The amazing thing about J.R. Richard was that he could throw a baseball hard, really hard. One of Richard’s pitches was once clocked at 98 miles per hour. Oh, did I fail to mention that this particular pitch was his slider? His fastball was regularly gunned in the triple digits, and on more than one occasion reached 103 mph.
Born to parents Clayton and Lizzie back on March 7 in the year of our lord 1950, it didn’t take long for James Rodney Richard to figure out he liked sports. It also didn’t take long for him, and the surrounding communities, to realize he excelled at them.
Basketball and baseball were the two sports that quickly showcased Richard’s physical gifts.
As a pitcher, imagine not losing a single high school game for your career, and not giving up a single run in your senior year. How about hitting four consecutive jacks, and in the same game pitching your team to a 48-0 shellacking of your opponent?
His basketball prowess was such that Richard entertained offers of scholarships from nearly every elite college program in the country. He turned every one of them down flat.
Instead, he would sign an offer from the Houston Astros to play professional baseball.
The Astros were enamored enough with Richard’s high school production, as well as his physical tools (Richard stood 6’8’’ and weighed 220 pounds as a senior in high school), to make him the second overall selection in baseball’s amateur draft held in 1969.
Like many young pitchers, Richard spent the better part of the next two years toiling in the minors. The strikeouts were amassing quickly, but also like many young pitchers, mechanics had to be perfected and control had to be tamed.
Richard made his Major League debut with the Astros on Sept. 6, 1971 at the tender age of 21.
He was asked to take the mound for the second game of a doubleheader against the San Francisco Giants—a team that included Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Bobby Bonds.
All Richard did was strike out 15 Giants, including Willie Mays thrice. He picked up the win, and tied a 17-year-old record for strikeouts in a debut for a starting pitcher.
After Richard’s auspicious debut, he found himself again contending with control problems.
He split time between the major league and the minor league until 1975, when he finally became a fixture of the Astros pitching staff for the next five-and-a-half seasons.
While winning 20 games in 1976, and 18 games in each season from 1977 thorough 1979, Richard became a strikeout machine. Using his blistering fastball and his equally effective slider, he won the single season strikeout title in both 1978 and 1979, ringing up 303 and 313 batters, respectively.
In the 1980 season, Richard was named to his first All-Star Game. Before the break he was just flat-out gas—three straight complete-game shutouts, 10 victories, 110 strikeouts, and an ERA of 1.96.
Soreness in his shoulder and back would limit Richard to only two innings pitched in the All-Star Game however; foreboding of things to come.
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