Over the years, the Cranbrook Bandits have produced some great baseball players, but few have taken the sport as far as Zach Johnson. From Cranbrook, to California, Virginia, Puerto Rico, Germany and Australia, he’s seen the world thanks to the pastime he fell in love with in the Kootenays.
“My goal was always to play professional baseball. I definitely envisioned the road being a little bit easier than it was, but I don’t take it for granted.”
Zach Johnson’s life has been far from steady.
The 27-year-old outfielder and Cranbrook native is currently playing for BSC Mainz Athletics in the Baseball-Bundesliga in Germany. It’s the seventh team and fourth country he’s played for in the past four years.
Baseball has been his one constant — and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I actually started playing when I was two years old,” Johnson says of how he first got into the sport. “My father and grandfather got myself and my siblings involved in it.”
Johnson was born and raised in the Key City and knew from a very young age that he wanted to be a baseball player. He quickly rose to the top level of the sport that the town has to offer — a spot on the Bandits.
“I played with the high school (Mount Baker) team first,” Johnson explains. “A lot of the guys who played on [that] team were also involved with the Bandits program [so] when I was 14 I went out and did a red shirt deal with them.”
Johnson played on a community rep team but practiced and travelled with the then-AA Cranbrook Rocky Mountain Bandits of the North Idaho League, in his freshman year.
By 15, he became a full-time rookie.
“It was [an] awesome [experience], being a little bit younger,” he says. “I grew up watching those guys, especially [being that it was my] hometown. At that age, to be able to participate and play with those guys was kind of surreal.”
From there, Johnson had a long and illustrious career as far as American Legion Baseball is concerned.
Playing from 2005 to 2009 as an outfielder who transitioned into a third baseman and a shortstop, Johnson also pitched relief, becoming a jack-of-all-trades in the baseball world.
In 2006, the Bandits had their best season to date finishing the year with a 25-18 record under head coach Nick Schuerman. While it was a highlight that Johnson will never forget, his favourite part of being a Bandit was the chance to develop along with some very familiar teammates.
“[I had the] opportunity to play with a lot of guys that I grew up with from the time I was eight or nine,” he says. “I had a pretty good group of friends that I came up with, which was awesome.
“One of the coolest moments too was being able to participate and play with my brothers for my last year. Being in the same lineup and having my brothers and I hitting two, three and four, that was pretty fun.”
Johnson’s younger brothers Bryce and Ryley, twins who are two years his junior, played for the Bandits from 2008-09 and made Zach’s swan song a real family affair.
“The last year [with them] was especially special as we made up around a third of the team,” he recalls. “We played together in our younger years once before, but playing at a higher level and being able to look around and see friends and my two brothers all battling for each other was pretty special.”
After graduating at age 18, Johnson went to the Prairie Baseball Academy in Lethbridge and returned in the summer of 2009 to play his 19-year-old year with the Bandits. His career, however, caught a snag in his second winter at PBA.
“They actually tried to transition me into a pitcher [but] I had some arm issues,” he says. “I had a misdiagnosis from a doctor. He told me that I had some inflammation in my shoulder, [which actually] turned out to be a badly torn rotator cuff.
“[When] I went to Okanagan College to play in their program there in the fall of 2010, I got told that I had been playing on a torn rotator and had to have surgery.”
Johnson had to complete reconstructive surgery on his shoulder in the spring of 2012. It was a slight setback, but soon after, he made his first international move. It was the beginning of a jet-setting lifestyle.
“In August of [2012] I moved to California to play Junior College,” Johnson says on his transition from Canadian baseball to Porterville College. “[In my second year], I became one of the captains of the team. I ended up being a First Team All-Conference Star and an All-Nor Cal First Team All-Star as well.”
From there, Johnson returned to Canada and played with the Okotoks Dawgs and then signed a contract with the MLB’s St. Louis Cardinals, playing with their travel team in Virginia.
After a brief stint with the Medicine Hat Mavericks, Johnson seized a chance to play winter baseball in Puerto Rico, an opportunity that he discovered through his short-lived Cardinals experience.
“Playing in Puerto Rico was an amazing cultural experience,” Johnson says on his time as a member of the PRIBL Turistas. “They don’t treat the game as a game, to them it’s a lifestyle, so you’re playing against former big leaguers who just don’t want to give it up.”
From there, Johnson found his way into one of Europe’s top professional leagues in April 2016, signing with the Mannheim Tornados in Germany.
In his first season in Germany, Johnson was a Triple Crown award winner and has since joined the 2016 Bundesliga championship-winning Mainz Athletics team.
“[Germany] is pretty awesome,” he says of his current home. “The nice thing was the group of guys that I played with last year, as well as this year, the majority of them are very fluent in English.
“I really do enjoy the culture quite a bit. It’s quite comparable in a lot of ways to Canada, whereas America is so different on a lot of different levels. It was a little bit tough at first, just learning the ins and outs of things, but other than that, it’s been pretty fantastic. “
During the winter, he played for the Rockingham Rams in Australia, meaning he’s been keeping up a non-stop baseball schedule from one hemisphere to the next.
“At this point, it’s been so much of a routine, that it feels normal,” Johnson says on his schedule. “Eventually, it’d be nice to have some time off, but at the moment I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
While he played a lot of different positions growing up, in recent years he’s stuck to primarily being an outfielder.
“If need be I can play different positions, but definitely the [outfield is my] most comfortable position,” he says. “[I mostly] just let my bat do the speaking for me [though].”
That bat has had a lot to say, evidently. In his first year in the Bundesliga, Johnson has a .361 batting average, a .541 on base percentage, a .687 slugging percentage and he hit six home runs.
After only 6 games with Mainz this season, Johnson is already keeping up an impressive pace with a .375 batting average, a .583 slugging percentage and a single home run.
Still in the prime of his career, Johnson hopes to keep playing baseball at the highest level he can for as long as possible, but has already laid the groundwork for a comfortable transition into whatever his future holds.
“[I have a] degree in Sports Management and Marketing, so on some level I’d like to get involved in the management of a baseball club or be involved in scouting or recruiting,” he says. “I don’t want to look too far ahead though, just because I try to focus on the present more than anything.”
Although he admits he’s lost touch with a lot of his former Cranbrook teammates, Johnson believes that he is the only one of them still playing the game at a high level. He never forgets how fortunate he is to be able to be a pro.
“I definitely don’t take it for granted, especially with the surgery,” he says. “I appreciate every opportunity and all the people who’ve helped me get here. Whether it was hitting extra fly balls, ground balls, throwing extra batting practices, doing different bus trips, you don’t take any of those things for granted.
“When you’re younger, it’s really easy to think it will always be there, so once you realise that it’s not how it’ll always be, it’s really nice to reflect back and have a lot more appreciation for how fortunate you are to still be able to do it and get paid.”
While he may be 7,000 kilometers away, Johnson’s heart never strays too far from home. Without Cranbrook, he knows that he would have never made it this far.
“I have the utmost respect and appreciation for everyone that was involved in [Cranbrook minor baseball] and the coaches that I had coming up and the people that essentially helped create the foundation to help me to continue playing and allowed me to get where I am,” he says. “It’s a privilege to be able to be somebody, that at the [American] Legion level, the coaches talk about or mention.
“It feels pretty good to kind of give back and still have the connection to home.”
Zach Johnson has worn a lot of different hats since leaving Cranbrook almost 10 years ago, but his relationship with the Bandits and his hometown will never fade. Every hit, every catch, every home run started in the Kootenays — but the entire globe is seeing it now.
