Friday, May 23, 2014

"HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 1970'S" #12: RYAN HIT'S 100.9 M.P.H. IN 1974

What kid DIDN'T know that Nolan Ryan hit over 100 miles per hour in 1974 with a pitch!?
If you didn't even follow baseball you would have known from skimming through a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records, which all of us did every year when the new copy came out.
It was like some magical number: 100.9, and it seemed non-human to be able to do that.
Granted today we have guys like Aroldis Chapman throwing pitches that make 100.9 seem antiquated, but Nolan Ryan's "100.9" was something all of us held near and dear as part of the Nolan Ryan legend.
So today allow me to present my design for a 1975 "Highlights" card that would have celebrated this achievement, following the design Topps had for the Highlights sub-set in the same set:


This was right at height of Ryan's super-human run of fast pitches, no-hitters, and 300+ strikeout seasons that had batters shaking in the cleats, and who knew that he'd be able to keep it going for almost another twenty years!?
Just awesome.
For all the hype the recorded pitch got, it would have been cool to have a card like this as party of the set, no?

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Everything baseball: cards, events, history and more.