Athletes - Nolan Ryan

Home > Listing Index > Athletes > Nolan Ryan

	Athletes - Nolan Ryan

Lynn Nolan Ryan, Jr. (born January 31, 1947) is a former pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for 27 years and still holds many major league pitching records, some of which are so far beyond previous marks that they are likely to stand for years and generations of pitchers to come. He was most noted for his blazing fastball and his longevity, routinely throwing pitches exceeding 100 mph, even into his forties. The media tagged him with the nickname "The Ryan Express", referencing a 1965 action-adventure film called Von Ryan's Express. He is considered by many to have been the fastest pitcher of all time; only Smokey Joe Wood, Walter Johnson, Satchel Paige, and Sandy Koufax are thought to have nearly equalled his velocity. His 5,714 career strikeouts rank first on the all-time list, as of 2006.

Playing career

As a Met

Ryan was born in Refugio, Texas, but his family moved to the Houston suburb of Alvin when he was six weeks old; he has lived there to this day. He developed his dazzling fastball as a high school pitcher in Texas, which impressed the New York Mets enough to draft him in 1965 and promote him to the major leagues late in 1966.

However, Ryan struggled for a number of years and was even sent back to the minor leagues a few times because of his inability to find the strike zone. He didn't make the majors for good until the 1968 season, and even then was unable to crack an outstanding Mets pitching staff led by Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman.

Ryan did, however, give people a taste of what was to come in the 1969 World Series, when he entered Game 3 in relief of a struggling starter and shut down the powerful Baltimore Orioles for nearly three innings. Ryan's work enabled the Mets to hang on to win that game, and they went on to upset the Orioles in five games. A videotape of that game, which has occasionally been played on ESPN Classic, reveals that Ryan's mechanics, with the trademark high trailing leg kick, were already firmly established at that young age.

As an Angel

Ryan truly blossomed as a pitcher after being traded to the California Angels in 1972 for shortstop Jim Fergosi (who would later manage Ryan in Anaheim). Even though the Angels were a sub-.500 team and remained one for most of his time there, he began winning between 19 and 22 games a season regularly. In 1973, he set his first record when he struck out 383 batters in one season, eclipsing Sandy Koufax's old mark by one. This record was made even more impressive by the fact that he achieved it in the first year of the designated hitter in the American League; if AL pitchers had still been batting, Ryan might have topped 400 strikeouts that season.

He threw two no-hitters in 1973, added a third in 1974 and a fourth in 1975, tying another of Koufax' records. He led the league in strikeouts seven times in the 1970s. In 1974 he twice struck out 19 batters, a record which wasn't broken until Roger Clemens struck out 20 in a 1986 game. Fans, researchers, historians and even the players argue all the time about who was the fastest pitcher of all-time. The most widely quoted response is Nolan Ryan. His fastball was "officially" clocked by the Guinness Book of World Records at 100.9 miles per hour in a game played on August 20 1974 versus the Chicago White Sox. Though popular with fans, Ryan did not win over Angels General Manager Buzzie Bavasi, who dismissed Ryan was a flashy .500 pitcher. When he let Ryan leave after a 16-14 record in the 1979 season, Bavasi remarked he only need replace Ryan with two 8-7 pitchers.

As an Astro

Ryan signed a lucrative free-agent contract with the Houston Astros after the 1979 season, in which he became the first player to make $1 million a year. The normally light-hitting Ryan got his 'Stros years started with a bang in a nationally televised game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 12, 1980, in which he hit a 3-run home run off future fellow Hall of Famer Don Sutton. It was the first home run of his career (he only hit one more), and garnered 3 of the 6 RBI's he would get that year. He got his second taste of postseason play in 1980, but the Astros were stopped one game short of the World Series.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Nolan Ryan ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Nolan Ryan; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Athletes - Nolan Ryan

Playing career

As a Met

As an Angel

As an Astro

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay