Like the Beatles shortly before him, Nolan Ryan performed at Shea Stadium and sang on the Ed Sullivan Show.
The first is a well-known and well-told part of Ryan’s life, the early days of a Hall of Fame career that eventually launched the Ryan Express as rocket fuel. The latter, when he and the entire 1969 Mets World Series-winning roster sang “You Gotta Have Heart” to a national television audience, is lesser known and one of many surprising parts of a new documentary, “Facing Nolan,” which is sure to will bring a smile.
“I thought this was the worst suit I’ve ever seen,” said Reid Ryan, the oldest of Nolan and Ruth’s three children and the film’s executive producer. Reid laughed and added: “I’m not sure if the mustard suit was ever worn. I know he can’t sing, but that was funny.”
Nolan Ryan said that while it looked like he and his teammates were lip syncing, they actually sang.
“We were all really excited to be on that show and the honor of being there,” Ryan said on a recent phone call. “But the highlight of the evening for me was that Eddy Arnold was there. I was a big Eddy Arnold fan and that made the evening special.”
What’s both charming and disarming about the film, which started streaming on multiple services this week, is Ryan’s surprising humility. A Hall of Fame pitcher who still holds 51 Major League records—according to the film’s tally—Ryan has a legend that easily fills his native Texas, but to some of his on-screen co-stars, he’s just Grandpa, that corny tells jokes and who, yes, can’t sing. And he loves it.
The high praise for Ryan comes in interviews with his fellow Hall of Famers. George Brett, Rod Carew and Dave Winfield are among those who provide a keen insight into the challenge described in the film’s title. Pete Rose too. When reminded that Ryan finished second to Baltimore’s Jim Palmer in the 1973 American League Cy Young Award voting after a record 383 strikeouts—of course, Ryan also led the league that year by 162 walks—Carew responds like he hears it for the first time.
“You are joking!” Carew exclaims when told Ryan never won a Cy Young.
Brett says, “Nolan never won a Cy Young Award? I thought he won three, four, five.”
That has even more impact today, as he still holds career strikeout records (5,714) and career no-hitters (seven; Sandy Koufax is second with four). The standing ovations and star-studded testimonials echo throughout the film, of course, but the insight of family members is what stirs the emotions and gives director Bradley Jackson’s work its touching humanity. The surprising, sturdy backbone of the story is Ryan’s wife, Ruth.
“People say that when you marry a baseball player, you actually marry baseball,” says Ruth Ryan in the film as she visits Nolan’s childhood home in tiny Alvin, Texas, and checks the progress of a tree he considers young boy has planted. “There’s a lot of truth in that statement.”
The two celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary last month, although, after their second date in 1962, that milestone seemed just as unlikely as Ryan’s eventual dominance after control issues plagued his early career.
It wasn’t exactly a romantic getaway: he took her to Colt Stadium to watch Koufax pitch.
“He wouldn’t talk to me,” Ruth said. “He wouldn’t get up.”
“We sat behind the sign with a panoramic view of Sandy Koufax,” Nolan explained.
Although she says she was initially annoyed when longtime pitcher and scout Red Murff warned her that one day she would “have to share Nolan with the world,” Murff’s prediction came true, and this movie is that story. With a generative fastball (“sounded like bacon in a frying pan,” Roger Clemens says in the film), it was only a matter of time.
What wasn’t inevitable was “Facing Nolan,” which is essentially a video memoir to his wife and their three children and seven grandchildren disguised as a baseball documentary.
“He said no,” Reid Ryan said. “My mom said, ‘I’ve been everywhere with you and you’re going to make this movie with me.’ If it wasn’t for her, this movie wouldn’t have been made.”
Nolan agrees.
“I’m not really comfortable talking about what’s happened in my career and stuff, and so I’ve really discouraged Bradley and them from doing it,” he said. “But my kids just stopped me. They felt I should do something for my grandchildren, and Ruth felt the same. So in the end I agreed to do it.”
