“It helps if a hitter thinks you're a little crazy.”
- Nolan Ryan
Nolan Ryan had a big butt, and he may still, but this was 1994. I was the strength coach for the University of Memphis baseball team and we were in the regionals in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Our team was good, 52-11, and we were vying for college baseball's ultimate prize, its World Series.
The team we faced in the first round was Texas Christian University (TCU). Their starting pitcher for that game was a kid named Reed Ryan, the son of Nolan Ryan. They beat us that day, 11-3. That's baseball. Nolan Ryan was there watching from the dugout. He had just retired the year before. He wasn't coaching or anything, just present. After the game, as is traditional, players line up and snake along across the infield, shaking hands with the opposing team. While that was going on, Ryan was out on the field milling around and I happened to be near by. Here's what I was struck by and have always remembered. He had a big, big butt and haunches, completely outsized for the rest of him. Now I had been around I lot of very good baseball players from different levels of play, but I hadn't seen anything like this. It's not something I would typically focus on, mind you, but some things you can't help but notice.
As I thought about it, though, it made perfect sense. The butt, hips and legs are where a pitcher generates all their power and the ultimate power pitcher was Nolan Ryan. He drove off the pitching mound and threw a baseball extremely hard for 27 seasons. He threw 5,386 innings. He threw 222 complete games. He threw 61 shutouts. He threw 7 no-hitters. He struck out 5,714 batters, the most in major league history. As the maxim goes, “We are what we repeatedly do,” and repeatedly doing what Ryan did for almost three decades earned him an impressively large lower half.
When you look at Ryans number's today they seem almost cartoonish. Who can believe them? They're not shocking to me, though, or anyone else growing up and paying attention during the the golden age of pitchers. We watched starting pitchers like Ryan, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale, Steve Carlton, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter and Tom Seaver. If those guys started a game, they intended to finish it. It was a personal insult to have to come out. Things have changed. In 2025, there were 29 complete games in MLB. Today if a starting pitcher gets through five innings, it's considered some kind of major accomplishment. They get respectful applause from the crowd. To throw a complete game or a shutout is viewed as an Olympian feat.
Here's a fun stat: Last year there were 13 shutouts thrown in all of Major League Baseball. In 1968, St. Louis Cardinal, Bob Gibson alone threw 13 shutouts, part of his 28 complete games. He was 32 years old. Gibson that year was so dominate, he was such a bad ass, they had to change the game of baseball in 1969 by lowering the mound to give hitters a fighting chance against him. Gibson probably had a big butt too.
In baseball, like life, change is the only constant. I accept that, but I don't have to like it.
I'm a big Jerry Jeff Walker fan, but this song of his is a little cringy, kinda like this post. I'm gonna play it anyway.