If local baseball fans didn’t already have a reason to watch the World Series, they certainly do this year. Alexis-native Graham Johnson is in his first season as the bullpen coach for the American League representative in this year’s Fall Classic, the Toronto Blue Jays.
Johnson is a 2003 Alexis High School graduate, where he was a multi-sport athlete, oddly enough, none of which were baseball. Before consolidating with the Warren School District before the 2004-05 school year, Alexis did not offer baseball in the spring. He played quarterback on the football team and point guard on the basketball squad for the Cardinals. Former United School District Superintendent Jeff Whitsitt, served as the Alexis High School principal during Johnson’s prep career and says, even then, he was a natural leader, “Super good kid and athlete. Very much a leader in the school and on all of his teams that he played for. Graham wasn’t the biggest kid on the team but had tremendous arm strength at the quarterback position. In basketball, he didn’t score a ton of points, but it was like having a coach on the floor. I remember him living and loving the sport of baseball, even though he didn’t get the chance to play on a high school team.”
Although Johnson didn’t get the opportunity to play baseball at the high school level, he found ways to satisfy his appetite for the sport. He played in the Galesburg Youth Leagues and in his later teens, was an important part of a successful Oneida American Legion program. Sandburg College baseball assistant coach, James Clark, was a teammate of Johnson and Graham’s brother, Drew, on some of those Oneida teams. He says he remembers Graham as a bulldog on the pitching mound, “Graham was always a competitor and one of our best pitchers. He was always fun to be around but when the game started he always flipped that switch. All the local legion teams were good in those days and Graham got matched up against some of the best in the area and competed with the best of them. A very smart player that always had a coach-mentality.”
Johnson took that experience with him to the collegiate level at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. A left-handed pitcher for the Wildcats from 2003-2007, he posted a 2.34 ERA in nine games during C-SC’s super-regional run in 2006. During his time at the school, the Wildcats captured three Heart of America Athletic Conference tournament championships.
Following his college career, Johnson spent several years as a pitching instructor at his alma-mater, Culver-Stockton, Lindenwood University, Morehead State and Western Illinois University. He was later hired as a coach in the Houston Astros baseball system, including a stint as the pitching coach for the Quad City River Bandits in 2018. Johnson later moved on to the New York Yankees AAA affiliate, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre from 2022-24 and was then hired by the Toronto Blue Jays in December of 2024 as the bullpen coach.
Johnson, and his fellow Blue Jay pitching coaches, will have their work cut out for them as they face one of the best hitting teams in MLB in the World Series starting tonight. Toronto will host the Los Angeles Dodgers in game one at 7:00 on the Fox TV Network.
