Growing up, I idolized Nolan Ryan as a baseball player. I had few physical gifts, but what I had was an ability to throw a baseball far, far faster than anyone my own size, and faster than most persons much larger than me. Nolan Ryan is a natural role model for such a person.

Of course I never became any sort of successful athlete, but my appreciation of baseball, and especially, hard throwing pitchers, has never decreased.

But Nolan Ryan is NOT just the guy who could throw hard. Everyone knows about all of the strikeouts, the M.L.B. records, the no hitters. Nolan Ryan also has the all time record for M.L.B. seasons played, at TWENTY SEVEN SEASONS.

I assure you that one does not compete in major league baseball for twenty seven years without mastering the art and science of physical conditioning. Physical conditioning though, is not limited to the very few persons who make it to professional athletics. We can all, no matter how bad a shape we are in, appreciate and participate in physical conditioning to improve our health, and make our lives more enjoyable. Nobody is a better living role model for that than the king of professional sports longevity, Lynn Nolan Ryan Jr.

Nolan Ryan pioneered weight training in a time and era of Major League Baseball when it was thought to be taboo. Weight training was thought to diminish flexibility, and destroy performance. Nolan Ryan, however, trained on - eventually becoming the very first athlete to make one million dollars a year via a professional contract. He did this in the year nineteen eighty, and with the Houston Astros.

I, later on, got to see Nolan pitch with my Texas Rangers. I saw first hand his second to last pitching performance. I saw with my own eyes the results of his training. The radar gun that day lite up the screens at the old Arlington Stadium with pitches clocked at ninety six miles per hour.

Nolan was either 45 or 46 years old.