June 11, 1991: At age 44, Nolan Ryan blanks White Sox for his final career shutout

The first two months of the 1991 season had been a roller coaster ride for the Texas Rangers. After dropping the first four games of a season-opening homestand, they ripped off wins in six of the next seven. Following another four-game skid in early May, the Rangers responded with a team-record 14-game winning streak to take a one-game lead in the American League West Division, only to immediately turn cold.

The Rangers entered the second game of a four-game series against the Chicago White Sox on June 11 having lost 11 of their last 12 to fall to 26-25, six games behind the division-leading Oakland A’s. Chicago had sent the Rangers to their eighth consecutive defeat the previous night, scoring the go-ahead run in the 13th inning on right fielder Ruben Sierra’s error. The victory was the fifth in a row for the fifth-place White Sox and gave them a record of 28-26, a half-game ahead of Texas.

A crowd of 38,172 showed up on a hot, muggy Tuesday night hoping to see pitching legend Nolan Ryan end the losing streak.1 The 44-year-old right-hander was 3-4 with a 3.45 ERA in nine starts. On May 1 he had hurled his seventh career no-hitter while striking out 16 batters against the Toronto Blue Jays, but he had gone 0-2 with a 4.22 ERA in his last four starts. Despite his age, Ryan was tied for third in the AL with 76 strikeouts, 12 behind Boston’s Roger Clemens. Opposing batters were hitting just .177 against him.

Ryan was opposed by 21-year-old right-hander Alex Fernandez, who was 2-5 in 11 starts and one relief appearance, with a 5.71 ERA. Fernandez, taking the mound just over a year to the day after the White Sox selected him fourth overall in the June 1990 amateur draft, was looking for his first victory since April 22.2

Ryan was facing the White Sox for the first time in 1991 and should have felt good based on his previous success against them at home; in two starts against Chicago at Arlington Stadium in 1990, he had allowed no runs and just four hits in 19 innings and struck out 31.3

But Ryan was not pleased with his warm-up before the June 11 game. “I didn’t have very good stuff; not a very good fastball, not a very good curve, and my changeup was inconsistent,” he said.4

Exactly one year earlier, Ryan had thrown his sixth career no-hitter in a 5-0 win against Oakland. The possibility of another no-hitter ended very quickly this time.

White Sox leadoff batter Tim Raines fell behind 0-and-2 and took two close pitches before he singled on a full count and stole second. After Robin Ventura popped out to Texas third baseman Steve Buechele, Ryan hit slugger Frank Thomas, playing in his first full season after reaching the majors in August 1990, to put two runners on.5 Ryan regrouped to strike out Dan Pasqua in an eight-pitch at-bat and retire catcher Matt Merullo, in the lineup to give 43-year-old Carlton Fisk the night off, on a fly to deep right field. Still, the White Sox had forced Ryan to throw 26 pitches in the inning.

Ryan began the second inning with a strikeout of 22-year-old future home-run champion Sammy Sosa. He got Lance Johnson to fly out to center before Joey Cora tripled to right; Ozzie Guillén popped up to shortstop to leave Cora stranded.

Chicago put another runner in scoring position in the third when Ventura doubled with one out. Thomas popped to second baseman Julio Franco for the second out. Remarkably, it was the only contact that Thomas, a lifetime .301 hitter, ever had against Ryan; he was 0-for-12 with 11 strikeouts in 15 plate appearances.6 Pasqua struck out to end the inning.

After a perfect fourth inning, Ryan worked out of trouble again in the fifth. Guillén singled with one out but was caught stealing. Raines drew what turned out to be Ryan’s only walk of the game. He stole second but was stranded when Ventura grounded out to second.

Although he didn’t have Ryan’s résumé, Fernandez outpitched the future Hall of Famer through the first five innings. After allowing a  leadoff single to Brian Downing, Fernandez retired six consecutive hitters, including a 6-4-3 double-play ball by Rafael Palmeiro and strikeouts of Franco (who hit a major-league-best .341 in 1991) and future home-run champion Juan González, before Buechele singled and Jeff Huson walked in the third inning. Fernandez escaped the jam when he struck out Downing and Buechele was caught stealing on the play.

Fernandez worked around a one-out double by Palmeiro in the fourth and a single by Buechele and a walk to Downing in the fifth.

Ryan followed with a perfect sixth which included strikeouts of Thomas and Pasqua, giving him seven for the game.

The Rangers broke the scoreless drought in the bottom of the sixth. Palmeiro led off with a walk. After fly outs by Sierra and Franco, González looped a single to left field. Fernandez got ahead with two strikes on Mike Stanley before brushing him back with a fastball high and inside.7 He followed with a curveball low and away, and Stanley lined a single to center to bring home Palmeiro ahead of Johnson’s throw. González advanced to third on the play.   

“It was a pretty good hook, down and away,” Fernandez said. “I guess that’s his strong point or he was looking for it. Either way, he’ll never get that pitch again.”8

Fernandez faced one more batter and issued his fifth walk of the game to Buechele to load the bases.

White Sox manager Jeff Torborg removed Fernandez after 109 pitches in favor of lefty Ken Patterson. Rangers skipper Bobby Valentine countered by bringing Mario Díaz off the bench to hit for Huson. The move worked when Díaz drew the Rangers’ third walk of the inning on four pitches to score González and give Texas a 2-0 lead.

Staked to a lead, Ryan finished the game strong, throwing 24 strikes out of 28 pitches and retiring 9 of the final 11 Chicago batters.

Sosa threatened to break up Ryan’s shutout when he hammered the first pitch of the seventh toward the left-field foul pole; it had home-run distance, but it was several feet foul. Two pitches later he struck out swinging. After Johnson grounded a single to right field, Ryan retired Cora and Guillen on fly balls.

Ryan pitched a one-two-three eighth inning, which included his second strikeouts of Raines and Thomas to give him 10 for the game.9 It was his 210th career double-digit-strikeout game.10

Texas stranded runners at the corners in the seventh inning and wasted a leadoff double by Stanley in the eighth, but two runs were all Ryan needed. After Ryan recorded two quick outs to start the ninth, rookie Warren Newson hit for Sosa and singled to left field on a 0-and-2 curveball. It brought the tying run to the plate one final time for Chicago, but on Ryan’s 116th pitch, Johnson’s grounder forced Newson at second base to end the game.

The victory was Ryan’s 306th, pushing him past Eddie Plank into 16th place in major-league history. The shutout was his 61st and tied him with Tom Seaver for seventh all-time.

After the game, Ryan talked about his slow start. “I didn’t like going out there with that kind of warm-up, but you can’t let that affect your approach to the game,” he said. “Fortunately, as the game went on, I threw better.”11

Stanley, who caught the final four innings after taking over for starter Geno Petralli, said Ryan “became more focused out there after we scored. He was more focused on location with all his pitches.”12

Both managers expressed astonishment at Ryan’s performance.

“He never ceases to amaze me,” said Torborg, a former catcher who caught Ryan’s first career no-hitter, with the California Angels on May 15, 1973. “I’ve seen him sharper, and I’ve seen him throw harder. But look at the line score.”13

“If you ever get him on the hook, you can’t let him get off. He’s just that kind of competitor.”14

Valentine – like Torborg a former teammate of Ryan’s with the 1970s Angels – said, “People say there’s only one Nolan Ryan, and it’s the truth. That extra gear he dropped it into when we scored some runs for him was absolutely incredible.”15

Ryan finished the season 12-6 with a 2.91 ERA. He was fourth in the AL with 203 strikeouts, the 15th and final time he topped the 200-strikeout plateau. The Rangers ended the season with an 85-77 record, third in the AL West, 10 games behind the first-place Minnesota Twins.

Ryan pitched two more seasons with the Rangers, compiling a 10-14 record, to finish with a career mark of 324-292 and recording the final 203 of his major-league-record 5,714 strikeouts.

Author’s Note

The author attended this game with his wife on their honeymoon, just three days after their wedding. Two seasons later, in October 1993, the author hoped to see Ryan make the final start of his career in the final game at Arlington Stadium, but an arm injury in the first inning on September 22 at the Kingdome in Seattle ended Ryan’s career prematurely.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.   

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted data from Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. He also reviewed a recording of the WGN television broadcast of the game, posted on YouTube.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TEX/TEX199106110.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1991/B06110TEX1991.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKdCj4wFdxQ

Notes

1 The start was the 716th of this career, tying him for third place with Phil Niekro. Ryan would retire with 773 career starts, second only to Cy Young (815).

2 Fernandez was originally drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the first round of the 1988 amateur draft, but did not sign.

3 It was a different story for Ryan when he pitched in Chicago. For his career, he was 5-10 with a 5.35 ERA in 17 starts at the original Comiskey Park. At the new Comiskey Park, which opened for the 1991 season, he was 0-1 with an 8.59 ERA in two starts. (The new ballpark was known as Guaranteed Rate Field as of the 2024 season.)

4 T.R. Sullivan, “Ryan Ends Rangers’ Skid at 8,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 12, 1991: D1.

5 This was the only time Thomas was hit by a pitch in 1991 and it allowed him to reach base in 54 of Chicago’s first 55 games.

6 Thomas walked twice against Ryan and was hit by the pitch in the first inning of this game.

7 The newspaper account by T.R. Sullivan said the pitch sent him “sprawling in the dirt” but the game footage showed otherwise.

8 Sullivan.

9 In his career, Ryan had 353 strikeouts against the White Sox, the most he had against any team.

10 Ryan recorded two more double-digit-strikeout games in 1991 to finish his career with a record 215 games of 10 or more strikeouts, three more than Randy Johnson. In third place as of August 2024 was Max Scherzer with 113.

11 Sullivan.

12 Associated Press, “Ryan Solid as Rangers Shut Out White Sox,” Orange (Texas) Leader, June 12, 1991: 6A.

13 Associated Press.

14 Alan Solomon, “Sox Run Into Ryan, Stop Dead,” Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1991: 4-1.

15 Associated Press, “Ryan Solid as Rangers Shut Out White Sox.”