A fairly meaningless spring training game, which wasn’t even televised anywhere, produced one of the most viral highlights in sports history 24 years ago today.
When a pitch from Arizona Diamondbacks ace Randy Johnson struck a seagull midair and instantly killed the bird, it became a moment that has been replayed countless times on “SportCenter” and millions of times on YouTube.
On the 20th anniversary of the freak accident in 2021, I began to realize what a collectible moment Johnson’s pitch represented.
As a collector, I knew had to find a ticket from that Giants-Diamondbacks game March 24, 2001
“I’ve been in 11 All-Star games. I won 300 games. I have close to 5,000 strikeouts,” Johnson said in a 2024 appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “I was an MVP of a World Series, and I’m recognized and remembered for killing a bird.”
In 2016, Johnson told FOX Sports, he wished the moment had never happen, but he has embraced it. He is now a professional photographer, and his logo is an upside down dead bird with feathers flying.
The search for a piece of memorabilia from that exhibition game was an extremely difficult one. When I began my pursuit, PSA had never graded a ticket from the game.
On Twitter, I found a Giants fan named Anthony Rios, who had kept the ticket and the program. He was one of the 10,713 fans in attendance that day at Tucson Electric Park.
I got him to follow me and then sent him a direct message. I first offered to trade him another group of tickets. He said his home was cluttered, and he didn’t need anything more.
“I admit, there’s a bit of sentimental value since it was a one-in-a-million game,” said Rios, a bowling center mechanic, who told me he worked late-night shifts. “But it was also, until recently, buried under a ton of crap lying around my bedroom for several years.”
Since no ticket from this game had been sold, there really wasn’t a comp. I had bought a ticket from the “other” seagull game, the August 1983 game in Toronto where Dave Winfield’s throw from the outfield hit a bird. I disclosed to Rios that I paid $235 for that ticket.
I offered $600 as my best offer, and Rios took it.
I have a ton of tickets more significant than this one, but few fascinate people like the “bird game.” Everyone knows about the bird.
What’s remarkable about the whole thing is the moment could have been forever lost in time. The game was not on television, and it was way before the iPhone era.
The only person filming it was Jim Currigan, the video coordinator for the Diamondbacks, whose camera was positioned over the center-field wall.
The first reaction from Currigan and the batter at the time, Calvin Murray, was the same. They thought Randy had thrown a tricked-out exploding ball as a joke.
It soon became apparent it wasn’t a ball that had exploded, as Jeff Kent, the on-deck hitter for the Giants, picked up what was left of the bird.
As if the highlight needed more life, another bird incident happened in 2022, and it involved another Diamondbacks pitcher.
In May 2023, a warmup throw from Zac Gallen struck and killed a bird before a game in Oakland. It didn’t go viral like the Johnson pitch — perhaps because it was a black bird, was a more grainy video and didn’t feature any exploding feathers.
As the years went by, two more Johnson Bird tickets have been found and brought to PSA by collectors.
A couple years ago, I got mine signed by the Big Unit. It was a mail-in signing, which is unfortunate, because I would have loved to have seen Johnson’s reaction.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct and one of the country’s leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.
