Brandon Johnson used to love to run the bases,

He wasn’t wild about baseball, mind you, but this wasn’t Little League or t-ball at the local park.

This was his childhood.

As the son of a big leaguer, some of Johnson’s earliest memories are the countless summer days spent around ballparks. The options, though they probably seem limitless to a youngster, really aren’t all that extensive.

You can bother Preston Wilson or Todd Helton. You spend games either with mom or at the club’s childcare services. You run the bases.

“I got to spend a lot of time in the clubhouse and that was really cool,” Johnson, the second-year Broncos wide receiver, told The Denver Post recently. “It was definitely fun to be around, but it was also cool to see how the guys that you watch on TV, they’re just normal guys. Really cool, different personalities, that’s what I remember the most.”

That takeaway feels particularly on the nose as Johnson ventures down memory lane. After all, he’s doing so 20 years later from a professional locker room. His professional locker room.

A smile crosses his face as the subject turns to the reason he spent so many days at the ballpark: His dad, Charles, the four-time Gold Glove winning catcher.

“It’s still cool to this day,” Johnson says of his dad’s 12-year career. “Going back and looking at some clips that I may not remember or seeing him play in the World Series. I wasn’t born when he played in the World Series, so finding those clips and watching him do what he do, like, man, he was a world-class athlete.

“One of the best to do it. It’s definitely cool.”

This weekend, the story gets cooler.

The Gold Glover

On Oct. 18, 1997, Charles Johnson stepped to the plate at a pulsing Pro Player Stadium in Miami. Orel Hershiser had just surrendered a three-run homer to Moises Alou to put the Florida Marlins up 4-1 in Game 1 of the World Series. Hershiser left a ball over the plate to Johnson, too, and he crushed it into the upper deck in left field.

Johnson and the Marlins won the series in an epic, seven-game battle. He won his third of four straight Gold Gloves behind the plate. Born in Ft. Pierce, Florida and then a University of Miami standout and first-round pick of the Marlins, Johnson figured he might never have to leave the Atlantic shoreline in his career.

“But all of a sudden Florida starts getting rid of players and my name came up with the whole (Gary) Sheffield and Mike Piazza trade,” he said. “And there I was in L.A.”

In May 1998 he got traded to the Dodgers. July 26 that summer – nine months to the day after Game 7 of the World Series – Rhonda Johnson gave birth to Brandon.

Then in December, Charles got traded again, this time to Baltimore.

“He’s definitely been on the roller coaster ride for a few years with us, but he probably didn’t realize that because he was so young,” Charles said of Brandon.

Charles signed back with Miami as a free agent and played two more years there. Then he got traded. Again.

Colorado connection

This time, Johnson packed his bags for the Front Range.

He played two seasons for the Rockies, catching 100-plus games in both 2003 and ’04. By now, Brandon was old enough to at least remember spending summers and off time from school at Coors Field.

“Whenever we had time off, we were up here,” Brandon said. “Out of everywhere he played, we spent the most time up here. We actually kept the house in Thornton that we stayed in all the way through my high school. Then after that my parents sold it. But we loved it out here.”

The Johnsons stayed based in Florida throughout Charles’ career. Brandon and his brother, Beau — now a tight end at Georgia Southern — went to school there all throughout their childhoods. But Colorado drew the kids and Rhonda up from the South Florida heat often.

“I used to always bring the kids up for Christmas, come up for the summer time, bring the kids to Vail and Breckenridge,” Charles said. “It’s just, when the kids got older, it was harder and harder to bring them to Colorado because they had so much sports. But they grew up in Colorado.”

“This kid catches with his hands”

Indeed, Brandon and Beau saw their sports careers begin to take off.

Brandon loved football and basketball. Beau did, too, but he also played baseball.

Not Brandon.

“Never even tried it, not t-ball or nothing,” he said. “I thought it was boring at the time. I was a basketball guy at the time. I regret it now.”

When he first started playing youth football, he got stuck on the offensive line because, even though he was “skinny as all get-out,” as Charles describes it, he was tall. That wasn’t going to work, either.

He wanted to catch, just like pops. Except, you know, on the football field rather than the diamond.

“I started noticing that, this kid catches with his hands,” Charles said. “He never let the ball get onto his body. He’s a hands kind of guy. That’s when I felt like he had a chance to be a pretty good receiver, because he really loves catching with his hands.”

Charles noticed because, after retiring following the 2005 season, he set about making sure he didn’t miss anything the kids had going on.

“When he decided to walk away from the game, he said he wanted to make up for all the time he missed,” Brandon said. “He told my mom, ‘You can chill, I’m going to take the boys to school, I’m going to take them to every practice they’ve got. I’m going to be that guy.’

“I enjoyed every minute of it. It’s kind of ironic that, right when I stopped playing, they were at the age where I was able to embrace them and they were ready to start playing sports. I was able to put a lot of time into it. Baseball takes up a lot of your time, but now I’m done and so I just poured all of my time into my boys.”

South Florida roots

Brandon played wide receiver at powerhouse American Heritage High in Plantation, just east of Ft. Lauderdale. He saw players like Tarvarus McFadden, Isaiah McKenzie and Sony Michel get recruited to power schools as he was coming up.

His senior year, Johnson played on a team that featured his future teammate and All-Pro Pat Surtain II, first-round pick and two-time Pro Bowler Brian Burns, second-round pick Tyson Campbell, fourth-round pick Marco Wilson, sixth-round picks Kahlil Herbert and James Houston.

“It can be hard to break out, but it also helps you raise your level of play,” Johnson said. “Schools may come to see Sony Michel or Tarvarus McFadden. They come to see those guys and if you play well, they notice you.

“I got noticed because of those guys, so it can be hard but it can also catapult you to the next level.”

Johnson turned himself into a four-star recruit according to 247Sports and played his first five years of college ball at Tennessee. He grad transferred to UCF and had a productive final collegiate season, but went undrafted in 2022.

The coach who originally recruited him to Tennessee, Zach Azzanni, by then coached Denver’s wide receivers and wanted him to sign as a free agent with the Broncos.

Right back where he spent so many of those days as a kid running the bases.

“When he had a chance to sign with Denver, I just said, ‘Wow, what are the chances?’” Charles Johnson said. “It was a full-circle kind of thing, you know?”

Up the ladder

Brandon Johnson impressed right away as a rookie, but sustained a high-ankle sprain in the 2022 preseason finale and didn’t make the 53-man roster out of camp.

Eventually, he worked his way back, moved from the practice squad to the active roster and played in seven games. His first touchdown reception, against Carolina in November, was Russell Wilson’s 300th. Wilson decided Johnson should be the one to keep the ball. It’s at his place now, though he said he plans to give it to his parents at some point.

This fall, Johnson’s ascension continued. He established himself as a lock to make the roster with a strong camp while his position group dealt with injury issues.

“He’s been doing amazing,” Broncos first-year receivers coach Keary Colbert told The Post. “He plays all the positions, he’s smart, he has a great skill set. He’s just a good receiver, so I’ve been really excited to work with him. Me not knowing anybody before I came in, I looked at everybody the same and I didn’t judge based on anything other than what I saw on tape. I thought he was a good player.

“He came out here and he’s been showing it ever since we got on the grass.”

Johnson played 32 snaps in Week 1 and 30 last weekend. His role hasn’t been as a primary target in the Broncos’ passing game progressions, but head coach Sean Payton likes his explosiveness and his physicality. He lauded Johnson: “Quietly, he’s one of those guys that does his job very well.”

Sort of like a catcher, who’s best work isn’t always a homer in the World Series. Most of the time it’s the dirty work — helping a pitcher through a tough lineup, controlling the running game, blocking pitches in the dirt and setting the defense.

“Baseball has taught us that you have to be very consistent,” Charles Johnson said. “I was always taught that there’s no such thing as a bad day. If I have a bad day, the whole team has a bad day. So I always preached to them to be consistent. I played 162 games a year, I had to be consistent.

“Day in and day out, come in and give it all you’ve got every day.”

In that pursuit, the spotlight eventually ends up shining in your direction. For Brandon Johnson, that arrived in Week 2 against Washington.

The 6-foot-2, 195-pounder showed his speed on a 16-yard crosser that he took for a touchdown. Then he showed those hands his dad noticed way back when to haul in a juggling, twice-caromed Hail Mary that gave Denver a chance to tie the game with no time remaining in regulation.

“It was crazy,” Johnson said. “Once I saw it get tipped, I was like, ‘OK, yeah, I might have this one.’ I was able to pull it in.”

The Broncos, of course, failed on the two-point try and fell to 0-2 on the season.

Homecoming

Week 3, though, has more highlights in store for Brandon Johnson. That much can be said beyond a shadow of a doubt before the ball’s even kicked off into the thick, South Florida air.

He’s playing at Hard Rock Stadium, home to some of his earliest memories and his dad’s World Series triumph.

The ticket list? It’s long. The gratitude? High.

“It’s a surreal feeling to play against the Dolphins, a team I grew up my whole life watching. Definitely exciting,” he said. “… I remember going there as a little kid and watching my dad play. The stadium is different now, but it’s definitely exciting to be in that same stadium.”

He said he plans to take a moment, look around and consider the path that delivered him back to that spot. Somewhere in the stands, his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and more will be looking on, doing exactly the same thing.

“It’s going to be unbelievable for me,” Charles Johnson said. “Having a chance to win a World Series in 1997, the year before he was born, and now he’s coming back to the same stadium to play in a football game. It’s definitely going to be exciting. I can’t wait for Sunday. …

“I’m really excited to see him get the chance to play here.”

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