WEBVTT 00:00.031 --> 00:16.490 [SPEAKER_01]: Adam Widerbe here on the baseball insider with Tim Brown speaking about Nolan, the singular life of an American original Tim as soon as I heard there was Nolan Ryan biography I could not wait to read it and of course you turned this into so much more than a biography. 00:16.590 --> 00:20.294 [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate you joining me today to talk about the experience of crafting this one. 00:20.895 --> 00:21.456 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you Adam. 00:21.516 --> 00:22.697 [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you having me. 00:23.403 --> 00:30.114 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there are so many places to start and Nolan Ryan's career is so long that it's really impossible to go wrong with a starting point. 00:30.775 --> 00:35.742 [SPEAKER_01]: But I do want to take it to something that you write about an intro here and you sort of lay out really clearly. 00:35.782 --> 00:37.906 [SPEAKER_01]: The game's changed. 00:37.926 --> 00:43.234 [SPEAKER_01]: A simple quote, but one that is really evocative of a whole lot of Nolan Ryan tail. 00:43.214 --> 00:44.876 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I sit here. 00:44.896 --> 00:47.999 [SPEAKER_01]: I was alive for portion of Dolran's career. 00:48.079 --> 00:49.540 [SPEAKER_01]: Like the early 90s. 00:49.660 --> 00:50.661 [SPEAKER_01]: I was there. 00:50.821 --> 00:51.782 [SPEAKER_01]: I was, you know, a toddler. 00:51.822 --> 00:59.629 [SPEAKER_01]: But, um, it feels like his career occurred to fans of my generation so much longer ago than the 31 years that you laid out. 00:59.710 --> 01:03.513 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, he feels so larger than life for one thing. 01:03.533 --> 01:13.002 [SPEAKER_01]: But also, the game really has changed so much from the early 1990s even that both 01:12.982 --> 01:13.743 [SPEAKER_01]: for a little bit. 01:14.364 --> 01:18.168 [SPEAKER_01]: No one Ryan in today's game. 01:18.188 --> 01:29.220 [SPEAKER_01]: How do you think an arm and a pitcher like him erratic like the act first, one of a kind, would be treated and developed in the miners in this world? 01:30.242 --> 01:37.690 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think I think one of the problems is he would be treated and developed like everyone else. 01:37.838 --> 01:46.971 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the points I try to make in the book is that there will never be another Nolan Ryan because the game won't allow it. 01:47.692 --> 01:53.740 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that, you know, there may have been another Nolan Ryan along the way. 01:54.061 --> 02:00.430 [SPEAKER_00]: There may yet be another Nolan Ryan, but the game isn't gonna allow him to be him. 02:00.590 --> 02:06.158 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and I'm talking about someone who is as competitive who has as resilient an arm, 02:06.408 --> 02:18.166 [SPEAKER_00]: who throws his heart, who needs maybe some developmental time, needs to find a coach who speaks to what the mechanical flaws that we're going wrong with him. 02:18.907 --> 02:21.591 [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it's interesting, the way you opened it. 02:22.752 --> 02:31.926 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I was very, really curious about if you were to take, say the, the last, the best three pictures from, 02:32.108 --> 02:40.979 [SPEAKER_00]: the generation we're now just passing out of, and that's Verlander, Scherzer, and Kershaw, and you can come up with another 3D, but those are the 3S sort of settled on. 02:42.701 --> 03:00.462 [SPEAKER_00]: The 3 of them combined pitch for almost 60 seasons and combined completed 63 games, which is crazy when you think about the fact that Verlander was a rookie just 12 years after Nolan retired, 03:00.543 --> 03:03.847 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the game hasn't just changed. 03:04.087 --> 03:15.800 [SPEAKER_00]: It changed overnight where suddenly we decided and look, and I get it, no one hates more than I do, people who pose problems in no solution. 03:15.880 --> 03:22.888 [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't really have a solution to this, but I think a lot of this came along when kids were being abused 03:22.868 --> 03:30.019 [SPEAKER_00]: in terms of their arms in little league, in high school, in college, even a little bit in the minor leagues. 03:30.821 --> 03:39.434 [SPEAKER_00]: And this has been the solution, right, is to limit pitches, limit innings, five, six man rotations. 03:40.035 --> 03:44.843 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think we're treating them all exactly alike, that they're all gonna break. 03:45.295 --> 03:56.920 [SPEAKER_00]: And the upshot is, we haven't seen a real decrease in Tommy John, we haven't seen a decrease in other types of injuries shoulder injuries or things like that. 03:57.301 --> 04:05.498 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not sure what we're solving here other than just making sure there's not another guy who's going to complete 222 games across his career. 04:07.267 --> 04:10.474 [SPEAKER_01]: I had a hard time, I think, reconciling. 04:10.514 --> 04:15.165 [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I mean, hard time, I think, by definition, because you did a really good job pushing the dichotomy. 04:15.626 --> 04:25.528 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, the fact that those people have disappeared by and large sets up Nolan Ryan as even more of a myth. 04:25.508 --> 04:41.891 [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas in the book and sort of the way it builds you start by using myth as a negative almost and in that Nolan Ryan the Met was dragged for being a myth because people heard so much about this legendary right arm But we didn't really see it. 04:41.931 --> 04:43.233 [SPEAKER_01]: We saw the erratic Ryan. 04:43.273 --> 04:44.695 [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't see the developed Ryan. 04:45.055 --> 04:51.364 [SPEAKER_01]: But by the end of his career like myth or marvel, I mean as we trip further along, it feels like 04:51.344 --> 05:12.357 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean he's both and myth is a positive where it's like I cannot believe this man existed and but but it really did happen ultimately would you say he was more of one or the other myth or marvel and that like did he change that hurtful definition of myth over time can we now confidently say he's a myth and that's good. 05:12.708 --> 05:13.169 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 05:13.349 --> 05:14.430 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's that's a good point. 05:14.470 --> 05:40.285 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it that termed the myth he was tagged by the New York writers at the time who were impatient and I think the fans as well who were impatient they needed the next Tom Sever right right away and he was just not going to be that way and and I think now he's a myth because we just can't fathom a guy who does if throws 330 innings throws 05:40.771 --> 05:49.704 [SPEAKER_00]: The night in Anaheim, when he was clocked at a hundred one miles an hour or whatever, that was on his 150th pitch. 05:50.946 --> 05:51.847 [SPEAKER_00]: We just don't understand. 05:51.887 --> 06:02.442 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think he's crossed completely into the whatever the positive side of a myth is only because we can't imagine that guy existing anymore. 06:03.434 --> 06:05.576 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was also so funny to read. 06:05.596 --> 06:08.179 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, again, you talk about being removed from it. 06:08.259 --> 06:12.804 [SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of this, scouting Nolan Ryan feels like the easiest thing ever. 06:12.984 --> 06:21.333 [SPEAKER_01]: Like if you just showed me Nolan Ryan today, I would, and I'm familiar with the concept of a pitching lab now as a modern fan. 06:21.353 --> 06:30.062 [SPEAKER_01]: So I know that if I see a guy in Alvin's axis, throw in a 102 that I can say, to hell with the no curve ball or no control, I can fix him. 06:30.483 --> 06:31.804 [SPEAKER_01]: But at the time, 06:31.784 --> 06:44.211 [SPEAKER_01]: It's clear that his relationship with Red Murph and the fact that they remain so close, it really was a challenge to uncover a man like this and he didn't even get him to a situation that was most beneficial. 06:44.311 --> 06:52.088 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, why do you think no one else was able to see what Murph saw or did they see it and they just couldn't fathom how to fix it? 06:52.574 --> 07:05.013 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a great question, and Merff really found him quite by accident, which is wild because he was, you know, he was, he put up terrific numbers in high school and through really hard anyone could see that. 07:06.455 --> 07:14.547 [SPEAKER_00]: But Merff that day was in Houston, or I'm sorry, it was in Galveston and was going to Houston to see a game, but the Galveston game was lousy. 07:14.848 --> 07:21.838 [SPEAKER_00]: So he detoured through a town called Clear Creek and just stumbled into this. 07:21.818 --> 07:31.401 [SPEAKER_00]: 6 foot 140 pound gangly sunken chested kid had no expectation whatsoever and then saw the fastball and fell in love. 07:32.283 --> 07:34.208 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that 07:35.352 --> 07:39.336 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and by the way, the mess drafted him in the 12th round. 07:39.656 --> 07:43.059 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was like 290, 5th overall or something. 07:43.079 --> 07:49.065 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not as if Red Murph went running them and found this diamond and they fell in love with them as well. 07:49.125 --> 07:50.387 [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't work that way at all. 07:52.008 --> 08:04.380 [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, it's wild to think that there was one Scott, one baseball scout in the country who would recognize this sort of talent. 08:04.715 --> 08:05.897 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't get it. 08:06.158 --> 08:16.017 [SPEAKER_00]: I actually sort of poke fun in the book that apparently there was only one scout who was ever going to find Nolan Ryan and he happened to be working in Texas at the time. 08:16.318 --> 08:21.568 [SPEAKER_00]: So I suppose, you know, it was the lack of the second pitch. 08:21.668 --> 08:26.217 [SPEAKER_00]: I suppose it was his wildness, even 08:26.652 --> 08:30.397 [SPEAKER_00]: a big thing for him was command command command command. 08:30.457 --> 08:38.468 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't care how hard you throw, but even he was convinced when he saw the fastball that this was gonna be a special arm, and he was largely alone. 08:38.488 --> 08:41.312 [SPEAKER_00]: He begged the meds to draft him. 08:41.492 --> 08:46.078 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think they drafted him just to shut red up in the room because they've just tired of hearing about it. 08:46.885 --> 08:50.792 [SPEAKER_01]: But then all of a sudden, like they drafted him and maybe you're just trying to shut up. 08:50.812 --> 08:54.278 [SPEAKER_01]: There's God, but he ends up being called up to the majors remarkably quickly. 08:54.318 --> 09:05.156 [SPEAKER_01]: So the met see something after doing that favor too, was that in your mind, you know, total desperation from the met or your dating, he was ready. 09:05.236 --> 09:10.345 [SPEAKER_01]: Because that is, that's also kind of hard to reconcile, knowing what we know about early Ryan. 09:10.730 --> 09:20.942 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, he was striking out like two batters and ending in the minor leagues and the metzword 10th place team and why not, right? 09:22.103 --> 09:23.204 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's see what the kid has. 09:23.284 --> 09:28.350 [SPEAKER_00]: I assume they also saw the walk total in the wild pitches and things like that. 09:28.410 --> 09:38.762 [SPEAKER_00]: And thought, well, let's get him up here with some coaches who might be able to direct him better and that didn't really work out as well as Nolan would have hoped. 09:39.029 --> 10:03.957 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you know, I think you're looking at a team that had nothing to lose a kid that and they recognized finally, yeah, you know, after a couple of minor league seasons that this, this was a special fastball, this was a special kind of picture, this was a very competitive kid and, you know, when he debuted, I thought it was fascinating, he debuted on the back end of a double header and the guy who started the first game was Tugmogra. 10:04.038 --> 10:08.847 [SPEAKER_00]: And you're too young for this, but these are, these were the guy grew up in New York and white planes. 10:09.869 --> 10:11.552 [SPEAKER_00]: These were the guys who I grew up with. 10:12.594 --> 10:17.904 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was seven years old when they won that World Series in 69 and that's when I became a fan. 10:18.125 --> 10:20.549 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you can't, you know, you're in white planes. 10:20.570 --> 10:24.357 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't avoid, you know, the medswining World Series in there it was. 10:24.437 --> 10:26.080 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a med fan for the rest of my life. 10:27.460 --> 10:47.784 [SPEAKER_01]: it's not only a singular season, it's one that is sort of like you write that the model for all future underdog stories, like it gave potentially false hope to teams that didn't actually earn that hope, but it was so improbable that it, you know, awoke in something that no one expected. 10:47.844 --> 10:48.945 [SPEAKER_01]: And that includes 10:48.925 --> 10:52.469 [SPEAKER_01]: Ryan's World Series came out of like he's called up. 10:52.489 --> 10:56.032 [SPEAKER_01]: He's a non-essential part of this metstaff for all intents and purposes. 10:56.452 --> 11:04.300 [SPEAKER_01]: And he gets thrust into a seven inning relief appearance touched by the gods to help usher in this improbable title. 11:05.742 --> 11:11.627 [SPEAKER_01]: Does it upset you that that is the sum total of Ryan's World Series legacy across his whole career? 11:11.748 --> 11:16.232 [SPEAKER_01]: Or is it kind of more amazing that 11:16.685 --> 11:29.640 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it sort of speaks almost to this massive experience that he touched every single part of baseball, right? 11:29.740 --> 11:34.545 [SPEAKER_00]: All the seven no hitters is all that glory, all the strikeouts. 11:36.147 --> 11:41.093 [SPEAKER_00]: But he also, he made one world series appearance in his life. 11:41.733 --> 11:45.898 [SPEAKER_00]: He struck out everybody, he walked everybody. 11:46.267 --> 12:02.807 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, he was he had some of the, you know, six hits per nine on lousy teams, kept losing 16 games a season, never won a sigh young, um, you know, how are 12, one hitters, 18, two hitters. 12:03.462 --> 12:13.293 [SPEAKER_00]: It's really sort of a difficult career to put into one box, because he basically, you know, as I refer to in the book, he in terms of a career, he filled the box score. 12:13.713 --> 12:18.178 [SPEAKER_00]: He did just about everything, and it's sort of hard to narrow him down. 12:18.218 --> 12:23.884 [SPEAKER_00]: People ask me all the times, like, is this the best picture of all times, is he the 10th best picture, is he the 30th best picture? 12:24.285 --> 12:26.047 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I don't know, it depends on what you like. 12:26.347 --> 12:28.810 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you call it the way you want to call it. 12:29.751 --> 12:32.794 [SPEAKER_00]: But this was, and one of the things, 12:32.774 --> 12:48.429 [SPEAKER_00]: found really cool was in a three-true outcome era, and maybe we're getting out of that a little bit, but nobody boiled the game down to one-on-one more than no one riot did. 12:49.030 --> 12:52.217 [SPEAKER_00]: Walks, strikeouts, home runs. 12:52.383 --> 13:07.810 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was, he hardly ever gave up hits and just sort of a remarkable one on one guy who had these fantastic sort of individual feeds and never had really the team around him to do much more than that. 13:09.308 --> 13:19.783 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we could talk all day about the ways the game is changing, but I think you just hit on another one that blew my mind reading this and I couldn't figure out my answers. 13:20.364 --> 13:35.687 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious about yours. 13:35.667 --> 13:55.988 [SPEAKER_01]: Jacob DeGrom in the meantime is flirting with a hundred wins and he looks like a Hall of Famer Like when loss has never met less to people strikeouts That one-on-one that batter on pitcher is is all the more important these days But we are losing the eyewitnesses of the Nolan Ryan hair like 13:55.968 --> 13:57.471 [SPEAKER_01]: He is becoming that myth. 13:57.491 --> 14:00.817 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going further and further away from anyone who can comprehend what he did. 14:01.278 --> 14:09.333 [SPEAKER_01]: So, do you think he'll be appreciated more as its career gets reduced to these numbers and the perception has changed or less because we don't have people to tell the story? 14:09.854 --> 14:14.463 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a great question because I think it goes back to the Saoyung. 14:15.044 --> 14:18.010 [SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't he ever win a Saoyung if he was so great? 14:17.990 --> 14:21.515 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was the wind off in the wind loss record. 14:21.535 --> 14:23.679 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was also timing to a degree. 14:23.739 --> 14:26.543 [SPEAKER_00]: One of his best seasons was the Fernando breakout year. 14:27.404 --> 14:31.851 [SPEAKER_00]: He lost a sign a young one year to like this weird sparky liel we're here. 14:32.492 --> 14:33.954 [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't quite figure that out. 14:35.597 --> 14:43.609 [SPEAKER_00]: But he just never had the record of like a Jim Palmer, for example, was a guy who he was frequently finishing behind. 14:44.855 --> 14:49.453 [SPEAKER_00]: analytics didn't love him, which I think he would be fine with, because he doesn't care much for analytics either. 14:49.473 --> 14:54.493 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that, um, yes, that. 14:55.098 --> 15:20.481 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, before we got a little bit smarter and before we realized that wins and losses were not the true reflection of a picture, I think that was the big hit on him was gosh, he lost so many games with people didn't think he has some of the worst run support over the course of a career in the history so it top three or four and also again. 15:20.461 --> 15:24.385 [SPEAKER_00]: surrounded by teams that weren't winning a lot of games and he wore it. 15:24.465 --> 15:26.147 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've seen it's funny recently. 15:26.187 --> 15:33.314 [SPEAKER_00]: He just come up where his ERA in losses was like five and a half. 15:33.334 --> 15:35.096 [SPEAKER_00]: And I hadn't really thought about that before. 15:35.296 --> 15:42.243 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I poked around a little bit and just had just yesterday I was writing down and this was the big knock on him. 15:42.303 --> 15:45.827 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so he was good when he was good, but when he was bad he was really bad. 15:46.668 --> 15:51.235 [SPEAKER_00]: Pedro, 156 in wins, five, five, seven in losses. 15:52.096 --> 16:00.068 [SPEAKER_00]: Sever 1615, Randy Johnson, 1866, Maddox, 133, five, six, six. 16:00.229 --> 16:05.757 [SPEAKER_00]: Name me a Hallfane pitcher and I'll show you guy you had a five and a half ERA in his losses. 16:07.154 --> 16:11.379 [SPEAKER_01]: and you name not only Hall of Fame pictures, but the upper echelon there. 16:11.479 --> 16:14.723 [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, that is a pretty solid way to rebut that. 16:15.404 --> 16:23.614 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a favorite era of no-one Ryan or if not which era of sort of the story of it all resonated most with you? 16:24.315 --> 16:32.385 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that those breakout years in Anaheim, 72 to 74 when 16:32.534 --> 17:00.364 [SPEAKER_00]: I think he completed something like 75 games and through three no hitters and you know that was in there was in there was the best game he ever pitched there was a game against the red sacks and this is from him I didn't decide this was the best game because it was not one of his seven no hitters it was a game against the red socks I believe it was in inanaheim where he struck out the first batter the second batter got a hit 17:00.344 --> 17:09.299 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that was Yustremski rolled a ball through the right side, and then he got the next 26 hitters in a row, including I think 15 by strike out. 17:09.940 --> 17:16.892 [SPEAKER_00]: He was so dominant in most, I would put those three years up against any other picture in any other era. 17:16.952 --> 17:23.162 [SPEAKER_00]: There was nothing like him where he just became this phenomenon and was absolutely unhittable. 17:24.408 --> 17:28.412 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a favorite absurd, no one Ryan fact or stat? 17:28.512 --> 17:31.155 [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, there are a million to go off of. 17:31.175 --> 17:36.761 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's hard to move off, you know, retired with these 53 records and all that stuff. 17:36.841 --> 17:42.728 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I like everybody love the fact that no one will ever break his strikeout record or his walk record. 17:44.710 --> 17:54.060 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of the facts that I got from him and this was sort of the challenge in writing a book. 17:54.192 --> 18:00.676 [SPEAKER_00]: And this was the first one I've done where you think everybody knows about this guy already. 18:01.198 --> 18:01.439 [SPEAKER_00]: Right. 18:01.580 --> 18:05.113 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm taking on this project where, you know, if you're. 18:05.701 --> 18:12.090 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're older than 35 or 40, you know everything about Nolan Ryan, because you witnessed it or were close. 18:12.631 --> 18:17.417 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're under that, you heard all about him from your dad, or you read a book, or whatever. 18:17.497 --> 18:21.002 [SPEAKER_00]: And so what am I going to tell people about Nolan Ryan that they haven't heard before? 18:21.022 --> 18:26.730 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of it came from teammates or opponents, you know, 18:27.267 --> 18:30.893 [SPEAKER_00]: That boy helped put through college. 18:31.995 --> 18:41.790 [SPEAKER_00]: Those are the sort of things that the father of the lady who runs the Alvin historical museum used to provide Nolan with bowl semen. 18:42.812 --> 18:46.398 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's that sort of stuff where I'm like, oh, how's that work? 18:46.458 --> 18:47.299 [SPEAKER_00]: And you don't want to know. 18:49.623 --> 18:54.591 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think more of the stuff about the man. 18:55.195 --> 19:07.080 [SPEAKER_00]: than sort of the reputation and the numbers, anybody can sort of recite the numbers in their remarkable sort of in all ways like we talked about from one end to the spectrum to the other. 19:07.621 --> 19:13.373 [SPEAKER_00]: But it was really interesting sort of getting to know who he was and still is, by the way. 19:13.555 --> 19:13.896 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 19:14.296 --> 19:20.728 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, on that note, you spent a lot of time in Alvin and you wrote that these are the towns that make men like him. 19:21.990 --> 19:29.925 [SPEAKER_01]: What do you think in a small town can make a picture like Nolan Ryan and what was your favorite part about spending so much time digging at his roots there? 19:31.427 --> 19:36.677 [SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite stories, so I was when I was talking to Nolan. 19:37.265 --> 19:49.200 [SPEAKER_00]: He brought up painting his house, his family's house, Dezo Drive, just a little one story, house on a horseshoe shaped road. 19:50.382 --> 20:02.918 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, every summer to he would notice there'd be fresh paint cans and brushes in the garage and he knew it was time for him to repaint his house. 20:03.168 --> 20:29.175 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and, you know, so, and his dad was a big quiet sort of stoic guy, smoked Marboro Reds, and every day his dad would come home from work and see the progress that no one made and not or, or point to the, to the flaws or whatever, uh, and what I, I sort of loved about the, the work ethic in terms of one brush stroke, 20:29.560 --> 20:31.022 [SPEAKER_00]: means you've finished the house. 20:31.744 --> 20:36.312 [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought the metaphor of one pitch means you've finished the game. 20:36.712 --> 20:37.534 [SPEAKER_00]: That's your game. 20:37.794 --> 20:39.537 [SPEAKER_00]: That's your, the house you're going to paint. 20:39.597 --> 20:51.838 [SPEAKER_00]: And no one said to this day, he's 79 years old now, when he's driving around and he sees a crew up on ladders paint in a house, he thinks back to those days as a teenager where 20:52.156 --> 20:59.642 [SPEAKER_00]: you're given a job and you're expected to finish it and you're expected to finish it well or you know, stagger out having tried. 21:00.243 --> 21:05.007 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the sort of town Alvin is, that's the sort of family he came from. 21:05.908 --> 21:21.741 [SPEAKER_00]: I've thought a lot about hard winters, hard summers, hard work, oil fields, cattle ranches, farms, just the sort of people who come from those communities, they're tough folks and there are expectations. 21:21.907 --> 21:30.476 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think he was accountable to not only his arm, which I think, you know, he viewed as a gift that he needed to live up to. 21:31.157 --> 21:36.964 [SPEAKER_00]: But also the people of Alvin, the sort of that raised him alongside his parents. 21:38.325 --> 21:43.471 [SPEAKER_01]: You talked in plenty of character, when it's is along the way, many of whom were the hitters that he decimated. 21:43.491 --> 21:48.336 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a favorite funny story that Hitter told you about dealing with Nolan Ryan? 21:49.193 --> 22:03.936 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I sort of love the fact that they all felt like it was personal, so personal, that, that, you know, I would say the Rod Carou story was sort of fascinated me. 22:04.036 --> 22:07.923 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've known Rod for 30 some years. 22:07.963 --> 22:09.305 [SPEAKER_00]: And I hadn't heard this before. 22:09.786 --> 22:11.709 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, Rod had that crouch stance. 22:11.729 --> 22:16.416 [SPEAKER_00]: He was bent at the waist, and his bat was sort of parallel to the ground, and his head was 22:17.105 --> 22:19.668 [SPEAKER_00]: sort of slanted, almost resting on his shoulder. 22:20.670 --> 22:26.878 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, I ever tell you where I got that stance and I said, no, you have, and Rod faced him a ton of times. 22:27.699 --> 22:34.748 [SPEAKER_00]: And despite of the fact that they eventually became teammates in Anaheim, well, he couldn't hit Nolan's fastball up. 22:35.469 --> 22:39.795 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Nolan kept going up with fastball and Rod kept striking out. 22:39.815 --> 22:45.542 [SPEAKER_00]: And this was in an era where Rod Cruz, one of the great bat-to-ball guys of all time. 22:45.978 --> 22:47.742 [SPEAKER_00]: And it just was driving him crazy. 22:48.263 --> 23:01.050 [SPEAKER_00]: And after about 30 a bat to this thing, Rod was sitting on a stool in his clubhouse, playing for the twins and the it's swiveled. 23:01.300 --> 23:09.650 [SPEAKER_00]: And if a media guy came up or a teammate or whatever, he would turn in the chair and swivel in the chair, he wouldn't stand up, he would sort of swivel. 23:10.391 --> 23:14.756 [SPEAKER_00]: And it came to him that this is how he needed to face Nolan Ryan. 23:14.776 --> 23:22.305 [SPEAKER_00]: He had to sit on the stool and get down in that crouch and take that high fastball away from Nolan Ryan. 23:22.325 --> 23:27.932 [SPEAKER_00]: Rod Kru, hit every other pitcher in the league, but it drove him crazy that he couldn't hit one. 23:27.912 --> 23:29.314 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was Nolan Ryan. 23:29.635 --> 23:31.978 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he changed his entire mechanics. 23:31.998 --> 23:35.624 [SPEAKER_00]: He took batting practice, sitting on that stool until he perfected it. 23:36.385 --> 23:39.510 [SPEAKER_00]: And from then on, the fight was fair. 23:39.991 --> 23:46.140 [SPEAKER_00]: And he actually hit, you know, from then on about 300 off of Ryan and they would get into it a little bit. 23:46.120 --> 23:52.770 [SPEAKER_00]: Rod or Nolan would tell him, hey, stand up and and Karud would say, no, bring it down, I'm staying here. 23:53.391 --> 24:01.863 [SPEAKER_00]: So just those sort of fights within the fights, you know, two Hall of a guy, one of the great hitters ever, and one of the great pictures ever, and how that all sort of came together. 24:02.143 --> 24:14.862 [SPEAKER_00]: And Rod has convinced that Nolan Ryan, because of that, because of the way he changed his stance, turned Rod from a good or a great hitter into a Hall of Fame hitter, because of those duals with Nolan Ryan. 24:15.415 --> 24:41.473 [SPEAKER_01]: certainly more evidence there too that he could hit everyone but no one that the fastball did in fact hop as all these hitters keep uh he'd fastifying to um do you believe no one Ryan is still throwing the hardest fastball of all time and if not when you think he was first surpassed so to say yeah it's a great question right I mean you know there's an awful lot of argument about that um you know I do know that um that 24:42.854 --> 24:49.582 [SPEAKER_00]: 101, 101, 0.8, whatever it was that night, the Anaheim was at the plate and not out of his hand. 24:50.403 --> 24:53.527 [SPEAKER_00]: I do know that all the readings now are out of hand. 24:55.649 --> 24:56.450 [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows, right? 24:56.510 --> 25:03.398 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, at the time they're thrown against police motorcycles and making stuff up. 25:04.620 --> 25:07.343 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. 25:07.897 --> 25:26.142 [SPEAKER_00]: What I probably think is that even though Nolan was so far ahead of the game in terms of lifting weights and being very tentative to his body and committing to these regimens that were unlike anything that was happening at the time. 25:26.982 --> 25:37.814 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, between the pitching labs and the bodies of the way they look now and how the only thing they're chasing is velocity, you know, no one never had to chase velocity. 25:37.834 --> 25:39.796 [SPEAKER_00]: That was that was natural for him. 25:40.797 --> 25:46.323 [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows what would happen if he had knocked on drive-line store, you know, in 1978. 25:46.383 --> 25:54.812 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure, you know, these guys are probably throwing hard, but it's only a guess. 25:55.619 --> 26:02.050 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad I think that Bob Feller has not had to watch drive line and had to think about what that means. 26:02.070 --> 26:06.458 [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, you'll see what the motorcycle measurements will wrap here. 26:07.239 --> 26:10.685 [SPEAKER_01]: Where do you rank Nolan Ryan on the all-time pitcher hierarchy? 26:10.785 --> 26:12.869 [SPEAKER_01]: And is he on your mount Rushmore? 26:12.889 --> 26:15.092 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, if not, how do you build that around him? 26:16.274 --> 26:21.323 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that in terms of pitching legends, 26:22.282 --> 26:24.888 [SPEAKER_00]: would be on my Mount Rushmore. 26:25.149 --> 26:38.620 [SPEAKER_00]: In terms of best pictures ever, top four on Mount Rushmore, probably not, you know, I think that, you know, what I love, 26:39.342 --> 27:06.075 [SPEAKER_00]: loved about sort of digging in on this was that he was flawed you know he was he was he was like everybody else that that not everything was perfect you know and you sort of go back to the walks and he didn't feel this position great and he didn't really hold runners particularly well 27:07.827 --> 27:27.979 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, probably not just because I think there's, there's more tool than that, you know, I just what he was the, the, the, the competitor he was the ball player he was all that stuff I think would put him there for me only because of, you know, what he represents particularly today. 27:28.921 --> 27:29.742 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you're right. 27:29.883 --> 27:42.362 [SPEAKER_01]: I was too young for Nolan, but his Hall of Fame class was the first one I really remember and vivid detail, getting announced, Ryan, Yout, Brett, and that changed my childhood. 27:42.523 --> 27:46.629 [SPEAKER_01]: Forever, I went to the induction ceremony the next year for Fisk and Tony Perez. 27:46.689 --> 27:48.893 [SPEAKER_01]: It's sort of like a week into my love. 27:48.993 --> 27:55.924 [SPEAKER_01]: I was already, I've been a group for a stand a few times, but no one 27:55.904 --> 27:58.329 [SPEAKER_01]: that made that town so special to me. 27:58.409 --> 28:03.318 [SPEAKER_01]: So no one has always been a personal favorite of mine and unattainable one, too. 28:03.419 --> 28:05.483 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, you know, I can't really see it. 28:05.543 --> 28:06.565 [SPEAKER_01]: I can sort of feel it. 28:07.366 --> 28:08.408 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he's a myth to me. 28:08.488 --> 28:13.979 [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate all the hard work and in no one in the singular life from an American original and the end to him. 28:14.320 --> 28:16.464 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for speaking me today this meant a lot. 28:16.965 --> 28:17.426 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks Adam. 28:17.446 --> 28:18.047 [SPEAKER_00]: This was fun.