When Red Murff first saw a baseball shoot out of the right hand of a 145-pound Alvin High School junior named Nolan Ryan, he knew he’d witnessed something special. 

“The first pitch he threw was the fastest pitch I’ve seen in my lifetime. It had to be over 100 mph,” said the New York Mets scout, who died in 2008.

Murff not only convinced the Mets they had to draft the kid from south of Houston, but he told Ryan’s girlfriend — and eventual wife of going on 58 years — Ruth that she needed to realize that she was going to have to share the skinny kid with the world because he was special.

“I thought, ‘I’m not sharing him with anybody,’’” Ruth said in the 2022 Netflix documentary ‘Facing Nolan.’ “I was very put out that he said that to me. And it was so true — I did end up sharing him with the world.”

That lanky kid with a golden yet erratic arm grew into a worldwide icon who pitched until he was 46 years old and still owns records that likely will never be matched, including seven no-hitters, 5,714 career strikeouts and six seasons with at least 300 strikeouts.

He spent 14 years of his 27-season big league career in Texas, nine with the Houston Astros and five with the Texas Rangers. Which fan base he belongs to more — Houston fans, don’t look at his Hall of Fame plaque — can be debated, but there’s no doubt that he’s a Texas hero.

“He’s as Texan as Texan gets — determined and hardworking,” then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush said in 1999 at the announcement of Ryan’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. “He’s blessed with a can-do spirit that absolutely refuses to let obstacles stand in the way of any dream he has ever had. Nolan honed the talents God gave him into stuff of a baseball legend.”

In basketball, No. 23 is sacred after being worn by Michael Jordan and for much of LeBron James’ career. In soccer, it’s the No. 10, usually emblazoned on the back of a team’s best player. In Houston, 34 is similarly hallowed.

In the 1980s, the number was made famous by icons of the city’s three major sports franchises. Earl Campbell wore it with the Oilers, Hakeem Olajuwon with the Rockets and Nolan Ryan for the Astros.

Although the Holy Trinity of Houston sports made it so that kids growing up in the city were ready to fight to try to get the number on every youth league they joined, the synchronicity was all a coincidence.

When Ryan became baseball’s first million-dollar player, signing with the Astros for $4.5 million over four years before the 1980 season, he had worn No. 30 for all but two games of his career that at that point had included four seasons with the New York Mets and eight with the California Angels.

The always humble Ryan joined the Astros as one of the biggest names in baseball and probably could have had any number he wanted, but outfielder Jeffrey Leonard, who had just finished as runner-up in National League Rookie of the Year voting, already was wearing Ryan’s No. 30. True to the personality Texans embraced, Ryan didn’t want to create a stir.

“It was a new ballclub, and I didn’t want to take somebody else’s number,” Ryan said. “I took whatever was available, and 34 was the closest.”

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His nine seasons in Houston ensured no other Astros player will ever wear the number again as it has a place in the Daikin Park rafters as one of the franchise’s 11 retired numbers. The same can be said for that team in North Texas, where it’s one of the Rangers’ six retired numbers.

Why Nolan Ryan defines Houston sports

October 14, 1986–Nolan Ryan pitches against the New York Mets in game 5 of the National League Championship series in New York. (Howard Castleberry/Chronicle)

Howard Castleberry/Houston Chronicle

Ryan got to Houston when the entire city was rallying around all three professional teams. The Oilers were in the thick of their Luv Ya Blue era, the Rockets were a year away from their first NBA Finals and the Astros were exactly one Nolan Ryan away from making their first postseason appearance.

However, what is Houston without heartbreak? Ryan was six outs away from pitching the Astros to their first World Series, heading to the mound in the eighth inning of the deciding game of the 1980 National League Championship Series with a 5-2 lead over the Philadelphia Phillies.

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Instead, Larry Bowa blooped a ball for a lead-off single. Bob Boone followed with a harmless grounder back to the mound that had the chance to be a double-play ball, but bounced off Ryan’s glove for an infield single.

Then, Greg Gross had the nerve to drop a perfect bunt down the third-base line to load the bases. Pete Rose walked with the bases loaded, ending Ryan’s day and setting the Astros on the path to sadness and an extra-inning loss that still stands as the most painful in franchise history.

“The game breaks your heart a lot,” Ryan said.

It would go on to break Houston’s heart again in the 1981 and 1986 playoffs and again when hated owner John McMullen asked Ryan to take a 20% paycut after the 1988 season, and instead, Ryan left for the Texas Rangers.

He would go on to win his 300th game, record his 5,000th strikeout, throw two more no-hitters and bully Robin Ventura, all in a Rangers uniform. 

Nolan Ryan’s backstory

If you drive down to South Texas and take Highway 77 through Refugio, you’ll be greeted by a “Welcome to Refugio: Birthplace of Nolan Ryan” sign.

Yes, the man known just as much as the Alvin Express as he was the Ryan Express actually was born 180 miles south with his family living in Woodsboro before they moved to Alvin when Nolan was just five weeks old. 

His father Lynn Nolan Ryan Sr., operated a newspaper delivery service for the Houston Post, which used to boast of being responsible for building young Nolan’s superhuman arm strength as he helped his father deliver 1,500 papers a lot of mornings.

“The Houston Post used to say, ‘Nolan Ryan developed his arm from throwing the Post.’ Well, that’s totally false because when you drive a car, you throw with your left hand,” Ryan said.

Wherever the power originated, it was overwhelming.

Although Ryan’s fastball was once clocked at 100.9 mph back before radar guns were common sights at ballparks, Jerry Grote — his catcher with the Mets in the late 1960s and early 1970s — insists he threw much harder than that.

“Everybody was saying that Nolan was throwing 101, maybe 102 mph, that’s wrong,” Grote says in ‘Facing Nolan’. “Nolan was throwing 107, 108.”

When someone behind the camera chuckles and asks if he really believes that, the straight-faced Grote says, “Yes. I was there catching it, or trying to.”

Nolan Ryan’s legacy

Nolan Ryan makes his final appearance at the Astrodome as an active player during an exhibition game between the Rangers and the Astros, April 2, 1993.

Kerwin Plevka/Houston Chronicle

Ryan’s footprint is secured all over Texas.

State Highway 288, which you can take from outside of Alvin to Houston, is known as the Nolan Ryan Expressway, there’s a Nolan Ryan Junior High School in Pearland, his number is retired by both the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers and he’s in not only the Baseball Hall of Fame, but also the Texas Trail of Fame and the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Still, it’s the plaque in Cooperstown that will make a die-hard Astros fan wince. Etched in bronze is Ryan’s grinning face while wearing a Rangers cap.

Ryan played for four big-league teams, but it was with the Astros where he played nine seasons, the longest stay of his career, compared to five with the Rangers. However, his exit from Houston wasn’t a smooth one.

Astros owner John McMullen wanted his 41-year-old star to take a 20% paycut.

Ryan instead went to that offseason’s winter meetings in Atlanta to weigh his options, something he called “the lowest day in my career” during his Hall of Fame speech. He ended up finding what he was looking for in Arlington where he would spend five seasons with the Rangers and throw two more no-hitters.

It was enough to give Ryan a reason to go with a Rangers cap on his Cooperstown plaque, instead of becoming the first player in the hallowed halls with an Astros lid.

“The reason for that is I feel those last five years with the Rangers, because of some of the things that happened there — the 5,000th strikeout, the no-hitters, the 300th win, brought my career and my presence in the game to another level,” Ryan said. “I feel those were very special years there.”

Ryan returned to the Astros on a personal services contract with former owner Drayton McLane in 2004 before leaving for the Rangers again, this time as their team president. He came back to the Astros as an executive advisor in 2014 a year after his son Reid took over as team president.

When owner Jim Crane put his son Jared in charge of the franchise’s business operations in place of Reid, Nolan left the club again. Now 78 years old, Ryan enjoys his time in the Texas Hill Country leaving the Astros or Rangers debate to the rest of his beloved state.