Nolan Ryan famously pummeled Robin Ventura 27 years ago

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Nolan Ryan Through The Years

THE MOST FAMOUS BASEBALL BEATDOWN EVER

This classic photo shows Nolan Ryan’s famous fight with Robin Ventura.

Nolan Ryan Through The Years

THE MOST FAMOUS BASEBALL BEATDOWN EVER

This classic photo shows Nolan Ryan’s famous fight with Robin Ventura.

Photo: Linda Kaye, AP

Nolan Ryan famously pummeled Robin Ventura 27 years ago

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It was the face-pounding beatdown heard ’round the baseball world, echoing through Texas and forever cemented in Lone Star sports legend, and it involved the greatest pitcher in baseball history.

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Twenty-seven years ago, on Aug. 4, 1993, the Texas Rangers met the Chicago White Sox at Arlington Stadium. In the top of the third inning, 26-year-old Robin Ventura gets plunked by Nolan Ryan in the ribs.

The slap of the ball to flesh is audible. Ventura hesitates for a split-second, throws down his bat, takes off his batting helmet and charges straight at the 46-year-old Ryan on the pitching mound.

Ryan immediately grabs the young Ventura, dishing out tough love in the form of a head lock and fist gumbo. The Arlington crowd is an orgy of boos and whistles. People are eating it up, as our elder statesman dishes out six or so punches to Ventura’s then-cocky cranium.

The sixth one seems to be the most clear.

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Both benches are cleared. Men with ridiculous mustaches and mullet combos fight in slow motion. Ryan and Ventura seethed at each other from across the melee, gaining their composure. Something angers Ryan and the brawl begins anew. The dog pile stews a bit longer, and then both teams begin filtering back into the dugouts to continue the game. Compared to a hockey fight, it’s a playground shoving match.

Ryan was just months from retirement. He didn’t care. His place in baseball history was long secured.

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It was this fight that would make Ryan even cooler in many of our eyes, grizzled even. People all tell the story differently. This was before social media, YouTube and the like. Now, the video would have been viral in seconds. Back then, the clip surfaced only here and there on baseball highlight reels.

When fans relayed the tale to friends who hadn’t seen it, sometimes they would add that Ryan literally ripped Ventura’s ears off in the fight. Sometimes, Ventura, in the telling, wept like a baby and it was evident afterward that he wet his pants.

For some reason many people get this incident mixed up with the September 1990 game in which the Kansas City Royals’ Bo Jackson smashed a line drive into Ryan’s lip, creating a bloody jersey and face for Ryan. For his part, Ryan still threw the nimble Jackson out at first base. He continued to play covered in blood, which was frickin‘ awesome.

Jackson was also a part of that Ventura-inspired brawl in Arlington three years later, but as a supporting player.

In 2012, Ryan and Ventura met on more friendly terms before a White Sox-Rangers game at the Rangers Ballpark and shook hands after years of not speaking on the matter.

“It’s something that happened in the heat of the moment. I’m surprised that a mere baseball fight, and I’d had a few others over the years, could have this kind of life,” Ryan told USA Today around the time of the 2012 meeting.

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Ventura told the sports blog that it was more of an outgrowth of what kind of turmoil the two teams were embroiled in at the time. He wasn’t going after Ryan as a person.

“It wasn’t a me-against-him thing,” Ventura said.

You can now buy framed and signed prints of the Ventura/Ryan fight, with both slinging their signatures onto it, at sports memorabilia shows and on eBay. Some even have Rodriguez in the picture, too.

A graphic artist, Jon Smith, has turned the incident into a poster and a T-shirt which should be in every man’s man-cave or closet in Texas and beyond. Don’t mess with Texas, indeed.