Nolan Ryan

1947-

American baseball player

Baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan is the all-time strikeout king, with a career total of 5,714 strikeouts, and seven no-hitters. His career lasted 27 years, the longest

of any major league baseball player. With a career average of 9.55 strikeouts per nine innings, he was one of only three pitchers to average a strikeout per inning. He set a major league record by striking out 10 batters in a game 215 times, and an American League record in 1974 by striking out 19 batters in a 9-inning game. In 1992, a year before his retirement, Ryan became the oldest pitcher in the major leagues to strike out more than 10 batters in a single game. His six seasons of 300+ strikeouts and 15 seasons with 200+ strikeouts are still major league records.

Two Life-Long Loves Begin

Lynn Nolan Ryan Jr. was born in 1947 in Refugio, Texas. He grew up in Alvin, Texas, where his family moved when he was less than two months old. In 1954, when Ryan was seven years old, he father bought him in his first baseball glove at the local hardware store. "That was one of my favorite memories," Ryan said many years later to Jody Goldstein in the Houston Chronicle. "Getting to go with my dad down to Alvin Hardware and being the last of six kids and getting to pick out, for the first time, anything new for myself and not being a hand-me-down. That was a new experience."

For Ryan, it was to be the beginning of a lifelong love affair with baseball. He joined his local Little League team soon after. To play in the youth league, Ryan told Goldstein, "That was the highest thing you could look forward to as a kid growing up in a small, rural town like that. To go to tryouts and stuff. That was a big event in your life." Ryan was just 15 years old when he first dated the girl who was to become his wife, Ruth Holdorff. She was 13 years old. "I still remember him asking," Ruth recalled years later to Goldstein. "He game up to me and said, 'Do you think your mom would let you go to a movie?"

In high school, Ryan and Ruth were voted by their classmates the Most Handsome and Most Beautiful, respectively. "We love to tease them about that," their son Reese told Goldstein. "We always tell them there must not have been much to choose from." Both Ryan and Ruth excelled in athletics in high school. Ryan played basketball as well as baseball, and Ruth became a state tennis champion.

But although he stood out in athletics in high school, he did not do so well academically. He found out as an adult that he had dyslexia, a learning disability that causes one to misread words. But in high school, "one teacher thought he was stupid and wanted to fail him," Ruth later told Goldstein. "He was a C student, with a couple of D's and F's mixed in. The hardest thing for him was spelling. He also had a slight lisp, and as a result, he was shy in the classroom."

As his high school career progressed, Ryan spent more and more time playing baseball, starting to perfect the pitches for which he was to become famous. "I swear," his high school coach Jim Watson told Goldstein years later, "that ball jumped six to eight inches when it reached the plate." Ryan also developed a reputation for throwing wild balls, often hitting batters—a reputation that was to follow him into the major leagues. Some of his high school opponents even became afraid of batting against Ryan. Said Watson, "Those kids were so scared, they'd swing at anything just to get out of there."

"The Best Arm I Have Ever Seen"

While in his junior year in high school, Ryan attracted the notice of a scout for the New York Mets, Ruff Murff. Murff said in his report on Ryan, "This skinny high school junior has the best arm I have ever seen in my life." Watson thought Murff was exaggerating until he went to see a baseball game at the Astrodome and saw that the major league pitchers there were pitching slower balls than Ryan.

Ryan graduated from Alvin High School in 1965 after helping the school team get to the state finals, and immediately signed as a player with the New York Mets. His first assignment was with the Mets' minor league team in Marion, Virginia, for which he started playing in 1966. In 1967 Ryan married Ruth. (They eventually had two sons, Reid, the eldest, Reese, and a daughter named Wendy. By 2002, Ryan and Ruth had three grandchildren, Jackson, Caroline, and Victoria.) Ryan worked his way up to the major leagues, becoming a pitcher for the Mets' major league team after three years, in 1968.

Ryan did not enjoy living in New York. As he later told the Houston Chronicle's Neil Hohlfeld "I hated that place. I'd get cabin fever, sitting around the house. Then you'd drive to the ballpark and, no matter what time you went, there would be traffic and people getting in fights, honking, flipping people off, yelling." In addition to the shock of moving from the open spaces of his native Texas to the densest city in the country, Ryan had the stress of proving himself for a team that had a surplus of pitchers and could therefore afford to let him go if he did not perform well enough.

On top of everything else, Ryan had military duties to fulfill, requiring absences during the baseball season. "Looking back," he told Hohlfeld, "it turned out to be one of those situations where things just didn't match up. The combination of how many good, young pitchers there were and my military obligations, that made for some problems." Nevertheless, Ryan made it along with the Mets to the World Series in 1969, defeating the Orioles 4-1 to take the title. Then, the death of his father at the age of 63 in 1970 sent Ryan to a new low. He very nearly quit baseball.

The Strikeout King

In 1971, Ryan was traded to the California Angels. It turned out to be a godsend. As he told Hohlfeld, "I went to a team that was in the building stages and I got to pitch every fourth day. My military obligation was over that year, and I went from pitching 130 innings with the Mets to 300-plus innings each year with the Angels. At that point in my career, really, that's all I was looking for." Ryan stayed with the Angels for eight years, playing from the 1972 season until 1979. These years formed the foundation of his career. It was during that time that he learned to hone his pitching skills to a razor sharpness, in 1972 leading his league in strikeouts (329). As in his early years, he developed a reputation for aggression on the mound. Of the batters who faced Ryan at this time was Tom Grieve, then a player for the Texas Rangers. He later said of Ryan to Hohlfeld, "He was the only pitcher I faced … that fear entered into the

at-bat. He was throwing so hard, and he was wild, and you knew he was mean. He'd knock you down, and you never knew whether it was on purpose or not."

In 1973, Ryan pitched the first two of what was to be a total of seven no-hitters during his career. By 1974, Ryan's fastball was being clocked at 100.9 miles per hour. Also in 1974, he pitched his third no-hitter. He pitched his fourth no-hitter in 1975. In 1979, Ryan moved his family back to Texas, where he signed a 4-year, $4.4 million contract with the Astros. This made him the best-paid athlete in history. Ryan pitched his fifth no-hit game with the Astros in 1981, earning him the distinction of being the no-hit champion. Then 34 years old, Ryan wasn't sure that he would have the stamina to pull off this feat. "It was the one thing I wanted," he told the Houston Chronicle's Bill Sullivan. "I'd had a shot at if for a long time, but because of my age, I thought I wouldn't get it." Get it he did, and he repeated this remarkable performance two more times, in 1990, playing a no-hit game with the Texas Rangers, with which he signed in 1988, and a final time less than a year later, in 1991, to complete a record series of seven no-hitters.

Ryan finished his playing career with the Texas Rangers. In his first season with the Rangers, Ryan won 16 games and struck out 301 batters It was also with the Rangers that he pitched his sixth and seventh no-hitters. Other milestones he passed with the Rangers were his 300th win and his 5,000 strikeout. "The years I spent with the Rangers were the ones that put me over the top," he told the Houston Chronicle's Bill Sullivan. In particular, Ryan was proudest of his 5,000th strikeout (of the Oakland A's Rickey Henderson). As he told Sullivan, "It represented that many innings pitched and being able to maintain that style of pitching my entire career." Ryan retired from playing baseball in 1993, at the remarkable age of 46. He was the oldest player ever to play for the Texas Rangers.

In all, Ryan's career as a major league baseball player spanned 27 years. He played for four teams—the Mets, with which he made his pro ball debut, the California Angels, the Houston Astros, and finally, the Texas Rangers. Four decades as pro saw Ryan set or break 51 major league pitching records. Among these were seven no-hitters, and 5,714 strikeouts during the course of his career. He also played longer than any other player. He won a total of 324 games.

Ryan has had his uniform number retired by three teams, also a major league record. His number was retired by the Angels, the Astros, and the Rangers. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999, his first year of eligibility. The same year, he was elected to the All-Century Team.

Ryan still lives in his hometown, Alvin, Texas, with his wife Ruth. After retiring from baseball, he entered into several business ventures, among them ownership and management of a bank based in Alvin, two restaurants, and a group of cattle ranches. In 1997, Ryan and his son Reid headed a group of investors that bought a minor league team affiliated with the Houston Astros, moving it from its Jackson, Mississippi base to Texas and renaming it the Round Rock Express.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Periodicals

"Baseball: A Chip Off the Glorious Ryan Arm." New York Times (July 11, 1994): C9.

Truex, Alan. "Express Deliverer; Reid Ryan Has Found Round Rock Ready for Minor-League." Houston Chronicle (April 13, 2000): C9.

Other

"The Express Gets on Track." Round Rock Express Baseball. http://www.roundrockexpress.com/history (December 11, 2002).

"Express Staff: Lynn Nolan Ryan Jr." Round Rock Express Baseball. http://www.roundrockexpress.com/staff/item15528. (December 9, 2002).

"Good Deal: Despite Some Shaky Moments, California Strikes Gold." Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/plainstory.hts/special/ryan/295392. (December 9, 2002).

"A Hero's Welcome: Arlington Fans Get Hospitality Repaid." Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/plainstory.hts/special/ryan/294710. (December 9, 2002).

"Home Economics: Contract Dispute Forces Final Move." Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/plainstory.hts/special/ryan/294946. (December 9, 2002).

"Magnificent Seven: Chances of Topping this Mark Far-Flung." Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/plainstory.hts/special/ryan/294711 (December 9, 2002).

"Nolan Ryan." CNN/SI. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/all_time_stats/players/r/1985/ (December 9, 2002).

"Nolan Ryan Foundation." Nolan Ryan Foundation. http://www.nolanryanfoundation.org/ (December 9, 2002).

"Nolan Ryan: Journey of a Legend." Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/ryan/photos/scoutcard.html (December 9, 2002).

"Nolan Ryan Statistics." Baseball-Reference.com. http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ryannml (December 9, 2002).

"Slow Start: New York Doesn't Become Apple of Young Pitcher's Eye." Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/plainstory.hts/special/ryan/294770 (December 9, 2002).

"Young Gun: Solid Roots in Hometown Become Foundation for Success." Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/plainstory.hts/special/ryan/294698. (December 9, 2002).

Sketch by Michael Belfiore