Alex Johnson, who in a mercurial baseball career won the American League batting title with the Angels in 1970, edging out Carl Yastrzemski, only to be suspended by the team one year later for not hustling, a move that led to a landmark ruling in his favor, died on Saturday in Southfield, Mich. He was 72.  The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his son, Alex Jr., said.  A quick-wristed line-drive hitter, Johnson was a boon to batting orders on eight major league teams in 13 seasons. His bat was so fast that for a lark, he reportedly hit line drives off a pitching machine during batting practice from about 20 feet in front of home plate.  “I’ve never been scared pitching batting practice before, but throwing to Alex is like being on an artillery range,” the Angels coach Rocky Bridges told Newsweek magazine in 1970.  A Detroit native, Johnson grew up playing sandlot ball with the future Tigers Bill Freehan and Willie Horton. Like his younger brother, Ron Johnson, an All-Pro National Football League running back, Alex Johnson excelled at football as well.  His career peaked in 1970, his first season with the California Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). He finished with a batting average of .3289; Yastrzemski, the Hall of Famer who played for the Red Sox, batted .3286. In the last game of the season, Johnson was benched after getting his second hit so he would not risk lowering his average with another at-bat. Red Sox fans were incensed; Yastrzemski’s season had ended the day before.  Johnson’s 202 hits that season remained a franchise record until Darin Erstad topped it with 240 in 2000, and Johnson remains the only Angel to have won a battling title. He had a career average of .288, with 1,331 total hits, 78 home runs and 525 runs batted in.  Johnson’s prowess at the plate was not matched in the outfield. He led major league outfielders in errors twice and tied for that dubious distinction once. Even during his banner 1970 season, the Angels fined him several times for a lack of effort in the outfield and failing to run out ground balls.  “It’s as if he doesn’t consider it a hit unless the ball reaches the outfield,” Angels Manager Lefty Phillips groused in September 1970, according to a biography of Johnson by the Society for American Baseball Research.  Johnson’s playing and behavior grew more erratic during the 1971 season. In the opening months, he was benched repeatedly and fined $3,750 for lackluster play.  “Last year he gave us 65 percent,” Phillips told The New York Times on June 9. “Now he’s down to about 40 percent.”  Johnson expressed dissatisfaction with the Angels in interviews and told The Los Angeles Sentinel, which had a largely black readership, that he was bitter because of racism in baseball. He was involved in several locker room arguments with teammates that came close to blows, and in one incident he accused his teammate Chico Ruiz, his daughter’s godfather, of threatening him with a gun when they were alone in the Angels’ clubhouse during a game in June 1971.  Dick Walsh, the Angels’ general manager, announced that an investigation by the team had found no gun. After Johnson was suspended without pay, the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance, saying he had emotional problems that should have placed him on the disabled list and entitled him to pay.  In a hearing, Walsh admitted that Angels management had known that Ruiz had a gun in the clubhouse and that by saying there was no gun, Walsh had led the public to believe Johnson was either delusional or a liar.  “I did it in the best interests of the club,” Walsh was quoted as saying in a transcript of the hearing.  The arbitration board found for Johnson, ruling that he should receive back salary of $29,970, but that he still had to pay his fines. The decision established that emotional issues were to be treated the same as physical ailments by major league teams.  Johnson was traded to Cleveland that October; Walsh and Phillips were fired shortly afterward.  Though Johnson continued to play in the majors until 1976, he said he had lost his enthusiasm for the game.  “I saw so much negativism with the Angels,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1990, “that I couldn’t help but lose it.”  Alexander Johnson was born on Dec. 7, 1942, in Helena, Ark., to Willie Mae and Arthur Johnson. After the family moved to Detroit, his father founded Johnson Trucking.  Johnson became a star baseball player and an offensive lineman at Northwestern High School in Detroit. He was recruited to play football at Michigan State but joined the Philadelphia Phillies in 1960. He married Julia Augusta in 1963 and made his major league debut the next year.  Traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 1968, he went on to be named the National League comeback player of 1969 by Sporting News magazine for finishing the season with a .315 batting average. He also played for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Texas Rangers and the Yankees. In his Yankees debut, on Sept. 10, 1974, he hit a 12th-inning home run to beat the Red Sox, 2-1, at Fenway Park.  He ended his career with his hometown team, the Tigers, and lived in Detroit.  Johnson’s marriage ended in divorce. Besides his son, he is survived by his brother, who played for the Cleveland Browns, the Giants and the Dallas Cowboys; a daughter, Jenifer Johnson; a sister, Jean Johnson; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.  Johnson took over his family’s trucking business after his father died in the early 1980s. He told Sports Illustrated in 1998 that the business agreed with him. “It’s a nice, normal life — the thing I’ve always wanted,” he said.  A version of this article appears in print on March 5, 2015, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Alex Johnson Dies at 72; Deft Batter Won a Key Ruling. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Johnson captured a batting title in 1970 and later won an arbitration decision establishing that major league teams must treat emotional issues the same as physical ailments.