Anniversary! (HINT: Nolan Ryan)
I like anniversaries. At least, I like them sometimes.
Here’s one I like.
I saw when I was looking for something else.
Today is the 22nd anniversary of when Nolan Ryan beat the … out of Robin Ventura! HERE
You charge the mound because you’re furious. Because you want to hurt someone. You know you’ll be ejected, fined, suspended, but it’s all worth it for brief taste of revenge. You never do it thinking that it all might go horribly wrong, and you might wind up on the receiving end of one of the most iconic beatdowns in sports history. Robin Ventura was one of the finest third baseman to ever play the game of baseball. I can’t hear his name without picturing him in a headlock, being whaled upon by a 46-year-old man.
It was nothing personal. The Rangers (and Ryan in particular) and White Sox had been at each other’s throats for three years, going back to when rookie Craig Grebeck had pimped a spring-training home run off the aging, ornery flamethrower. The two teams exchanged occasional beanballs, but things escalated in a game on Aug. 2 that saw four hit batsmen.
On Aug. 4, 1993, Robin Ventura greeted Ryan with a first-inning RBI single. In the second, White Sox starter Alex Fernandez hit Juan Gonzalez. So when Ventura came up in the third, Ryan drilled him in the upper arm. Ventura took four steps to first, then changed his mind.
Ventura’s errors were manifold. Rather than barrel into Ryan at full speed, he slowed down when he hit the mound, allowing Ryan to remove his glove. Ventura went low on Ryan, trying to wrap up his trunk, but couldn’t get any leverage on the big Texan. Ryan wrenched Ventura’s head to the side, as if trying to wrest it off, then deliver five or six short, quick uppercuts to Ventura’s dome before the cavalry could arrive.
Ivan Rodriguez was the first there, and the 21-year-old catcher was already in rough shape. He had undergone surgery on a broken cheekbone less than a week earlier, and had missed the previous night’s game with what sound like post-concussion symptoms. “I didn’t try to go out there and fight,” Rodriguez said. “I went out there to try to separate them.”
He couldn’t do a thing, as Ventura’s momentum was carrying the fight away from Rodriguez and into center field.
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Read the rest there!
