RIP to the Bigger Than Life J.R. Richard
J.R. Richard was bigger than life to my 8-year-old self in 1979. I wasn’t an Astros fan, but I was a National League fan because my favorite team was the Pittsburgh Pirates. The 1979 season was the first baseball season I really remember following. I wasn’t even playing baseball yet—that would happen the following year—but I’d watch baseball as often as I could and pour over the statistics in the Sunday paper and the Sporting News. J.R. Richard was the ace of the Astros. He was 6’8”, threw pure gas, and seemed like a giant among men.
Even before I started playing baseball, I was reading about baseball, especially the history of baseball. The list of pitchers with 300 strikeouts was mythical to me, going back to 1903 and 1904 with Rube Waddell, and 1910 and 1912 with Walter Johnson. After “The Big Train” accomplished the feat in 1912, it would be more than 30 years before Bob Feller struck out 300 batters in a season in 1946, then another 17 years until Sandy Koufax became the fifth pitcher to do it. In 1965, Koufax and “Sudden” Sam McDowell both struck out 300 batters. Six years later, Vida Blue and Mickey Lolich joined the 300-Strikeouts Club, followed by Steve Carlton and Nolan Ryan in 1972.
Ryan struck out 300 batters in a season in 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1977 (and again in 1989, when he was 42 years old). He truly was the King of the K. In 1978, though, he “only” struck out 260 batters, which still led the American League. Over in the National League, J.R. Richard struck out 303 batters, becoming only the 10th pitcher in major league history to strike out 300 batters in a season. He was the third National League pitcher to do it and the first right-handed NL pitcher. He did it again in 1979, leading the NL with 313 strikeouts.
That offseason, Nolan Ryan was a free agent for the first time. In November, he signed a three-year contract with the Astros that made him the first athlete on a professional sports team to be paid $1 million per year. It also meant that baseball’s top two strikeout pitchers would be in the same starting rotation in 1980. Nine-year-old me imagined the two fireballers combining for 600 strikeouts in a season, which would not have been safe for my little mind.
J.R. Richard took the hill on Opening Day in 1980 and struck out 13 Los Angeles Dodgers in a 3-2 victory. He would strike out 12 Dodgers in a start nine days later and 13 Giants in a game in early June. At the All-Star break, he had a 1.96 ERA, with 115 strikeouts in 110 innings. He was having his best season and was rewarded for his performance by being named the starter for the NL All-Star team, where he pitched two scoreless innings and struck out three batters.
In what would later prove prescient, there was this comment from announcer Keith Jackson as Richard warmed up: “Richard, with a record of ten and four. He comes in, however, after struggling in his last couple of starts. He has been experiencing stiffness in his right forearm. He uses the word ‘fatigue’ to describe it.”
After the All-Star break, Richard made a start against Atlanta on July 14, but lasted only 3 1/3 innings. He complained of arm weakness and was put on the disabled list. On July 23, he was examined at Methodist Hospital in Houston where an angiogram revealed an obstruction in the arteries of his right arm. Two days later, doctors concluded that all was normal and no surgical treatment was necessary after studying the arteries in his neck.
On July 30, Richard was doing a workout in the Astrodome when tragedy struck. He wrote about it in Still Throwing Heat: Strikeouts, the Streets, and a Second Chance.With the team on a road trip, Richard was working out at the Astrodome. He heard a high-pitched tone in his left ear, became nauseated, and fell to the turf. Fortunately, someone was in the stadium and called for an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital. They took CAT scans and determined he had suffered three separate strokes and extensive arterial thoracic outlet syndrome. He was 30 years old and at the height of his baseball career and suddenly his life was in peril.
Richard recovered from the strokes and made multiple attempts to get back to the big leagues over the next few seasons, but was unable to continue his major league career. Over the next decade, he would fall prey to a business scam, pay nearly $700,000 in a divorce settlement, then marry and divorce again and lose his home and more money. In 1994, he was homeless and living under a highway overpass in Houston.
Things started to turn around for Richard in 1995, when he became eligible for his pension from Major League Baseball. He appeared in an Old-Timers’ Day game with the Astros that year and found work with an asphalt company. He embraced religion with a church in Houston and eventually became a minister.
Working with local financial donors in the Houston community, Richard helped establish baseball leagues for children. A film about his life was made in 2005. In 2018, he joined former major leaguers Eddie Murray, Kenny Lofton, Mudcat Grant, and Dick Allen as members of the “Hall of Game” at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
Sadly, J.R. Richard died on August 4, 2021. According to his family, “he was experiencing complications from a COVID-19 infection.” Writer Bradford William Davis revealed in a series of tweets the words of Enos Cabell, a teammate of J.R. Richard with the Houston Astros in the 1970s.
According to Cabell, Richard was unvaccinated. Cabell tried in vain to get Richard to take the shot, saying, “I’ll take you ‘cause we been through too much together. You need to go get the damn shot. Not taking shots when you’re supposed to take ‘em. I mean everybody took polio shots. Didn’t you take your polio shots when you were a kid?”
Cabell continued, “I don’t know why, I just—it boggles me. I went through so much stuff back in the 80s with Jay, tryna get him back and happy and healthy.”
May he rest in peace.
-Bobby Mueller
