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?