Nolan Ryan he ever win a Cy Young Award. Ryan is one of only 29 players in baseball history to have appeared in Major League baseball games in four decades and the only MLB pitcher to strike out seven pairs of fathers and sons. Ryan was born in Refugio, south of Victoria in south Texas, the youngest of six children, to Lynn Nolan Ryan Sr. (1907–1970), and the former Martha Lee Hancock (1913–1990). The senior Ryan operated a newspaper delivery service for the "Houston Post" that required him to rise in the early morning hours to prepare 1,500 newspapers for delivery over
Nolan Ryan 20th-century record that had been set by Jim Kaat. Ryan also ranks high on the list for four "negative" records; he ranks first all-time in walks allowed (2,795), first in wild pitches (277), third in losses (292—most in the post-1920 live-ball era), and ninth in hit batters (158). Ryan is also one of two pitchers in MLB history to give up ten grand slam home runs, including one to Dann Howitt, the next-to-last batter Ryan faced in his career. Bill James focuses on this dichotomy between Ryan's positive and negative statistics. While ranking him as the 24th best pitcher of