Nolan Ryan

Baseball Player

• Born: January 31, 1947
• Place of Birth: Refugio, Texas

SPORT: Baseball

Early Life

Lynn Nolan Ryan, Jr., one of the hardest-throwing pitchers in the history of baseball, was born in Refugio, Texas, on January 31, 1947. He was the youngest of six children, whose father was an oil-plant supervisor. Soon after he was born, the family moved to Alvin, Texas, where Ryan grew up and would continue to make his home as an adult.

As a boy, Ryan played sandlot and Little League baseball for hours on end. Ryan later said that his arm strength derived from rolling and tying newspapers for his paper route. He won twenty games while losing four for Alvin High School, keeping batters off stride mostly by his wildness. His idol was Sandy Koufax, and he dreamed of joining the ranks of Major League Baseball (MLB). In high school, he was already dating his future wife Ruth, whom he married in 1967.

The Road to Excellence

In 1963, while Ryan was still at Alvin High, Red Murff, a scout for the New York Mets, spotted his potential. The young Ryan threw wildly and was plagued by blisters on the fingers of his throwing hand, the result of a childhood cut that had developed sensitive scar tissue. However, he threw fast, sometimes so fast that he broke bones in his catchers' hands. For forty-four years, Ryan held Alvin's single-game strike out record, where he struck out twenty-one batters in a seven inning game.

Drafted in the twelfth round by the Mets, Ryan was sent to Marion, Virginia, in 1965. In 1966, on the class A team in Greenville, North Carolina, he blossomed with a 17–2 win-loss record and 272 strikeouts in 183 innings. In 1967, an arm injury kept him out. He did, however, pursue his education at Alvin Junior College, where he also joined the United States Army Reserve.

The Emerging Champion

In 1966, Ryan was called up to the major leagues for the Mets, and he was the second-youngest player in the league at the time. In 1967, Tom Seaver had been the Mets’ rookie-of-the-year sensation, so, in 1968 the pressure on Ryan to follow up such success was tremendous. He knew he could throw as fast as anybody, but he did not know exactly where the ball was going; he was not yet a pitcher. Due to his command troubles, he was essentially a relief pitcher in 1968 and 1969, the year of the Mets’ first-ever world championship. Ryan's commitment to the Army Reserve kept him on active duty and out of baseball for two weeks each summer and weekends.

In 1970 Ryan became a starter. He was unhappy living in New York and slumped in 1971, so he asked to be traded. In what would turn out to be one of the most lopsided trades in baseball history, the Mets acquired third baseman Jim Fregosi from the American League’s (AL) California Angels (later the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) for Ryan and three other players. Although disappointed at not “going home” to Texas to play for the Houston Astros, Ryan began to turn his career around in 1972.

Almost immediately, Ryan hooked up with three men whom he credits as helping him to attain his great success: catcher Jeff Torborg and coaches Jimmie Reese and Tom Morgan. Torborg later praised Ryan's drive and willingness to work. These qualities, along with self-confidence and a lifelong physical training routine, contributed greatly to his success.

In his first three seasons with the Angels, Ryan won sixty-two games and struck out more than 300 batters each year. His problems with the Mets and his military commitment were behind him. In 1973, his second year with the Angels, Ryan pitched two no-hitters and set a major-league record with 383 strikeouts. The record came dramatically in the eleventh inning on his last pitch of the season and eclipsed the mark of 382 set by his idol, Sandy Koufax. After an injury-filled and disappointing 1975 season that nevertheless produced his fourth no-hitter, Ryan returned to form. By 1979, he had reached 300-plus strikeouts in five of his first six AL seasons and led the league in strikeouts in seven of eight seasons.

In 1979, with Fregosi as manager, the Angels won the Division Championship but lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the playoffs. At season’s end, Ryan's contract expired and he became a free agent. Despite his friendly relationship with Fregosi and the ongoing support of the Angels’ owner, former cowboy actor Gene Autry, Ryan could not get along with Buzzie Bavasi, the club’s general manager. As a result, he instead finally achieved his wish to play baseball for the Astros, just twenty miles from his boyhood home in Alvin. His $1 million Astros contract set a record at the time.

Continuing the Story

In 1981, at the age of thirty-four and before a national television audience, Ryan pitched his record fifth no-hitter. Number six came in 1990, number seven the following year. In 1983, he broke Walter Johnson’s fifty-six-year-old record for most career strikeouts. Ryan was proud of the fact that he required 2,500 fewer innings than Johnson to strike out 3,509 batters.

Ryan's 1987 statistics were unconventional. He led the league in earned run average (ERA) and strikeouts, but was only 8–16 in the won-lost column. As Ryan explained, general manager Dick Wagner imposed a limit of 115 pitches per outing on him. When he reached that point, he was to be taken out of the game. Often, this occurred when he was pitching well, felt strong, and was leading. If the relief pitchers blew the lead, he would not get the victory. If he left the game with the Astros behind, and the team was unable to come back, he got the loss. The result was the distorted 8–16 record.

Again a free agent after the 1988 season, Ryan joined the Texas Rangers of the American League. He recorded his five-thousandth strikeout for the Rangers at the age of forty-two. During the 1989 season, Ryan achieved 300 strikeouts for the sixth time. It would be one of twenty major-league records that Ryan owned or shared at the time of his retirement. Earlier in his career, Ryan walked about two batters for every three strikeouts, which is one reason for his low career won-lost percentage of .530. For six seasons, from 1984 through 1989, however, his ratio improved to about one walk per three strikeouts.

In 1992, at the age of forty-five, Ryan continued to make history. He added 157 more strikeouts to his all-time record total, with an ERA of 3.72. The following year, however, he pitched only 66 1/3 innings, recording 46 strikeouts and walking 40. He decided to retire following the 1993 season, virtually assured of a position in the hall of fame with his impressive achievements across an unusually long baseball career. He joined only a handful of players to have appeared in the major leagues across four different decades.

In 1999, Ryan was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility with one of the highest favorable vote percentages of all time. In the same year, he was also selected for Major League Baseball’s All-Century Team. During his career, he faced some of baseball’s greatest hitters, including Hank Aaron and Ken Griffey Jr., recording strikeouts against both.

Following his retirement, Ryan pursued several business opportunities and coauthored several books, including autobiographies and pitching instructional manuals. Seeking to remain connected with baseball, he became involved in the ownership of an Astros minor league team and moved it to Round Rock, Texas, where the team became the Round Rock Express in 2000 and broke attendance records within its league. This successful experience led Ryan to transfer the franchise to Corpus Christi, Texas, as the Class AA Corpus Christi Hooks while purchasing a Class AAA team and turning them into the new Round Rock Express. Both teams continued to have strong attendance. In 2008, Ryan became the Texas Rangers' president, and in 2010 he and a partnership group successfully bid for ownership of the team. He was named the Rangers' chief executive officer (CEO) in 2011 but stepped down in 2013. In 2014, he became an executive advisor in the Astros organization. The Astros won the 2017 World Series and won the 2019 American League pennant. In 2020, Ryan stepped down from his work with the Astros.

Impact

Nolan Ryan, known as “The Ryan Express,” became what he always knew he must become: a consummate pitcher, not just a thrower of “heat,” as he called his fastball. He added an excellent curve and changeup to his explosive fastball. Nolan retired from baseball with 5,714 career strikeouts, a seemingly insurmountable record. He also had seven career no-hitters, his last coming at the age of forty-four, when he struck out sixteen Toronto Blue Jays and walked only two. As a clear hall of fame–caliber player, he is remembered as one of the most dominant pitchers of all time and a model for many hard-throwing ballplayers to follow. His legacy was further solidified when he became one of just a handful of players to have his number retired by more than one MLB team—and the only one (aside from the MLB-wide retirement of Jackie Robinson's number) to be retired by three (the Angels, Rangers, and Astros).

Bibliography

Anderson, Ken. Nolan Ryan: Texas Fastball to Cooperstown. Austin: Eakin, 2000. Print.

“Nolan Ryan.” MLB.com, www.mlb.com/astros/history/hall-of-fame/inductees/nolan-ryan. Accessed 28 June 2024.

Boston, Talmadge. "Nolan Ryan." Society for American Baseball Research. SABR, 10 Jan. 2011. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.

Dickey, Roger F., and Clyde E. Dickey. Nolan Ryan: Texas Rangers Hall of Fame Legend. Richardson: Crest, 2000. Print.

Goldman, Rob. Once They Were Angels. Champaign: Sports, 2006. Print.

"Nolan Ryan." National Baseball Hall of Fame. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/ryan-nolan. Accessed 28 June 2024.

Ryan, Nolan. Miracle Man: Nolan Ryan, The Autobiography. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1993. Print.

Ryan, Nolan, T. R. Sullivan, and Mickey Herskowitz. Nolan Ryan: The Road to Cooperstown. Lenexa: Addax, 1999. Print.

Westcott, Rich. Winningest Pitchers: Baseball’s Three-Hundred-Game Winners. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2002. Print.