We live in soft, comfortable world today in the West. At least most of us do. In this episode, we're going to talk about the hard virtues of physical courage and toughness—something embodied in one of the greatest MLB pitchers of all time, Nolan Ryan.
They called him Big Tex. The Nolan Express. He pitched a record-setting 7 no hitters. In his early days, he threw a blistering 108-MPH fastball. In this episode, we'll explore the manly toughness of Nolan Ryan.
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We live in soft, comfortable world today in the West. At least most of us do. In this episode, we're going to talk about the hard virtues of physical courage and toughness—something embodied in one of the greatest MLB pitchers of all time, Nolan Ryan.
They called him Big Tex. The Nolan Express. He pitched a record-setting 7 no hitters. In his early days, he threw a blistering 108-MPH fastball. In this episode, we'll explore the manly toughness of Nolan Ryan.
Sign up for the New Christendom Press Conference in June 2024.
Join the Patreon exclusive membership.
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
Alpine Gold Exchange Website: alpinegoldogden.com
Set Up a Meeting: https://calendly.com/alpinegold/alpine-gold-consultation
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth with Backwards Planning Financial.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Check out Premier Body Armor.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Contact Private Family Banking Partner at banking@privatefamilybanking.com to set up a free private consultation and get started building wealth now and unto future generations. "For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now! How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey, go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net
This episode of the Hardman podcast is brought to you by Joe Garracy and Backwards Planning Financial, by our friends at Alpine Gold, by MaxD Trailers and finally, this episode is brought to you by Private Family Banking. In the third inning of a game between the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox on August 4, 1993, robin Ventura stepped to the plate for the Sox. The two teams had developed a fierce enough rivalry that Chicago players decided collectively before the game that whoever got plunked first by a pitch was going to charge the mound. If they didn't, the team would find them $500. The problem was, the man on the mound had a reputation for throwing inside to intimidate hitters. He wasn't just any pitcher either, and he threw 100 mile an hour heat. In fact, he had hit 158 batters during his illustrious career At the plate.
Speaker 1:Ventura, a left-handed hitter, recoiled inward as a fastball tracked and encroached into his personal space. The pitch struck the 26-year-old Ventura square in the back. For a moment he hesitated. Maybe he was thinking about the $500 he would owe his teammates. Maybe he was thinking twice about the imposing Texan standing just 60 feet away. It wasn't just that he was about to charge the mound in a Major League Baseball game. It was the fact that he was about to throw hands with the Paul Bunyan-sized legend of the baseball diamond, the man that everyone called Big Tex. But maybe Ventura held the advantage of you. The man on the mound was 20 years his senior by the time he got to the mound. The 46-year-old Nolan Ryan had Ventura in a headlock like he might have wrestled a steer to the ground on his Texas ranch. When repeatedly pounded Ventura's face and head with his fist, it became one of the most iconic moments in the legendary career of the Nolan Express. Ryan got the best of the young man as sports photographers captured the iconic moment for ages to come. When the famous photos were printed, many came with a simple yet profound caption Robin Ventura, the only player in Major League history to get six hits off Nolan Ryan in one game.
Speaker 1:Sure, he had a Hall of Fame career with statistics and records that will probably never be broken. He played for a record-setting 27 seasons and he amassed 5,714 career strikeouts. To put that in perspective, randy Johnson has the second most career strikeouts in Major League Baseball history and he has almost a thousand less than Nolan Ryan. But more than anything, nolan Ryan, I think, embodied one masculine characteristic in particular that I want to highlight in this episode of the Hard Men Podcast, and that's manly toughness. This guy embodied toughness at every level.
Speaker 1:Yes, he'd won a World Series with the Miracle Matz and that was incredible. He broke various strikeout records and he pitched five no-hitters before the age of 38. It was a record he shared with the legendary Dodgers pitcher and his boyhood idol, sandy Kofax. Of course, sandy threw four career no-hitters, which was incredible. He would finish his career with seven no-hitters. Nolan Ryan would seven no-hitters. But it's really impressive what Nolan did after that in his 40s. That captured the imagination of men everywhere.
Speaker 1:Nolan did statistically his best pitching in his 40s and threw two of his no-hitters in that time period. It was just absolutely incredible. The records themselves bear this out From when he was 39 until he retired at 46, ryan did his best pitching. Between the ages of 19 and 28, he averaged 9.6 strikeouts per 9 innings, which is, by the way, incredible. Between the ages of 29 and 38, he averaged 9.2 strikeouts per innings. So a little bit worse. And between the ages of 39 and 46, he averaged 10.1 strikeouts per 9 innings. He even notched two of his seven record-setting no-hitters while in his 40s. So the question we want to ask in today's episode is how did he do it? How did Nolan Ryan find a way to get actually better at the point when most people are fading? What was the secret to his midlife success? Again, most people at this age are going to fade and fall off, and yet Nolan found a way to become great at exactly that moment. Where did all this toughness come from? How did he keep the fire of his passion burning at exactly the point when most men are losing their fire and their passion? I think for those of us who are aging I'm approaching 40. This is some pivotal stuff here that we want to learn from. But we'll talk about Nolan Ryan's legendary toughness in this episode of the Hard Men Podcast.
Speaker 1:At the back end of his pitching career, nolan Ryan finally made it back to his home state of Texas, first with the Astros, then with the Texas Rangers, to close out his career. In his first game as a ranger, he pitched several marginally bad innings. Rangers pitching coach Tom House strode to the mound for a mid-game intervention. House tells the story. He said to him Nolan, how are you doing out here? Awful, tom, nolan said, but it's a whole lot better than that horse. Well, you know, you got warming up in the bullpen Get the hell off my mound. Later, when he was describing the story, house said this is how I responded. I told him it's big techs. I got the hell off his mound.
Speaker 1:It's hard to imagine today, in an era in which starting pitchers rarely make it to 100 pitches, but Ryan prided himself on pitching the whole game as often as he possibly could. As we said, in the cold open, his toughness was unmatched. Both then or now. It simply became grinding it out, learning how to deal with the pain and keep pitching at a really elite level In 2019. For example, a complete game was thrown by just 22 pitchers in 2042 Major League starts House's career. Ryan threw a massive 222 complete games. Talk about an Iron man.
Speaker 1:In 1974, ryan, then, pitching for the Anaheim Angels, pitched a complete game against the Boston Red Sox. The game lasted a whopping 13 innings. For his part, ryan struck out 19 Sox hitters, leading the Angels to a 4-3 win. But perhaps most impressively of all, well, the Nolan Express threw 235 pitches that night. You heard that correct 235 pitches. It almost seems impossible, and we would think it was, except that pitching coach Tom Morgan was sitting there the whole time with a handheld clicker tracking the number of pitches. Consider that since pitch counts started to be actually recorded, the all-time record in the game is Tim Wakefield's 1988 performance against the Braves. In that game he threw 172 pitches, which, by the way, is crazy. Edwin Jackson threw a no-hitter for the Diamondbacks in 2010, and he closed the night with 149 pitches. So Nolan Ryan 235 pitches. That's insane.
Speaker 1:Nolan, it seems, was bred to be tough from his youth. And when you ask the question, where did all this toughness come from? Well, probably from his stock, and that stock came from Texas. Nolan Ryan's parents were Depression-era Americans who worked hard for every cent, and this certainly seems to have rubbed off on the young Nolan Ryan. As a young boy, he tells a story about his father, who would wake him up at 1 AM every day, and they would drive and go to a paper route every single day 1 AM.
Speaker 1:Even after getting drafted by the Mets and winning a World Series in 1969, you remember the Miracle Mets Ryan had to work in the off-season. You see, baseball players simply weren't millionaire celebrities like they are today. So Ryan wins World Series, he goes home and what does he do? He immediately gets a job. He's an HVAC installation man and he's told the story. He said as a MET that year I made $7,000, which even then wasn't enough to live off of. So while everyone else and his teammates were enjoying the party in New York, ryan goes back to his hometown of Alvin, texas, and he starts HVAC installation when he finally did have a little bit of money. Ryan bought land and started his dream job, which was cattle ranching. Well, he can't exactly be soft in the profession of cattle ranching and it seems to be kind of embedded in the ethos and the character of Nolan Ryan. He's this tough Texas ranchant, big Tex. That's exactly who he was. Now.
Speaker 1:It was an era also in which millionaire athletes simply weren't common, and we can show this by the contracts that were signed. During the time period when Ryan was signed by Houston in the 1980s, he became the highest paid athlete in any sport. And that deal, what was the deal he signed? Well, he signed a four-year deal for $4.5 million. It was really the first athlete who became a million-dollar-a-year man. Now, by today's standards, you think about something like Russell Wilson's contract horrible, atrocious, terrible contract that Russell Wilson signed with the Broncos. It's like $240 million. They're probably going to cut rust this year and he'll still make $37 million. So I know there's obviously inflation, but still you can see how athletes just weren't paid that much and, as a result, most of them weren't pre-Madonna's, they were still kind of blue-collar lunch pail, working-class-type guys.
Speaker 1:Nolan Ryan certainly was. He used the money to start a cattle ranch and then he continued to work really hard on his cattle ranch, even while pitching. Now Nolan Ryan certainly had once-in-a-lifetime gifting. He had a golden arm. It's absolutely unbelievable. But he was also unique for his day in that he worked out religiously in between starts while other players did not. In fact, nolan Ryan talks about most of his career. Working out was simply laughed at. He said the clubhouse and the gyms that he would go to were always empty. No one was in there except him and he was religiously working out Now as an Anaheim angel.
Speaker 1:Early in his career, when radar guns first made their debut, he was clocked on his fastball at 100.8 miles per hour. So you think, 100.8 miles per hour, that's pretty impressive. Well, experts now say that the technology back then really wasn't that good and fairly inaccurate. But they know exactly how inaccurate it was. By their estimations. Almost everyone agrees Ryan was actually throwing 108 to 109 miles per hour fastball in his early career in Anaheim. Nobody does that today. Even in the steroid era of baseball, nobody does that. And yet here's Nolan Ryan. It looked effortless almost when he was pitching. He had that tall, sweeping leg kick and just fundamentally sound pitcher. And here he is almost 110 mile an hour fastball. It's just absolutely incredible and unheard of.
Speaker 1:Now Nolan Ryan owns several all time records. He has the most strikeouts in MLB history. He also has the most walks and the strikeout total, by the way, 5,714, more than a thousand more than second place Randy Johnson. That's incredible. Ryan has a single season record strikeouts in a single season one more than his hero Sandy Kofax, and that total is 383 strikeouts in a single season. I mean, that's that's unthinkable 383 in one season. He has the most no hitters in history, as we've said, seven career no hitters and I think if it wasn't for the walks several of those no hitters, I think he has two or three walks they would have been perfect games. So absolutely phenomenal, incredible pitcher.
Speaker 1:Whatever records Ryan broke and there were plenty of them it's probably most impressive that he did his best work after 40. When most men are having midlife crisis and buying small little sports cars to compensate, ryan was driven to improve. Now this is crazy, considering how hard Ryan threw for so many years with very little injury. Really, when you think about it, you know. Even think about pitchers like Justin Verlander with Houston, like, yeah, he's pitched for a long time, but how many Tommy John's surgery says the guy had? I mean, he's been out multiple seasons, continues to pitch power pitcher as well, but not near the velocity or the longevity of Nolan Ryan. Somehow this guy, nolan Ryan, managed to continue pitching at just an alarmingly high rate for a long time. I think his success after 40 has less to do with talent and more to do with work ethic. Certainly he had talent, but really you start to see in this later part of his life that he becomes like a gym workout beast. It's at this late stage in his career with the Rangers that he partners with pitching coach Tom House and he comes up with some of the most brutal workouts imaginable. Now here's what Brett McKay on the Art of Manliness had to say about Nolan's famous workout routine.
Speaker 1:A key to Nolan Ryan's middle-aged success was his rigorous and innovative training regimen, developed with his trainers Gene Coleman and Tom House. Instead of taking it easy in his 40s, ryan spent five hours a day, six days a week, on physical training Nolan and Ryan. Doing marathon workouts like this was unheard of in baseball. Players might hit a few weight machines, perhaps do a little stretching and call it a day, but Ryan understood that if he wanted to continue to thrive as a pitcher into his 40s, he needed to continue to develop his strength and endurance, and the way you develop those qualities is through hard training. Weightlifting played a big role in Ryan's exercise routine. He loved squatting because it helped him develop his lower body power, which was the key to his trademark wind-up and delivery. After weights he would run foul pole to foul pole for laps and then end his conditioning workout with five 60-yard sprints. Ryan instructed this workout schedule religiously. When the Rangers traveled to other cities to play, he made sure there was a gym he could use to get his workouts in.
Speaker 1:Even though Ryan went hard with his training, he also understood that the body of a 40-something differs from that of a 20-something. The stress and strain of heavy exercise could wear down his joints and connective tissues. Moreover, muscles don't recover as quickly as they get older. So besides training hard, ryan trained smart. In his 40s, working with Tom House, he devised innovative training protocols for his aging body. He dedicated considerable time to water-based exercises so as to minimize joint stress. He spent a lot of time stretching. He loved riding a stationary bike after a game while he talked to the press, because it allowed him to get his cardio in without stressing his tendons and ligaments.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite Nolan Ryan stories is the no-hitter he threw at the ripe old age of 44. I can't even imagine I'm 38 right now. I cannot imagine pitching nine innings of really bad baseball, let alone being 44, quite a bit older and pitching your seventh career no-hitter. It's absolutely unthinkable. If you've ever played baseball I did a little bit of pitching it's actually exhausting. You need a lot of lower body strength and to go five innings is a lot of work. So according to legend, ryan was struggling during warm-ups on May 1st 1991 at Arlington Stadium. In fact, he was having such bad, excruciating back pain that he wasn't sure how long he could pitch that day, if at all. He walked into the dugout and told Rangers manager Bobby Valentine by the way, bobby was 41 at the time, nolan was 44. And he tells Bobby Valentine in Tom House. He says you guys better get somebody up in the bullpen because I don't think I'm getting out of the first inning. This story was relayed by Ryan's son, reed, who was in Austin that night with teammates from the University of Texas baseball team.
Speaker 1:In his 25th major league season, ryan was the all-time strikeout king. He had 5,345 career punchouts. He had a record six no-hitters in his name at this point when no one else in the AL or NL history had more than four again Sandy Kofax. He was also 44 years old in 90 days. That was older than his manager, as we said, bobby Valentine, who was actually 12 days shy of his 41st birthday at the time. And Nolan Ryan was coming off a start in which he was hit hard for five runs on eight hits in a pretty ugly loss to Cleveland just five days earlier. And then Ryan did what he had done so many times before the unbelievable.
Speaker 1:When Ryan emerged from the dugout on his way to the mound that night he turned back toward Valentine and he said this might be it, and he wasn't talking about a no-hitter, he was talking about retiring Nolan Ryan. His arm hurt so bad I guess he had bone chips. He had to have his wife put his shoes on and tie his shoes for him that day. That's how bad. He couldn't even move his arm. Somehow he goes and he warms up and he goes to pitch that game.
Speaker 1:Now the idea that the legendary Nolan Ryan's career maybe over was weighing heavily on Valentine's thoughts. He called down to the bullpen and he did what Ryan said I'm going to get somebody ready. He's 69 and going to be able to make it out of the first inning while something was over. All right, but it wasn't Ryan's career. Jeff Husson, who played with Ryan, said this he just had that extra gear on his fastball. Husson was playing shortstop for Texas that night he said you could hear it and Steve Buchelli, who was playing third base that night. He and I were jogging off the field after the first inning and we just kind of looked at each other and said it's over. Of the 27 outs Ryan recorded, 16 came by strikeout that night. His game score, which is a metric created by Bill James to evaluate individual single game pitching performances, was 101. Now, to put that in perspective, it was the highest of the 7-0 hitters, this score of any that Ryan had thrown and tied for the highest of his magnificent career.
Speaker 1:44 years old and Ryan is pitching one of the best games of his life. All that kept Ryan from perfection were the two walks he issued. Otherwise it would have been a perfect game. That's incredible. He threw 122 pitches and his fastball, which is thought by many to have reached another worldly 108 miles an hour at its zenith, was still nearing triple digit velocity at age 44. So even at 44 he's throwing 100 miles an hour. The old man, big Tex, the Nolan Express Houston, said this everybody has to make adjustments, everybody has to try and reinvent themselves at some point in their careers. Except for Nolan Ryan, he was larger than life Now.
Speaker 1:It's also interesting if you follow the career of Nolan Ryan. He always put his family first. In fact, I was recently watching a documentary called Facing Nolan. You can find it on Netflix, but really incredible story about Nolan Ryan and his family. He is still married to his wife Ruth. They love each other. She's his high school sweetheart. She was very much devoted to him as a wife in the help meet kind of sense that we've talked about in this show. He's a quiet guy but intense, passionate, strong willed, obviously to get to age 46 when he retires as a pitcher. But it's interesting too.
Speaker 1:As Ryan got older he sought a trade from Anaheim. He's playing for the angels. At the time he wanted to go to Texas because that's where his family and his ranch was. He wanted to be near home, and this was a family first decision. Because the Rangers and the Astros neither of them were very good Like at all, the Rangers probably worse. But because he loved his wife and his four kids, he wanted to be where he could spend time with them, and so part of the agreement when he signed with the Rangers was he wanted in his contract that his family would have full access to the team facilities and so his son Reed and the other parts of the family, they would be there with him in the gym training. Of course, not many of the other players in baseball. The other players in baseball sort of imbibe the John Cruck philosophy. Somebody said, john, you're kind of fat for an athlete, and he corrected them. He said whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player. Right, that's how most people viewed baseball in the day. Here's Nolan Ryan saying I want access to the facilities so that I can spend time with my young family and my sons. Right, he wanted them with him.
Speaker 1:And, as I said, his wife, ruth, sort of this 1950s in the best of ways. Wife, she's loyal, she's devoted to her husband. She seems pretty submissive, yet passionate, fiery. She's a tennis player, she says throughout the documentaries she was Nolan's biggest fan, his biggest advocate. She was the one who convinced him not to retire earlier. She said, nolan, I think you can keep pitching. You need to become the best that you can be at this sport. God's given you a gift. Also interesting all the kids were asked they said who's the most competitive person in your family? And they said oh, no question, no question, we don't even have to ask it's mom. She was the one who was so driven to push Nolan like be a great competitor, be the best you can be, and this is what wife should be. Right, she's in his corner.
Speaker 1:Nolan tells us a funny story in the documentary where he said I would get home from games and I'm like I'm beat, I'm tired, I don't want to think about the game. And he said Ruth would want to go through pitch by pitch. She'd be like Nolan, how come in the third inning, like you went fastball, change up, curve, but I really felt like you should have gone curve, curve, fastball. She's like I don't understand why you did that. And he was like I don't want to talk about this, I want to go to bed, I want to sleep, I'm tired. But she was for him. Like I said, she was his biggest fan. That's a great picture of a help meet. It's so interesting, too, that, no matter what he was Hall of Fame pitcher, all these things he worked so hard to be a pitcher.
Speaker 1:But Ryan really put the biggest premium on his family and you get to see that in again the Netflix documentary called Facing Nolan. It was so impressive to me Like they have these family outings that they film, and it was so impressive to me you could just see it in the kids and the grandkids. They said, yeah, he's super involved in all of our stuff. He comes to all of our games. You can tell that he really loves us. He's affectionate with his wife. There's warmth. They care for each other. Right?
Speaker 1:Here's a guy who gave himself fully to his career. He was a passionate competitor, but he didn't lose his family, right. That's a mistake that a lot of men make, especially as they get to their 40s. You know what I mean. Think about Tom Brady. Of course it helps if you don't marry a witch. You marry a witch and she's like oh, you want to go play another year of football. I'm leaving because I want to be the star. I want me and my wick of powers to be the star, and it tears his family apart, right.
Speaker 1:But here you have Nolan, sort of this salt of the earth, very old school type man, quiet, passionate, but a strong man, broad shoulders, and he puts his family first and he, as a result, he keeps his kids. I think it's a big, big lesson. I think one of the other big lessons is you know, today it's so hard to find guys with drive and ambition and if they do, then they're like loud and boisterous, like red pill mannisfur guys who love to toot their own horn. Nolan wasn't like that. He was passionate, he was devoted, he was a fierce competitor, but he's also humble and everybody loves him, right. So it's kind of that. Again, it's sort of an old school mix.
Speaker 1:When you talk and listen to all the players and coaches through the documentary, they'll say that, they say that he was hard to be around because he was so intentionally passionate, right. That's how competitors are they. You remember Nick Saban saying this years ago. He said guys who are passionate, guys who want to win championships, do not want to be around mediocrity. They don't like it. It brings them down, right. And so Nolan has that effect and yet people love him. He was always praising his teammates for great plays that they made. Now, watching his documentary, it also reminded me of Peyton Manning or Tom Brady. Again, guys who were fiercely devoted to their craft. They devoted themselves to be the greatest pitcher or the greatest quarterback that they possibly could be, by devoting themselves to film study and footwork and all the small things that nobody sees. That's really why they were winners, but it's also why they were loved by their teammates.
Speaker 1:Finally, in the news I had read something that Danny Amidolo, who was one of Tom Brady's receivers, he said this about Tom Brady. I think this says a lot. He said we worked for Bill Belichick. We played for Tom. Isn't that interesting? Like, yeah, we worked for Bill, but the reason we were there the heart, the passion, the reason we wanted to put our best on the field was just because, tom Brady, we wanted to win for the guy.
Speaker 1:You look at Nolan Ryan, how many of the no hitters. He didn't really have the best team around him and yet his teammates were like we have to close out this no hitter for Nolan. We have the privilege of playing with this guy and so we can't let him down, and so his passion, his competitiveness, his work ethic, it inspires the people around him. Well, I want to go over a few takeaways that you can learn from the life of Nolan Ryan, some of the takeaways that I've pulled out of his story and been inspired by, I think, first and foremost, this masculine virtue of physical toughness.
Speaker 1:You know, it's something that it always inspires men when you read about the great feats of men. It's not necessarily about talent, it's not about how gifted you were. I mean, those stories are cool. Not everybody can throw 110 mile an hour pitch, no matter how hard you work. That is cool, that is the stuff of legends. But again, with Nolan Ryan, I think it's about his toughness, something that he cultivated in himself, that was cultivated in him from his youth. There's just something about this physical courage and physical toughness that is inspiring for men. Men were made to be warriors, men were made to be protectors, and so when you see instances like this. It's inspirational, it motivates you.
Speaker 1:You know, I've had a couple of weeks of sickness and I'm reading about Nolan Ryan and I'm like I got to get back into it. You know, getting back into your workout routine is hard after a time period of layoff, but you read this stuff and you're like man, if this 40 year old guy can work his butt off and go through a no hitter, I think I can knock out this set of squat and deadlift. I think I can do it. You have no excuse. You can't possibly be worse off physically and more tired than Nolan Ryan was at that point in his life. We need to be inspired by these stories of physical toughness and, I think, especially in our world.
Speaker 1:A book I'll probably talk more about later, but the comfort crisis that's the title of the book. We live in an age where everything is curated for you. You have a thermostat, you never have to be cold, you can have a heated steering wheel, you can have heated socks, you can have. I mean just, you have a manicured existence, don't you? If you're a modern American male, and the thing is, we actually have to subject ourselves to hardship. You actually need experiences. Maybe it's out hunting, Maybe it's out in the wilderness. You actually need in your masculine soul, you need experiences that expose you to pain and hardship and cold and discomfort. And so I think you're seeing in a lot of spheres where they're exploring masculinity, they're saying we're actually going to have to go find hard things, we're going to have to go find danger.
Speaker 1:One of the stories that I absolutely love, nolan Ryan's son was saying he said dad's traded from Anaheim and we travel back to Texas and I don't know the kids are like six or eight years old and he said dad had a single cab pickup bench seat, no seat belts, at least not that they use. He said we sat in the back, the back of the pickup, going down the highway from California to Texas. And he said dad had bought us for entertainment. He bought us each a pack of green army men and he said here you can play with these. And they said sometimes we would climb in the cab through the little window in the back of the cab and we would sit with dad or fall asleep, or sometimes we'd just lay in the back in the sunshine. Can you imagine that today I mean in our culture of safetyism how many people freak out even just hearing that story. Listen, I remember going fishing with my dad in the mountains. He had the same style truck Maybe we wore lap bouts, probably not.
Speaker 1:You know old, like 76 square body, chevy, pickup, single cab me and my brother and dad going fishing. The number of times we'd ride in the back, we'd chain up, we'd get stuck in the mountains, we'd dig out. Yeah, that was normal. Today it's like now. You got to be 27 years old and 160 pounds before you can sit in the front seat of a car. Even then you might not be bigger, old enough. Right, we live in a culture of safetyism and so this is hard in our day. You're going to have to cultivate this virtue of physical toughness. And I also would say this it's not like I look back years ago. Within the last 20 years there's been seasons where I did a ton of back country hunting, went through a lot of hard experiences. It's been a while, quite frankly, since I've done those. Yeah, we have some weightlifting, but you know, air conditioned weightlifting is not the same thing.
Speaker 1:As you know, being in British Columbia in the mountains at the peak, I remember this. With a couple of friends we were hunting mountain goats. I was there for the photography. We killed two mountain goats and we're at this peak above tree line. There's grizzly bears in the area and I'm exhausted.
Speaker 1:We spent like all day getting to this peak and you know the sweat runs off and I had been sharing I had two Nalgene's I'd been sharing those with the group and we got to the top and I said I'm out of Nalgene's. Who else has water? And we looked around the group and not a soul. Nope, including the guide, no one had brought water, just epic genius. So I thought, well, we'll go through my water and then my pack will be lighter and then we will get water from these other guys. That's not what happened. And then I had to put on my gear because I'm sitting there photographing and it's frigid. The wind is whipping on the top of this mountain. I'd like to say it was like Everest, but that would be like hyperbole, that'd be me embalishing the story. But the wind's whipping on this peak in British Columbia and it's cold and I start to like get chilled to the bone. You know, you've been sweating for like I don't know four hours at least to get to the top of this mountain to shoot these goats, we have to skin them, we have to get them down. Man, it was just crazy, I think, about that experience.
Speaker 1:We're going down through the trees. Well, first of all, we have to like slide down the mountain without killing ourselves in a ravine as we're holding these goats back, but sort of riding them like sleds down the mountain. And we get into the tree line and I'm in the back and I've got a kafaru pack with a ton of the meat, and the guide says to me I don't have a gun. He says, hey, just every so often take your light and just shine it behind you across the tree line, through the trees. And I said, yeah, okay, I can do that. Why? What's the reason? Well, I saw a, a grizzly bear, probably her. At least one cub is well following us into the trees. They probably smell the blood. And I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna be in the back anymore.
Speaker 1:We're going through the alders and it I don't know snow that is making it treacherous to get down a super, super steep mountain and I remember collapsing at one point. We get to a creek and there's water that you can drink unfiltered, and so we've been like high exertion. It's probably like I don't know like the fourth hour with no water. So have you ever been so thirsty and like dehydrated, where, like your lips are caked, you feel like you're just the energy is sapped out of you. It's like horrible. And we get to this creek and we were able to drink fresh, crisp, cold water. Be like somebody else, please look that way so that the grizzly bear doesn't eat me while I'm lapping water out of this creek. But it was amazing.
Speaker 1:We got back to the horses and we loaded up and If you thought that was the end of the journey, we had like 14 mile ride in the dark Back to the trailer and then the ride from the trailer to the cabins is probably another two hours. We get home at like three in the morning or something crazy like this. But I remember getting on the horses. They said we're not gonna use headlights, the horses nowhere to go, just they'll take us back. And I'm thinking the horses are gonna like walk. I Don't know if it's a grizzly bears or what, but horses did not walk. Horses were like galloping. I'm like holding on to the saddle horn as hard as they can, you know, cuz it's Like I don't want to fall off this horse and get run over by the other horses.
Speaker 1:It's probably like two minutes into the ride I catch a branch. A large branch square in my face, knocks my hat off, bloody nose. Like two seconds after the branch hits me, the guide, who's in the front? He goes Branch, look out. I was like, oh, thanks, thanks, that's great, right, it's just crazy.
Speaker 1:So I think about that experience and it's like I haven't had one of those in a while. It's actually one of those experiences a little scary, right, but they require physical toughness. There's a real element of danger and as men, we have to have those and we have to cultivate them. Now you can do it on your treadmill in your basement lift and weights, that's true. My boys are doing it all the time. You know, two hours of boxing training Followed by two hours of tennis, I mean, that's at least some Measure of you. Know you have to be tough, you've got to suck it up, but we need these experiences and I think Nolan embodies this virtue of physical toughness.
Speaker 1:Now, you say, these legends that inspire us as men will get into a few more, but it really. You wouldn't have Nolan Ryan, the legend, big text that people revere today, without the physical toughness element. You just wouldn't. And so you know, in the midst of all the pietism in America and the American church when say it's only the spiritual qualities that matter, that is a hundred percent not true. Men are inspired by real physical courage and toughness, and so, again, we're just gonna need to cultivate these things. You need to do hard things, get outside of air conditioning and cubicles and safety, and you've got to intentionally choose what's hard. Now the second thing that I would point to as an example we can learn from from Nolan Ryan, is that we have to be so passionate at our craft that our teammates, our peers, our colleagues, our co-workers they respect you for the devotion to your craft.
Speaker 1:Right champions are devoted to the details. You see this in the life of Peyton Manning. You know he's Studying film when everybody else has left the facility. He's learning the nuance and the details of the defenses. He learns how to pick them apart, and there's really no shortcut to all the hard work that he's able to put in and that he does put in. There's so many quiet, dark ashes, work, hours of Study and of just honing skills that nobody is ever gonna see.
Speaker 1:But this is a book that we've talked about, about craftsman level skills Before, but this is Cal Newport's book. Be so great they can't ignore you or so good they can't ignore you, I think, is the title of the book. But that should be your drive and your ambition as men that you hone your skill. If you're a preacher, hone the skill of preaching. If you're a Tile layer, be so good at your craft. Or a woodworker, be so good at your craft that people Respect you for that. And that means that you're gonna have to do work and not take shortcuts, and Truly become great at the actual craft of what you do.
Speaker 1:I also like Cal Newport because one of the things he talks about is people go to their job, they're there for the first day and they say, well, I'm not really passionate about this. And he's like well, the thing is you have to put in a ton of work and you have to maximize your skill at the craft, and once you do that for a long period of time, then the passion develops. Right, you don't come into it usually with a ton of passion. You've got to put the work in and then the passion will follow the work Everybody wants to be famous for. A lot of people do. Nobody wants to put in the work, right?
Speaker 1:I remember this. I think it was like Jermakus Russell, right, he was quarterback for LSU and then the Raiders and Johnny Manziel very similar story, right, they were like these stud athletes in college and then they go to the NFL and they like did a thing with Jermakus Russell when the trainers like gave him an iPad and they were like here, take this home and study, and it was tracking how much he was actually looking at film in an entire season. You know how many times he opened his iPad to study film at home? And he guesses zero. The correct answer here is zero. Johnny Manziel said the same thing. He's like I never studied film one time. Right, you want to be Johnny football and maybe you can get away with it at one level, the college level. But eventually you can't fake it anymore. You have to actually put in the work, and Nolan certainly did that. Nolan Ryan did that.
Speaker 1:All right, I think about this with writing and chat GPT. So much of what we do with the podcast is about writing. We don't use chat GPT. I refuse to use the thing. Yeah, I've used it before, just to see what it does, what it's like yeah, it spits out some stuff. It's spits out some information, basically a Wikipedia style. Information is highly repetitive and uninteresting. Right, everybody's looking for a shortcut, but in the end it comes down to how you have mastered your craft.
Speaker 1:So what is it today, or in your life this week, that you can become Great at? Where do you start pouring yourself into the practice in the actual art? Right, this goes back to Malcolm Gladwell. You remember his. It's actually a different study, but he cites it's the 10,000 hour rule. If you want to be great at something, you got to put in 10,000 hours. Well, if you start thinking that way, what are you willing to put 10,000 hours into and what are you willing to be so patient with it? You're not gonna be good until 10,000 hours. You're not gonna be great, at least until 10,000 hours. What is that thing that you're gonna push yourself at now? Third, I would say, especially for us, again in America, so many people listening to the show You're probably not a pitcher for the Rangers. If you are, I'd love to meet you. Otherwise, for the rest of us, we're software engineers, we're pastors, we're so many different things. Your carpenters and plumbers, roofers right, this is sheriffs. These are our people, but what you have to do still is find ways to push yourself and challenge yourself Physically. This is related to toughness, but I always go back to like you have to have ways to push yourself, right. It may be that you this.
Speaker 1:Why I started Strength training with, with Matt Reynolds right, it was just because it was a new challenge. It was hard and I wanted to, you know, get above abduction weight. You know, get it, get closer to 200 pounds, at least put on some muscle. It was a new challenge, something hard that I hadn't done. I've done triathlons. I've done, you know, some half marathons. I wanted a new physical challenge and as men, we have to have these.
Speaker 1:It could be that you say I'm gonna hike the Appalachian Trail. It could be that you say I'm gonna hike 14ers this summer, doesn't even really matter. You just have to find something that is physically challenging and Physically hard. And when you do these things, this is when other men and women respect you, and I think particularly in the Christian camp. Look, we have so many people who are sloppy, fat, frail, weak. This none of this commands respect, none of it. And so it's gonna be really hard. You've got to watch your diet. You're gonna watch what you eat. It's really hard. There's a lot of garbage food in America. But I tell you what you watch the documentary in Nolan, you're like I respect the heck out of that guy For what he was able to do physically. So I want to encourage you.
Speaker 1:Whether it's weightlifting, when you sign up for barbell logic, maybe you sign up for a race, maybe you get into snowshoeing in the wintertime in Alaska, I don't know. There's about a million things you could do. But stretch your limits, break your comfort zone, find the area that it's pushing yourself and push yourself so hard, not to the point it's gonna kill you, but that it makes you very Uncomfortable. Now also like what Brett McKay says about keeping a killer instinct, especially into your 40s. This is really helpful and this is a quote again from an article that he had on Nolan Ryan. He says this just because you're in your 40s doesn't mean you have to become a nice, soft suburban dad. You can maintain your edge and killer instinct well into midlife. This doesn't mean you have to be some a-hole blowhard, but it does mean still having games, quote-unquote, that you want to win physical, professional, social and otherwise and going after these goals with gritty determination and quote.
Speaker 1:So I even think about stuff you know with my kids, especially my oldest, he likes to pit himself against dad and Every now and then I just like to almost throw my back out trying to prove that I can deadlift more than him. Or Go and play pickleball. Some of the Pickleball matches that we've had have been pretty legendary. And it pushes you right even as something so simple is that you know this is what teenagers are great for, because they're, like, naturally, in way better shape and it gives you something to pit yourself against to rise to a new level. So find the challenge, find the physical contest, find the thing that you have to work really hard at and get better, and you know this is the other thing. Have lifting partners. I do it with my son. Certainly, if your 16 year old son is watching you deadlift, trust me, you're gonna try just a little bit harder. Otherwise you're gonna hear it from him right, and that's good. That's a good way to push yourself.
Speaker 1:And then, fourth, I want to say with Nolan, one of the big takeaways that I have is just this way to Prioritize your wife and kids. Ecclesiasties four and five talks about this. What a folly. It is for the man who works hard and doesn't have anybody to share it with. Like, if you lose your wife and your kids and you do great at your career, then the thing is you've really lost, you haven't won. But Ryan, throughout his career, was able to have this balance. And it's interesting because the kids said in the documentary when he was home they said he rarely talked about baseball. He asked him how their day was. He took an interest in whatever they were doing in their life when they were young, when they were older, he would play games with them. They said to him he was just Dad and so for all of us as men, I think again we've warned about this. But like, you can be a killer at your career, but if you lose your family you have lost it. So prioritize both quantity and quality time with your family, do stuff together. But you have to actually intentionally make time for that. But it is really that important. Well, I'll close this episode with another story from Nolan's career.
Speaker 1:In September of 1990, a 43-year-old Nolan Ryan faced off against the superhuman Bo Jackson. Anybody remember those commercials? Bo knows, bo knew everything. Bo knew baseball, bo knew it. He was superhuman and it was Bo Jackson. In 1990, that was Bo in the prime of his career with the Kansas City Royals.
Speaker 1:In the second inning, jackson ripped a grounder that caught Nolan Ryan on the lip. It sent blood pouring down his face. It had ripped that lower part of his lip just clean open. What did Ryan do? Well, he grabbed the deflected ground ball and he threw Bo Jackson out at first base. Would he leave the game? Of course not. It's Nolan Ryan, it's big techs. Ryan simply licked his lip, wiped the blood off on his sleeve and finished the inning. After the inning he went to the clubhouse and got stitches to his lower lip. Was he done for the day? Heck, no. He returned to the game to record 17 more outs. He struck out eight batters and seven innings of work.
Speaker 1:The image if you've seen this image, of Nolan Ryan in his White Texas Rangers jersey covered in blood is one of the most popular sports photos ever taken. It hangs in many offices and gyms. Men put it in their offices for inspiration. Ryan standing on the mound ready to unload a hundred mile an hour heater, his face and white jersey covered in blood. A 43 year old man tougher than nails, showing the world of men what it takes to have true grit, and that is why they called him Big Techs. So, men, learn the lesson from Nolan Ryan, embrace and cultivate the manly virtue of toughness.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for listening to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast. We especially want to give a big shout out to our listeners. We appreciate you guys so much, and your support on Patreon makes this show possible. We could not do it without your faithful support. If you're not yet a supporter on Patreon, you can go to Patreon and follow the link in the show notes and you can sign up for as little as five dollars a month. Again, that goes a long way to supporting the show. You get early access to content, as well as exclusive content.
Speaker 1:We talk Twitter, we talk feminism, we talk pastoral counsel with often with my friend and pastor, mr Dan Burkholder, and so you're going to want to check that out. Also, I want to encourage everybody. We do have a conference upcoming June 6th through 8th in Ogden, utah. Hosts of great speakers, including Dr Joe Rigney, pastor Joel Webbin and the one and only Stephen Wolf, christian nationalism. He's going to be on hand as well as one of my personal favorites, J Chase Davis, pastor at the Well in Boulder and Chase is going to be on hand. We're going to have a great time. Pastor Brian is going to have a concert. We're going to do a lot of singing, so sign up today. You can follow the link in the show notes or go to newchristinimpresscom slash conference. Thanks again for listening to this episode and until next time, stay frosty. Fight a good fight, act like men.