Hall-of-Fame sighting
Reds Hall-of-Famer Gary Nolan made his way from Sacramento, Calif., to Nicholasville today to speak to sixth-graders about baseball. I’m pretty sure we never got to do anything that cool when I was 12. For those of you who care, take a look at his numbers:
| G | GS | GF | W | L | PCT | ERA | CG | SHO | IP | BFP | H | ER | R | HR | BB | IBB | SO | HBP | ||||||
| 250 | 247 | 1 | 110 | 70 | .611 | 3.08 | 45 | 14 | 1674.2 | 6836 | 1505 | 573 | 623 | 146 | 413 | 46 | 1039 | 14 | ||||||
He was in the minor leagues for 2 1/2 months and finished runner-up to Tom Seaver for Rookie of the Year in 1967. Here were his rookie stats:
| G | GS | GF | W | L | PCT | ERA | CG | SHO | SV | IP | BFP | H | ER | R | HR | BB | IBB | SO | WP | HBP | BK | HLD |
| 33 | 32 | 1 | 14 | 14 | 8 | .636 | 2.58 | 8 | 5 | 0 | 226.2 | 932 | 193 | 65 | 73 | 18 | 62 | 7 | 206 | 3 | 5 | 2 | - |
His best years, though, were ‘70 and ‘72
| G | GS | GF | W | L | PCT | ERA | CG | SHO | SV | IP | BFP | H | ER | R | HR | BB | IBB | SO | WP | HBP | BK |
| 37 | 37 | 0 | 18 | 18 | 7 | .720 | 3.27 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 250.2 | 1,052 | 226 | 91 | 102 | 25 | 96 | 9 | 181 | 8 | 1 | 2 |
| 25 | 25 | 0 | 15 | 15 | 5 | .750 | 1.99 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 176.0 | 689 | 147 | 39 | 48 | 13 | 30 | 5 | 90 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
Unfortunately, most of those students had no clue about those numbers or even what the Big Red Machine was. It still serves as a pretty nice visual for the baseball unit they are studying right now.
I was impressed with the way Nolan handled the students’ questions. He spoke for a bit about getting into the league and about the World Series (plural), and addressed steroids and drugs for a spell. Then he went into a question-and-answer segment. He got some pretty good questions about his favorite moments (only pitcher to ever strike out Willie Mays four times in the same game) and some of his least (losing to the Orioles in the Classic).
He also got some different questions (if the Reds asked you to pitch today, would you), which made for some pretty funny answers.
His responses to a student asking what he did when a batter charged the mound (I ran!) and what happened during a fight (a lot of people got their feet stepped on — you would have to wear band-aids on your toes) were priceless. He also made sure to not antagonize when certain questions came up. He said he never threw at anybody on purpose (a boldface lie, but an appropriate one).
He told some great stories about rooming with Johnny Bench and hanging with Pete Rose. He talked about his favorite people — Roberto Clemente, Tony Perez and Vada Pinson — his favorite competition — Bob Gibson — and his current favorite player — Albert Pujols (pronounced POO-jols). He also told the story about how he was the guy who took Joe Nuxhall’s rotation spot in ‘67 when he retired to broadcasting. Great stuff.
Afterwards he signed about a hundred autographs and spoke to every student individually. Overall it was a nice experience for those kids, and I enjoyed myself as well. Not very often you shake hands with a Reds HOFer (I think this makes two: Nolan and Tom Browning; I may be forgetting someone). Plus, he still hangs out with Pete Rose.
