In 1974, Nolan Ryan made history. As Major League Baseball began using radar guns to visualize pitch velocity, Ryan's fastball was the first to be measured in a big-league park.
In the ninth inning of a 0-0 tie, the big Texan hurled a fastball across home plate that registered 100.9 mph on the radar gun, famously earning him the moniker, The Ryan Express. He'd toss seven no-hitters and strike out a record 5,714 batters in his 27 major league seasons, thanks in large part to that devastating fastball.
According to his book, Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible, every single pitch he threw for the Houston Astros from 1980-89 was logged, and not a single one of the 17,309 fastballs he threw in that span was clocked below 90 mph.