Facing Nolan is the 2022 documentary of the story of one of the greatest pitchers in Major League Baseball history, right hander Nolan Ryan. Ryan was from Texas but was originally drafted by the New York Mets baseball club but did not find great personal success there. The team did find collective success winning the 1969 World Championship though!! Ryan was mainly used out of the bullpen as a Met, and the hard throwing right hander always saw himself as a starting pitcher so after three seasons in the big apple the tall Texan was traded to sunny Southern California where he became a member of the then California Angels. It was there that Ryan met up with a pitching coach, a coach that he did not have with the Mets or in high school. Ryan started to have tremendous success. First off, the Angels were a bit of a struggling franchise so they put the right hander in their starting rotation and after his work with the pitching coach Ryan's strikeout numbers grew exponentially, so much so that he threw over 300 per season for his three years in Anaheim!! Things eventually soured with the Angels and Ryan wanted to go back to Texas and play there professionally anyway so in the mid 1970's the Ryan Express signed professional sports first million dollar contract with the Houston Astros. Ryan found immediate success with the Astros, throwing a no-hitter for the club and taking a team that had never seen the post-season to the post-season and within one game of the World Series in 1980. In the mid to late 1980's though, Ryan was asked to take a pay cut with the Astros to sign more players to the team, and the team itself was going in a different direction, so the fireball throwing right hander decided to test free agency and signed with the upstate Texas Rangers. Ryan's success continued with Texas, firing two more no hitters and compiling some 51 major league records all told that still hold up to today!! The documentary is very well done. The testimonials in it are great as are the baseball highlights. You get a great sense of who Nolan Ryan and his family are and there is a great sense of nostalgia as you see the highlights throughout his career. 8 out of 10 stars.
Review of Facing Nolan
