one, he'll throw a backdoor slider. If he gets ahead 0-and-2, he'll rush him with a fastball. And then you watch him do it."

"I used to be a thrower," Johnson explains. "I struggled. I was leading the league in strikeouts, but I was also leading the league in walks." Then two things happened -- he took a call from Nolan Ryan, and his father died. "When my dad died in '92, it forced me to dig deeper. I thought I was, but I really wasn't. I realized there is another level. I learned that to get better, you have to do things other people aren't doing."

Ryan's impact was more specific. "Nolan explained that I was landing on my right heel, which made the ball spin off the third base side. Then my arm dropped down, and I lost the strength of my body and the direction. He told me to land on the ball of my foot. It sounds easy, but it took me a while."

By the time the season was over, Johnson was 19–8. But it was too late. His father was gone. He'd never see what his youngest son would become. "When I was younger, I wore a conehead and big funny glasses," Johnson explains. "I was goofy, flaky, a comedian. I was having a lot of fun making people laugh. After my dad passed away, I worked harder. Clowning around wasn't getting the job done, so I put blinders on. I became adamant about working hard, about not being distracted." He thumps his chest. "I felt pitching in here. And I stayed away from everything else."

Well, almost. Randy met Lisa in 1991, when "he was known for being the tallest player in the American League and giving up the most walks," she says. Set up by friends, "we hit it off because of his sense of humor. He's very dry and witty and we both laughed a lot." When it is suggested that not many people know the dry, witty Randy Johnson, Lisa laughs: "Yeah, well, he's pretty guarded now. We never expected him to be in the spotlight. Randy really doesn't care for it too much." Besides, "the only time most people see him is when he's pitching, which would be like seeing someone else during their college finals. I don't know many people who'd be loose then, do you?"

Lisa loves Randy for his wryness, and for other reasons: because he's kind; because he was so moved by the birth of his four children that he was beyond overwhelmed; because he loves her independence and honesty, and there aren't many men and even fewer jocks who gravitate toward that sort of woman; because he says, "What I do on the field will come and go, but my kids and my wife are what matters"; because even on days he pitches, even during those dark, leaden hours of waiting, he still wants his children around. "As time passes, it gets harder for him to be away from the kids," Lisa says. "He misses them so much. He gets to do this fantasy job, what every little boy dreams of doing, but it's still a job. To be honest, I forget what he does on the field. Sometimes I read his stats and I think, 'Gee, he really is pretty amazing.'"

***

	Be afraid of Mr. Snappy.

A few days after the Astros series, Johnson is in New York, pitching against the Yankees. The home team has the field for warmups, and TV crews from as far as Japan and South America crisscross the field, snagging Yankees to interview, while Bob Costas labors to be heard over the ba-dumping blare of "I Got the Power!" By the batting cage, Jason Giambi glistens in the heat of the Fox Sports camera light, his eyes as wet and shiny as a puppy's. "I love my standing O's," he says with a wide smile, his forearm flexing.

In the visitors bullpen, Brenly tells a different crew, "All we want is to win a game in this ballpark. It's a hole in my career." So do you think being here will psych out Johnson? "I don't think Randy knows what it means to be psyched out," Brenly responds.

Everywhere else on the field, men are chatting up each other, signing autographs, flirting with the TV producer with the bare midriff. No one is nervous. They bask in the unfiltered arrogance of the accomplished, and it's enough to make you long for cranky, old-timey Johnson to emerge from his dreary cocoon, clomp on the field and give them all a much-needed spanking.

He doesn't, not on this night, one of those rare exceptions that prove the rule, that Johnson is, in fact, human. An aging human.

"I'm 38. That's still very young in life. But in baseball ... " When Johnson talks about retiring, it's like he's talking about his demise. He says, "When my time comes," or, "When it's my turn." He can't say the word "quit." Men don't quit. Their time comes, and when Johnson's does, he'll know. "We're looking forward to it, to tell you the truth," says Lisa.

Asked if playing baseball was his dream, Johnson answers, "I don't know if I ever dreamed."

Which begs the question: Will 2003, the year his contract runs out, be his final season? "As I get older, I'm losing a little intensity," Johnson says. "When I'm done, it'll be because I've used up all that energy and focus. Do you want to stick around and squeeze out a few more years? When I start asking those questions, it'll be time. But I'm not asking myself those questions. I haven't doubted my ability in a long time. I'm consumed with baseball right now. Not records, just pitching a quality game. All I think about is my next start."

That's okay. The world will do the rest for him. Take notes, add up stats (in the three starts that followed the Yankee game, Johnson gave up one earned run), gasp in awe, chug beer for every strike. We will continue to build him into the legend he refuses to acknowlege. We will shape him into what we need him to be, no matter how often he insists, "I'm not that person. I'm not mythical. I'm not important. It's not why I play the game."

"What happens if you set a goal and then you meet it?" Johnson says. "What do you do then? Hang out?"

This article appears in the July 22 issue of ESPN The Magazine.