The young George Ruth who revolutionized baseball was 6-2, 215 pounds of solid muscle who was a world class athlete. It’s a tribute to how good he was that he continued to excel for a long time after he got out of shape. In smaller parks with clean, lively baseballs and modern training and orthopedic methods he might not put up the exact numbers he put up back then but he’d be among the most elite of the elite.

I’m going to go for a record for most downvotes by saying Nolan Ryan is the most overrated. I say that while also making clear that he was one of the best starting pitchers ever, a no-brainer first-ballot Hall of Famer and the most unique and entertaining pitcher who ever lived.

But so many people will fight you that he’s in the running for GOAT, when IMO he’s not in the zip code if not solar system of that.

His acolytes will tell you that he played for crap teams and that’s why his W/L record wasn’t that great. That’s not true, the teams he played for were over .500 for his career and they were significantly over .500 after the Angels got good in 1978.

They will tell you he got poor run support; that’s true, but it begs the question as to why teammates like Frank Tanana, Joe Niekro and Mike Scott got significantly better run support than he did, sometimes more than a run per game.

I submit that the very things that make fans adore this guy … his toughness and stubbornness and determination never to give in to a batter even if it was to his and his team’s strategic advantage to do so; and his reduction of the game to a mano y mano battle between him and the batter where he started out every game intending to strike out 27 batters, and if he didn’t strike out the first one he shifted to striking out 26, and so forth, which resulted in him caring nothing about going 3-2 on every batter and caring nothing about holding runners on base or defending his position or getting his defense involved in the game, which resulted in his teammates standing around twiddling their thumbs and getting cold … contributed to him underachieving there.

It’s telling that he was rarely considered the ace of his team’s staff; before he hurt his arm Frank Tanana was the best “pitcher” as opposed to no-hitter thrower and fan entertainer, he actually had more strikeouts than Ryan one year, was in sight of him the other years and had 99% of the speed with 1,000% of the control.

Fans adore the guy because they get off on demon speed and Sports Center highlights, and I think to a lot of old farts he represents the tough, large and in charge starting pitcher who went nine and could throw 200 pitches if need be, compared to today’s pitching usage. Again, he earned his place in Cooperstown but he’s horribly overrated by people who push him for GOAT.

Flame away.