June 5, 1981: Astros’ Nolan Ryan sets career record for walks, shuts out Mets anyway

During his eight seasons with the California Angels (1972-1979), Nolan Ryan led the American League in strikeouts seven times, walks six times, and shutouts three times. Signing with the Houston Astros as a free agent for 1980, the hard-throwing Ryan trimmed his season walk total under 100 for the first time since 1970 – but still led the National League with 98 free passes.

Walks, strikeouts, and shutouts were all relevant on June 5, 1981, when the 34-year-old Ryan started for the Astros against his original team, the New York Mets. Lee Mazzilli’s fourth-inning walk was Ryan’s 1,776th career base on balls, breaking the major-league record held by Early Wynn. Wynn accumulated his total over 23 seasons; it took Ryan just 15 to break it.

Ryan’s two walks against the Mets were accompanied by 10 strikeouts, only five hits surrendered, and no runs. The Astros won, 3-0. It was Ryan’s 46th career shutout, his 134th game with double-digit strikeouts, and his first-ever win against the team that had traded him to the Angels in December 1971.1

Ryan and the Astros had reached the playoffs in 1980 for the first time in the franchise’s 19-season history, winning the National League West Division but losing a tautly played NL Championship Series to the eventual World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies.2 Entering the June 5 game at the Astrodome, Bill Virdon’s team was struggling to stay over .500. Their 26-25 record placed them third in the division, eight games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ryan’s 58 strikeouts ranked him fourth in the NL, well behind the 90 strikeouts compiled by Dodgers rookie sensation Fernando Valenzuela.3

Manager Joe Torre’s Mets had closed 1980 in fifth place in the NL East Division with a 67-95 record. They held the same position entering the June 5 game, with a record of 16-29 and one tie, 11 games behind the Phillies. The game in Houston was the first of a three-game series between the Astros and Mets, the teams’ first meeting of the season.

The threat of a players strike loomed over all big-league action. As June 5 began, a federal judge in Rochester, New York, was considering whether to delay the implementation of a free-agent compensation plan put forth by major-league owners. A decision to delay the plan would postpone a strike. If the judge allowed the plan to take effect, players would be free to strike within two days. The decision was expected on Monday, June 8.4

Perhaps looking to get a major-league baseball fix while they still could, 28,085 fans turned out for the Friday night game.5 Ryan was opposed by 31-year-old left-hander Randy Jones, who’d won the National League Cy Young and Sporting News Pitcher of the Year Awards in 1976 after posting a 22-14 record with the San Diego Padres. The soft-tossing Jones suffered a forearm injury in his final start that season and never regained his peak form.6 He entered with a 1-5 record and a 4.36 ERA, compared with Ryan’s 4-3 record and 1.59 ERA.

Center fielder Mookie Wilson hit .271 for the Mets in 1981 and stole 24 bases, good enough to place him seventh in the NL Rookie of the Year voting. But Wilson, facing Ryan for the first time, led off the game with a strikeout. He returned to the plate in the third, sixth, and eighth innings and struck out each time.

Frank Taveras followed Wilson in the first inning by drawing the Mets’ first walk and moving to second base on Ryan’s second balk of the season. Joel Youngblood’s liner to shortstop and Dave Kingman’s fly ball to center stranded Taveras. Youngblood, a utilityman who mostly played right field in 1981, entered the game hitting .361, while Kingman’s 12 homers tied him for third in the NL.7

The Astros wasted two baserunners in the first inning, the Mets one in the second. Houston broke the deadlock in its half of the second, starting with a walk to .360-hitting Art Howe. Gary Woods’s single to left field advanced Howe to third, and typically light-hitting Luis Pujols blooped a single into left to give the Astros a 1-0 lead.8 The hit gave Pujols a nine-game streak.9

Joe Pittman’s groundout moved Woods to third and Pujols to second, but Ryan, a .143 hitter, struck out. Ryan took revenge in the top of the third by striking out Jones, Wilson, and Taveras in order.

Ryan gave up the record-setting walk to Mazzilli with two outs in the fourth, following a groundout by Youngblood and a strikeout by Kingman. Already the league leader in wild pitches with nine, Ryan uncorked another one that allowed Mazzilli to advance to second.10 Mike Cubbage’s grounder to second ended another threat.

In the top of the sixth, heads-up play by the Mets sparked another promising rally. With one out, Taveras singled to right. Youngblood grounded to Howe at third, who went deep into the hole to field the ball and throw to first baseman César Cedeño for the out. Cedeño, who began the season in center field, was playing his fourth game of 1981 at first base as he recovered from a broken ankle suffered in the 1980 playoffs.11

The speedy Taveras12 noticed how far Howe had strayed from third base. He kept running around second, gambling – successfully – that he would beat a throw to third.13 With the tying run 90 feet from home, Kingman flied to left, wasting the opportunity.

The Astros answered with a quick run in the bottom half. Craig Reynolds led the NL with 12 triples in 1981, and he opened the inning with his ninth three-bagger of the season, hit under Kingman’s glove at first base and into the right-field corner.14 Cedeño picked up the run with a sacrifice fly to right field, making the score 2-0, Houston.

The Mets rallied yet again in the seventh. Cubbage hit a one-out single to center. One out later, former Astro Rusty Staub – pinch-hitting for Doug Flynn – singled to put runners on first and second. Bob Bailor ran for Staub, while lefty-swinging Mike Jorgensen hit for Jones against the righty Ryan. Jorgensen’s fly to left field kept the Mets scoreless.

Lefty Pete Falcone replaced Jones on the mound in the bottom half. Pujols again served as offensive hero, drawing a leadoff walk and moving to second on Pittman’s single. Ryan bunted the runners ahead a base, and Terry Puhl’s fly to center scored Pujols for a 3-0 Astros advantage.

Ryan notched his ninth and 10th strikeouts in the eighth inning, getting Wilson to start the frame and Kingman to end it. He capped his shutout in the ninth by retiring Mazzilli on a liner to third, Cubbage on a tapper back to the mound, and John Stearns on a grounder to shortstop. The game wrapped in 2 hours and 9 minutes, with Jones taking the loss.

The New York Times described Ryan, who threw 121 pitches, as “the complete master of the Mets.”15 It was only Ryan’s second appearance against his former team. On April 27, 1980, he had pitched the first eight innings of a game the Astros won, 4-3, in 12 innings.

Ryan downplayed his newly acquired walk record. “I’m not ashamed of a record like that,” he said. “The kind of pitcher I am, I’m going to walk a lot of hitters.” Wilson, meanwhile, praised Ryan’s curveball. “His fastball was what I expected. His curveball surprised me to death,” the rookie observed. “It was a lot better than I thought he had.”16 Stories noted that the 10 strikeouts brought Ryan’s career total to 3,177, trailing only Walter Johnson and Gaylord Perry.17

“If Nolan pitches like that the rest of the season, a lot of people are going to be in trouble,” catcher Pujols predicted.18 He was right. In a season torn in half by an almost two-month players strike that began on June 12, Ryan led the NL with a 1.69 ERA, tied for the team lead with 11 wins,19 and pitched his fifth no-hitter, breaking the major-league record held by Sandy Koufax. He placed fourth in the Cy Young Award voting.

The Astros won the NL West second-half title, qualifying them for the playoffs, but lost the NL Division Series to the Dodgers. Ryan won Game One of that series but lost the decisive Game Five. (The Mets finished both halves below .500 and out of contention.)

Ryan retired in 1993 as the major-league career leader in walks (2,795) and strikeouts (5,714). As of April 2025, he remained comfortably ahead in both categories. The 324-game winner was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1999.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data. The author also thanks Games Project chair John Fredland for assistance researching game accounts in Houston newspapers.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/HOU/HOU198106050.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1981/B06050HOU1981.htm

Image of 1981 Topps Stickers #30 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Deane McGowen, “Ryan Subdues Mets,” New York Times, June 6, 1981: 15. Jim Fregosi, whom the Mets received in exchange for Ryan and three other players, had begun the 1981 season as the Angels’ manager but was fired on May 28. United Press International, “Fregosi Runs Out of Chances,” Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) Citizens’ Voice, May 29, 1981: 57.

2 Not only did the 1980 NL Championship Series go the full five games, but Games Two through Five all went into extra innings. Ryan started Games Two and Five but did not take a decision in either game. Ryan made his only trip to the World Series in 1969, as a member of the victorious New York Mets.

3 Ryan’s 30 walks entering the June 5 start did not rank him among the NL’s four leading pitchers in that category. The league’s walk leader at the time was Bruce Berenyi of the Cincinnati Reds, with 40.

4 Associated Press, “Baseball Heads Into Final Weekend – Again,” Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune, June 5, 1981: 13.

5 This was slightly higher than the Astros’ 1981 average home attendance of 25,907 per game.

6 Alan Cohen, “Randy Jones,” SABR Biography Project, accessed April 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Randy-Jones/.

7 Although some game stories described Youngblood as the NL’s leading hitter, Retrosheet’s summary of league leaders as of June 4 says Youngblood did not formally rank among the NL’s top hitters because he lacked enough plate appearances to qualify. He spent much of the 1981 season as the Mets’ starting right fielder; over the course of his 14-season career he appeared at least once at every position except pitcher and designated hitter. (Youngblood spent his entire career in the NL before that league’s adoption of the DH.)

8 Neil Hohlfeld, “Astros, Ryan Breeze Past Mets, 3-0,” Houston Chronicle, June 6, 1981: 4. Pujols entered the game hitting .239, robust by his standards; he’d hit .199 in 78 games the season before. He ended his nine-season career with a .193 average.

9 Kenny Hand, “Ryan Keeps N.Y. In Check,” Houston Post, June 6, 1981: 1C. Pujols went hitless in his next appearance, on June 7.

10 Ryan went on to lead the NL in wild pitches in 1981 with 16. It was the fourth of six times that he led his league in that category. His career high was 21, set with California in 1977.

11 “Cedeno Says Loss of Speed May Prompt Switch,” Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller, June 3, 1981: 1D. The 1981 season was not Cedeño’s first experience at first base; he had played there twice in 1971 and 91 times in 1979.

12 Taveras had led the NL in steals in 1977 with 70 while playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He reached double figures in steals for nine straight seasons, with 1981 the last.

13 Jack Lang, “Ryan Tops Mets 3-0 on 5-Hitter, Strikes Out 10 (Mookie 4 Times),” New York Daily News, June 6, 1981: 27. According to Houston newspaper coverage, shortstop Reynolds took the throw to third, too late to catch Taveras.

14 Ed Fowler, “Ryan Plays Numbers Game with Mets,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), June 6, 1981: 26; McGowen, “Ryan Subdues Mets.”

15 “Ryan Subdues Mets.”

16 Fowler, “Ryan Plays Numbers Game with Mets.”

17 Jack Lang, “Ryan Tops Mets 3-0 on 5-Hitter, Strikes Out 10 (Mookie 4 Times),” New York Daily News, June 6, 1981: 27.

18 Hohlfeld, “Astros, Ryan Breeze Past Mets, 3-0.”

19 Don Sutton, a fellow future Hall of Famer, also won 11 games for the Astros.