I'm not a football guy at all, but Brady's longevity at QB is just insane. Is he now seen as having the best NFL career of all time. Hard to imagine that someone's had a better career. Again, I say this as someone who has watched exactly 1 NFL game in my life.

The criterion is clear: if it can be played well while drinking beer, it is a game.

Running is the purest sport there is. Any definition that excludes it is wrong.

Nolan Ryan blows my mind, the guys body was a machine, he played so long and threw so hard.

That would probably make baseball the hardest sport of them all, and thus the ultimate sport.

Who do you think is more effected by being drunk, a 100m sprinter or a guy trying to hit against a big league pitcher? The baseball example is infinitely harder. Usain Bolt on a few drinks probably would've still won a medal at the Olympics in his peak. Nobody is hitting big league pitching when drunk.

Running is such a one dimensional thing compared to a real sport like baseball. It's like tic/tac/toe to chess.

But it sounds like you equate 'baseball' to the typical hackers you see playing softball on weekends. And that tells you just how hard baseball really is. Recreational people don't even try to play it, they make easier versions of the game so that they can have fun.

Pretty sure Roger Clemens proves you wrong.

Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio certainly do.

Soccer confirmed a non-sport?

https://www.goal.com/en/news/rio-fer...u1qy3n4275kiqh

https://www.ranker.com/list/drunk-or.../jacob-shelton

Seriously though, you can play any sport after drinks, especially if you are an alcoholic and have high tolerance. The prevalence or non-prevalence of playing under the influence is just going to come down to the level of risk and performance decline players are willing to accept to drink. And for drinking during the game, it has a lot to do with logistics and how many players have time to during the game. It's possible the prevalence is higher in baseball, but if so it probably comes down to the length of the season - it's easier to take each game a bit less seriously when you play 162 games a season - and the fact that teams get their enclosed space during the game.

On top of everything else, at age 44 he challenged his own MLB record for lowest hit's-per-nine inning seasonal record (150 IP or more) of 5.3 H/9. A bunch of closers have been better but nobody getting the innings in. Hader right now I think is the GOAT if you count relievers.

But Ryan led the league in H/9 by starters I think 12 times, also K/9 12 times. Some of his best years statistically were age 40+, this after two decades of leading the league in all kinds of stuff. He might be the freak of all Longevity GOATS.

Not to mention his high innings, K's, and BB totals through the years. The total pitches thrown by Ryan in his career is insane. Today's closest comps (Verlander, Scherzer, Kershaw) have probably thrown less than 1/3 of the total pitches Ryan threw in his career.

And Ryan threw hard too. His arm's durability was freakish beyond. He wasn't actually as good as most people think he was (ERA+ nowhere near as good as the 3 pitchers I mentioned) but his durability was insane. His arm should be studied by scientists.

How many pitches did Ryan throw?? Never seen that stat.

I remember he was on the cover of SI way early in his career, and it said some tendon in the elbow, probably the Tommy John one, was "hanging by a thread" and he was heading for trouble, surgery or done as this was before the Tommy John surgery. I'm pretty sure he never had surgery and kept throwing 100mph for another 20 years.

It seems a weird comparison but I have compared it to Secretariat. His power train in that delivery, like Big Red, was sick and way beyond the normal and just leapt out in watching it.

when you hold the all time records for both strikeouts and walks, i'm guessing you probably hold the all time record for total pitches. his career total stats after 27 years pitching are just bonkers. https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...ryanno01.shtml

holds the all time career record for H/9, and led the league four times while in his 40s.

and then there's the game in 1974 when he threw 235 pitches in 13 innings, struck out 19 and walked 10 (and didn't get the decision). https://www.joplinglobe.com/sports/l...eab70cf6d.html

and of course, at age 46, wasn't going to take any **** from Robin Ventura

I'm calling BS on the 235 pitches. NObody would do that to a young arm like his.

Just checked out the H/9 career chart, I actually guessed right Koufax at 2, was surprised that Kershaw is 3 and shocked that The Big Unit is not in the top 20.

here's one attempt to estimate the sum total of Ryan's career pitches.

averaging six pitches per AB is not that hard to believe in the early 70s with that SO and BB count.
he started 41 games that season and had 26 CGs. remember this was the era of a four pitcher rotation.

19ks and 10 BB's in 13 innings?

Yeah 235 pitches sounds about right to me. Dude probably averageD at least 140 per start in his prime.

That's awesome. Luv it. You'd have to go a little north of the 89K number because he was walking so many in the "uncharted" years. That's official workhorse territory.

Best pitch Nolan Ryan ever made was mailing an autographed baseball to my stepson soon after his retirement. Pretty sure I've posted the story on this site previously, so I won't repeat it. He certainly got my respect tho.

From a Tim Kurkjian article in 2020:

i've always been a Ryan fan.
for some strange reason i latched on to the Gil Hodges 1969 Amazin' Mets years after that season because i loved baseball and it was the year i was born. Koosman, Seaver, Ryan, McGraw...Agee, Kranepool, Harrelson, Cleon, Amos Otis, Ron Swoboda.
also latched on to them again in the mid 80's with Carter, Straw, Doc, Sid, Darling, Hondo, Backman, HoJo, Knight, Dykstra, Mookie, etc. but that's a different story.

after going through this thought exercise, i've reached the conclusion that it's
1. Nolan Ryan
2. Tom Brady

if you've never thrown a 90+ fastball to a batter you most likely don't know the physical exertion that's required. rinse and repeat 90,000 times.

I remember well our first family reunion golf trip, had to be 1989 looking at the stat column now (and this realization helps me pinpoint the first year of our golf trip, was never sure if it was 89 or 90). So Ryan was making a run at 300Ks again, needing 13 in his last start I think, this time some 18 years after the first time he had done it. That's a pretty ridiculous landmark itself. It's the last weekend of the regular season, either Friday or Saturday night, and we're tuning in on some radio station you could hardly hear. Nolan takes a perfect game into the late innings gunning for the 300Ks. Un effing believable. I said, "If he pitches a perfect game and lands on 300Ks, forget about Hall of Fame, just send him straight to heaven." LOL. One of my great quips. The perfect game got broken up, I wonder by who, but he got the 300Ks.

Also, he apparently gave up one All-Star game homer. Trying to find to who? Another all-star anecdote. He got traded over to the American League very young from the Mets, and wasn't well known. Reggie was watching him warm up and said, "WTF, they traded Seaver over here."

Ryan's first three years with the Angels he averaged over 20 wins with ERA way under 3, K-ing over 1000, leading in K's by a landslide ... for lousy teams. Hell, he could have won 30. And never won a Cy Young I just now realized.

I saw that series. I wanted to say my first, but not quite. All the amazing catches. I remember Curt Gowdy I think it was going crazy over the catches.

I kind of agree that Ryan is the greatest freak in terms of defying limitations brought on by age. I mean it would almost be like Usain Bolt keeps running 9.6 iinto his 40s. Brady could maybe pass him yet but its a little different. More mental. I think the next season after those first 3 with the Angels is when the arm thing started, them saying it's hanging by a thread you're toast. Pretty sure I remember right he was saying in that article, F you I don't do doctors, give me the ball and shut up. They backed off his 500 IP a year thing. Crazy. He had just broken Koufax invincible season K record, 383-382, I was on the edge of my seat watching that all year. Same years Aaron was chasing Ruth and landed on one short the end of one season, 73 I guess. No wonder I got addicted to stats. So anyway it was big news, his arm "trouble." Unreal, the guy. Texas tough. A workhorse. The didn't call him The Ryan Express for nothing. The only guy that ever charged the mound on him got a 14 punch combination. That was on Sunday Night Baseball wasn't it?