Well ladies and gentlemen, Baseball season is coming next week the greatest time in American sports history, the only great time where we can call in sick or call in a day off or fake in injury from work and we can just sit all day and watch Baseball all day and all night. And sure, there is a lot of Baseball movies to watch and talk about, but this Baseball documentary I have made my choice a long time ago in terms of wanting to watch and recommend for my yearly Baseball Recommendation.
If you grew up with late 80's and 90's baseball like I have then you had heard of the legendary pitcher Nolan Ryan, who still to this day holds a lot of records, the best way I would describe Nolan Ryan, let us just say he is the John Wayne of Baseball, a lot of the stories you hear about him are kind of like a stuff of legend per say. Even though the guy is from Texas so yes, the man is indeed a Cowboy. My first introduction of Nolan Ryan was without a watching The Great Sports Moments of the 80's by Al Michaels where he showed highlights of Nolan Ryan's no-hitter number five, and though yes, he made some bone headed remarks about the Texas Rangers beating my Cardinals in six games which is defiantly an a**hole part on him. Deep down I was intrigued in wanting to hear the legend of this great Pitcher and thankfully we have a documentary like Facing Nolan to tell his story.
I think the most unique way they were able to tell Ryan's story was using visual sequences of Ryan on the mound pitching, and the fact that they use actual uniforms that he wore with a minor detail of they're using reproduction hats of this year for which it's not bad at all but in a visual sense it's a nice usage in terms of telling the story of how he's felling on the mound when it comes to his emotions for when he's pitching with the Met's or when he's pitching his no-hitters with the Angles, Astro's or Rangers. Knowing Nolan Ryan's career especially when it comes to pitching his last decade-ish of his years in Texas I've always wonder that, for many reasons I never quite understood why he never pitched for some great teams like the Cardinals of the 80's or Yankees of the late 70's because sure as a ballplayer your goal without a doubt is to make it into the Major Leagues but more importantly win a World Series and sure he actually did win a World Series title in 69 with the New York Met's but deep down that was the same team he was drafted by furthermore he was just starting out and finding his technique, moreover the Astro's in the eighties had like two great teams but that was it they were deep down a minor league team in the eighties decade with flashy outfits, so it always bring the most interesting question why did he go to much better teams then spending the rest of his days in Texas through his retirement. And what I've learns explains a lot about him was that he wanted to stay closer to home especially with his family along with that during his time with the California Angles (who were originally called California Angles) was that one of his kids was hit by a car and that hit a knot in his stomach and when you want to stay closer to family you can't argue with his reasons why, also his kid did survive in case if your reading this review that he died or something no he didn't, though while watching the movie I was in a shock of wow he really died, but he didn't so deep down that's the most importantly. The thing what makes the documentary great is that you have a tone of legendary ballplayers talking about what it was like to face Nolan Ryan, though Robin Ventura didn't want to participate in the interviewing process for many reasons, ah screw it he got his a** handed to him by Ryan so that's why though I won't tell you when he didn't it that's for you all to find out. But you also have other great players like Pete Rose, George Brett, Dave Winfield, Roger Clemons and including the great Randy Johnson who Ryan actually helped him be the great pitcher that he was, I have to say my favorite moment in the documentary is where Rose and Ryan are doing an autograph session and Rose says while taking a picture "this is close I want to be with this guy" then Ryan says "aw you love me", just your typical love hate friendship. But when you listen to some of these great ballplayers was how scary Ryan is as a Pitcher because he threw a lot of balls inside basically bringing fear to the batters and to be honest, I'd be scared of Ryan if I was facing him. I will say the other great thing was that George W. Bush came into the film too, mainly because he was the owner of the Texas Rangers during his playing career. I did learn a lot about his earlier playing career with the Met's and Angels especially during his time with the Met's and that was during early years in Baseball you only get paid for just that season and once the season is over that's basically it you don't get paid till next season, so during road trips Nolan Ryan brought a lot of books mainly because he wasn't sure if Baseball was going to be his lifetime so he basically need a backup plan to get by during his time as a baseball player and really after each season in the sixties you had to find a job to get by so after the 69 World Series he went back to work he really didn't go on vacation like most player would today. I learned a surprising fact about the Angles, was it was founded by Gene Autry who was known as the Singing Cowboy who in the early movies and television as well as radio, for which who da thunk an actual Cowboy from Texas becomes a founding owner of the LA Angles. Speaking of Television, I did hear a mind-blowing fact was that Ryan acutely made a cameo appearance in the seventies soap opera Ryan's Hope which wasn't a show for him but did make an appearance so if you’re feeling adventurous go find it, the show's surprisingly on YouTube but I'm not mainly because I have a lot of respect for Nolan Ryan, so I don't want to have that respect for him fade. I should add that I found out about the documentary back in the summer of 2022 but the problem is when it was released it took a long time to find it in terms of streaming or finding it at your local stores because let’s face it you'll never find anything like this at your local store in Nebraska so really it took around Netflix to finally put it out so as of now the film is still on Netflix forever and hopefully forever, but as a documentary whole I knew this was a movie I wanted to watch once I saw the trailer on YouTube furthermore one to recommend it as a Baseball Recommendation because people today I doubt never heard of Nolan Ryan and I believe every fan of Baseball needs to hear about the legend of Nolan Ryan, also they guy in my opinion is up there in the top five pitchers of all time. And I believe this film will show every baseball fan that this guy was a respectable guy, moreover he played from the late sixties to early nineties and that is something I think is awesome beyond measure and they guy has a lot of MLB records that still stands to this day.
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