His 1985 season may have been the greatest single-season performance by a pitcher ever.

the Mets scored a total of less than 4 runs during all of those games.

when he was only 17, didn't he? He was my dad's idol. My dad pitched semi pro ball.

He took a brief leave from the team in May 1937 to go back to Van Meter and receive his high school diploma. In fairness he had also hurt his arm in late April throwing a curve ball.

My uncle pitched fast pitch softball at semi-pro level after Korea and he adopted the nickname Rapid Robert because he liked Feller so much.

If i had a major league contract at 19, i easily would have struck out 200 times a year!!!

Back to the point at hand: Notable by his absence is Ryan who when he first came up couldn't find the plate. So, nobody bothered swinging. Once he took 2mph off and started finding the strike zone, then it was "look out" time.

He was 25 his first year in Anaheim and had 329 K's in 284 innings and his ERA which averaged around 3.5 with the Mets fell to 2.28.

If he had found the magic 3 years sooner he might have exceeded 6,000 k's.

and batters argued with umpires, the hitters would say that ball sounded outside.

Ron Luciano once said that he thought there were times when umpires called balls on close pitches because he was throwing it so fast they couldn't be sure. As a result, umpires (he admits to being on of them) unconsciously called them balls out of a sense of fairness.

When the umpires can't be sure, you're throwing some heat!