One is a Houston legend. The other is a deadbeat and a criminal who quit on his team during the playoffs. Do not put Nolan Ryan and that loser in the same sentence as if they are somehow equals.
Doesn't bother me one bit. Just because he's dead doesn't erase all of the crappy things he did to the Astros. That b*stard is the reason I no longer care about them or baseball.
you don't care about the astros?? since john mcmullen was the owner?? seems like i've seen you post about them a bit...but maybe i have you confused with someone else.
I'm not saying Nolan was a bad pitcher, and he was great in 87, but he was league-average in 88, especially when adjusting for the Dome. 3.52 wasn't anything special in the late 80s, a pitcher's era. The 88 Astros was the last season Bass played the full year, or hit more than 10 home runs. The 89 Astros saw the last good season of Davis. Ashby was basically done in 87. Doran hit .248 in 88 and followed that with .219 in 89. Mike Scott, the ace, was done by 1990. You think we were breaking up a contender by letting Ryan go? They let the young guys like Biggio and Cammy play full time for the first time in 1989, getting them valuable experience. They traded one of their key relief pitchers for Jeff Bagwell in 1990. They traded Davis in 91 for Finley, Harnisch and Schilling. None of those moves were consistent with keeping an 40+ year old pitcher on the roster, even if the guy did make the All-Star team the next season. Given the other moves the team was making in the same time frame, remolding the roster, you certainly couldn't be disappointed in the course the team took. Don't tell me you'd have preferred a few more 82-80 seasons with the current roster.
Sam you are making a great point. In fact, today's fans would be advocating the team trade him for prospects instead of letting him go via free agency.
There was NO way to know that Bass would get injured or play below his prior avg along with Hatcher hitting a bit of a wall before letting Ryan go. Doran had two strong seasons after 89 and even helped the Reds win the WS in 90. Scott was 2nd in the Cy Young in 89 and Davis was an MVP candidate so Ryan would have helped that team a GREAT deal. My contention is this, if the Stros had been rebuilding and moving everyone right then and there then of course moving Ryan was the right thing to do, like Oswalt, but that wasn't the case. They still believed to be contenders and went along their offseason as such, so giving them credit for moving Ryan is not correct. Letting Ryan go was simply being cheap and not wanting to pay him what he was worth, which wasn't a HUGE amount and very movable a few years later when they did decide to rebuild.
The Astros traded Oswalt. The Astros tried to cut Ryan's salary by 20% and he left as a free agent for a salary a million dollars less than the highest paid pitcher in the league. Not to mention Ryan probably would have re-signed for less than the 1.8 the Rangers gave him if McMullen hadn't low balled him.
I used to live, breathe and bleed with the Orange. I grew up absolutely loving the game of baseball. I went to their games when they were the Colt 45's at the old Buffalo Stadium. As a kid, I used to sneak an old portable radio into my room to listen to late night games under the covers. I have lost count of how many games I attended at the Dome. I know that they sucked for many of those years but I didn't care because they were the Houston Astros and Houston was MY hometown. Well, it took John McMullen to change all of that for me. He managed to kill every last once of emotion I carried for the Astros until nothing was left and to this day that is what I feel for the Astros: nothing. McMullen's letting Nolan Ryan go was the last straw for myself and a number of my friends. That's why my watching yet another Dallas area team play for a title - this time with a team that Nolan Ryan put together evokes such bitter memories. I'd take him over Ed Wade in a heart beat.
I was a kid when all this went down but like a lot of people on this thread, I was a diehard baseball and Astros fan back then. Ryan was one of my childhood heroes along with Dream and Walter Payton. Once he went to the Rangers I lost all hardcore intrest in baseball in general. I agree with a lot points that Sam makes and I'd probably have looked it the same way if I were an adult back then.
Same experience dude. I guess it was really hard back then to make sense of it cause I was a kid, but it still makes no sense now from a PR and marketing standpoint. Nolan Ryan was baseball immortality and a native son. I remember watching him getting standing ovations from every city he went to cause the fans respected what he meant to baseball. He played 8 years for the Astros, but look what cap he's wearing in the HOF.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ryan and Wade Boggs are the reason players don't get to say what cap they're wearing any longer. I believe both had it written in their contracts.
one of those guys was an important member of the first team that won a championship for the city of Houston. I could careless what he did in his personal life and I could careless what Nolan Ryan did in his personal life too. Didn't Nolan Ryan beat the crap out of some dumb kid who ran at him at the mound? Maxwell would have whopped the crap out of him too if he was a baseball player! :grin:
If you are going to go with the "no way to know" card, then there was no way to know then that a 42-year-old pitcher still had a couple of good years left in his arm. It was, and is, unprecedented. Nolan's rebound year isn't something the team could have predicted. What they could predict was the team was coming off 2 straight disappointing seasons (76 and 82 wins, respectively) and had finished at least 12 games out of the playoffs each season. I know they were awesome in 86, but 87 and 88 were very down seasons and the team wasn't young. And if you're looking back on that squad, you have to realize that the Stros made the right moves. They were drafting well and developing good young players. They were making good trades for prospects. And did you know that the "cheap" Astros began the Venezuela Academy that same year, 1989? The one that ended up producing Abreu, Hidalgo, Santana, Guillen, etc? Seems like that was money well spent, instead of wasting it on an old pitcher. But what do I know?
I don't care about Vernon Maxwell's personal life. I don't care about yours either. I could careless if you win the Nobel peace Prize or the second coming of Pol Pott. don't try to derail this thread because you hate Vernon Maxwell. Whatever you say will never change my mind about Maxwell. NEVER. Your blind hate is shown cause you won't even admit that Maxwell had contract disputes with the Rockets even though it's well documented. Back to NOLAN RYAN. As mentioned by other posters who aren't purposely trying to derail this thread based on knowing who were my sports heroes, Nolan Ryan not being resigned by the Astros was very devastating to many young fans. I'm happy for him getting a chance to be respected.
When I was a kid, I really didn't understand the concept of players leaving their teams, especially when the player in question was Nolan Ryan. I wasn't mad at him, but the Astros. For him to go to Dallas was a bitter pill to swallow. It was exciting for him to come back to Houston all those years later. It felt right. But then he left. Again. For Dallas. Again. Because the Astros simply wouldn't keep him. Again. I'm happy for him, personally. I swear Houston sports are cursed.
So you care if I win the Nobel Prize? I'm confused. How exactly does someone careless? I didn't bring Maxwell into a thread about Nolan Ryan. You did. Therefore, you invite commentary and opinion as to why they should not be mentioned together in the same encyclopedia as "Houston Sports Legends". I don't "hate" Maxwell. I couldn't care less about him. I've said it over and over again. I'm a Houston sports fan. I'm a fan of the teams much more than the players. There are a few players that transcend that for me. Hakeem, Earl Campbell, Nolan Ryan, Biggio and Bagwell are some that do. They're legends on and off the field/court.
Maxwell is a Houston Sports legend in my book. I never said he was on the same level as Nolan Ryan but I did say they had contract issues. Actually, Buck Turlington and others have mentioned Maxwell in this thread first. Nobody really knows anybody off the court, just what people read about them. As mentioned before about 100 billion times, Maxwell has already express regret and remorse over that incident to Rudy and the Rockets (go search the articles i posted about it), that's water under the bridge, but in some of your mind it's like when the Helen of Troy got kidnapped and you are sending your army over.
must have been pretty weak, then. Sorry for how that sounds, but I and quite a few others lived through that (not to mention the Ford Credit fiasco), and to this day this is what was killed for me: nothing. Baseball is still the greatest game. God's game. The Astros still play for MY city. The BEST city. And no spoiled-rotten roided up athlete, penny-pinching meddling owner, or idiot GM can "kill" that for me. not expecting you or anyone else to feel the same way--but no owner, athlete, or official is in charge of how I love the great game of Baseball or my Astros. They simply don't have that much power over me.
