1974 SPECIAL- THE RECORD-SETTING STRIKEOUT DUO OF NOLAN RYAN AND BILL SINGER

If you’re about my age (50) and remember the baseball days before some guys named Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling came along, you’ll remember the historic pitching duo of Nolan Ryan and Bill Singer seemingly striking everyone and their mothers out during the 1973 season.
Here’s my 1974 “special” celebrating their feat:

Found a very nice photo of Ryan and Singer, along with the most used catcher that season by the Angels, Jeff Torborg, and immediately thought of this card creation.
Of course, when you have Nolan Ryan’s record breaking 383 strikeouts, you’re off to a great head-start to set any kind of Major League record.
Now go and throw in Bill Singer’s 241 K’s, and you have a combined 624 punch-outs, setting a new Big League record that wouldn’t be surpassed until Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling in 2001 with an incredible 664 K’s.
I always remember when Baseball Digest would have little specialty stats every so often like “40+ homers in three or more consecutive seasons”, “100+ homers in two consecutive seasons”, and the most strikeouts by teammate pitchers in a single season.
I loved grabbing each new issue when released and devouring all the info within like a sponge, leading to much mocking by my childhood friends calling me the “encyclopedia” and throwing baseball questions at me LITERALLY every day, and to this very day some 40 years later.
Anyway, it was a great season for these two guys, as they each won 20+ games, combined for those record-breaking strikeouts, threw six shutouts between them and logged 300+ innings each over 81 starts!
Those were certainly different times...