Nolan Ryan’s Historical August

This week in baseball history belongs to one man: Nolan Ryan, “The Ryan Express”. The Houston native, raised in Alvin, etched his name into greatness not once, but twice this week, on two different milestones that forever changed the game.

It started on August 20, 1974, when Ryan, then with the California Angels, unleashed a fastball that officially clocked at 100 miles per hour. No one had ever thrown that hard before in the major leagues. In that instant, Ryan became the flame-throwing standard that pitchers would chase for generations.

Fast forward to August 22, 1989. Now pitching for the Texas Rangers, Ryan fanned Oakland’s Rickey Henderson to record his 5,000th career strikeout, the first pitcher in Major League history to reach that impossible number. Henderson later joked, “If you haven’t been struck out by Nolan Ryan, you’re nobody.”

In between those amazing moments, he signed with the Astros in 1980, making history again as baseball’s first million-dollar-a-year player. Over nine seasons at the Astrodome, he added to his legend, helping the team into the postseason and giving local fans countless memories of pure power on the mound.

We could go on forever about his historical career, but this week marks a rare kind of anniversary of two of those milestones, 15 years apart, that bookend the career of the most feared pitcher that baseball has ever known. From 100 mph to 5,000 strikeouts, Nolan Ryan didn’t just make history; he defined it.

And Houston will always claim him as one of its own.

There will never be another like him.

Doug O’Brien