Atlanta Braves were the final opponents of the great JR Richard
The Atlanta Braves of the 1970s had a love-hate relationship with J.R. Richard, he loved facing them, and they hated to see him on the bump.
J.R. Richard passed away Wednesday, August 3, 2021, and former Atlanta Braves players were among a host of his peers to express their feelings for an opponent who made future Hall of Fame players look overmatched at the plate.
Gary Matthews was a member of the Braves from 1977 through 1980, just as Richard was reaching his prime. Over that span, Matthews batted .288/.354/.456/.810 against the league, with a 114 OPS+, hitting 81 homers, 96 doubles, and 18 triples.
Against Richard, Sarge batted .143/.280/.167/.447 with six hits – one a double – in 50 PA. Matthews faced Richard more than any other batter; he told the New York Times, no one ever threw harder than Richard.
“I kid you not: If they took the radar gun that they’re using right now and they put it on J.R., when the ball left his hand like that, it was probably going 110.” “If he doesn’t have that stroke, he’s in the Hall of Fame. He had Hall of Fame stuff and he would have had Hall of Fame stats. J.R. Richard doesn’t have to take a back seat to any pitcher that’s ever pitched in the major leagues.”
Mathews should know; he faced some of the hardest throwing pitchers in the game: Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Doc Gooden when he was striking out 270+ players a season, and Nolan Ryan.
When Dale Murphy was asked about the toughest pitchers to hit (Twitter link), he said…
“Anybody that played in the late 70’s or early 80’s will probably give you the same answer: JR Richard.”
Hall of fame third baseman Mike Schmidt explained what it was like facing Richard.
“From the right side of the batter’s box, it was very, very intimidating. You almost had to go into a defensive hitting mode — do anything you could to just make contact. It was a very unusual night when he pitched.”
More from the NY Times.
Richard faced 16 Hall of Fame hitters for a total of 548 at-bats, the equivalent of a batter’s full season. Collectively they hit .245 off him, with 138 strikeouts. Everyone else combined to hit .209.
He was even harder on the Atlanta Braves.
Atlanta Braves vs. King Richard
The Braves didn’t fare nearly as well as everyone else. In 822 PA, the team batted .193/.298/.265/.563, hit seven homers, 24 doubles, and three triples while striking out 212 times in 200 1/3 IP.
In his career, Richard posted a 14-6 record in 30 games – 29 starts – pitching to a 2.47 ERA and 1.19 WHIP with a 9.5 K/9 rate… and those numbers shortchange him a bit.
Richard was called the Sandy Koufax of his generation, and like Koufax, it took him some time to harness his fastball and the slider he learned from a pitching manual he found on the side of the road while in high school.
It was 1975 before Richard became a fixture in the Astros rotation. Over the next six seasons, Richard went 13-4 while pitched to a 2.30 ERA in 180 innings over 26 starts. Those starts included seven complete games, three shutouts, 193 strikeouts, and walks 91, one intentional.
That lone intentional walk caught my eye. Richard had only 15 intentional walks in his career; who would he walk on an Atlanta Braves team that he dominated so completely? Murph? Chris Chambliss? Bob Horner? Nope.
The Astros had Richard walk Brian Asselstine with a man on second and two out in the bottom of the ninth, in a tie game on May 10, 1980, to get to Bruce Benedict. Benedict grounded out, but it still seems an odd decision.
The May 10 game was the second of three appearances against the Braves in 1980. The Astros won that game in Atlanta and again in Atlanta on July 3, behind six Richard innings of three-hit two-run ball.
Richard took the mound against Atlanta on July 14 in what was sadly his final game.
Knucksie vs. the King
Neither pitcher allowed a hit through the first two and one-half innings. Richard got the first Astros hit in the bottom of the third, with a double to right, but Phil Niekro struck out the next three batters.
Richard took the mound for the top of the fourth and walked Murphy before coaxing what should have turned into a double-play ball, but a bad throw allowed Chambliss to reach first.
Chambliss was the last batter Richard ever faced. He signaled to the dugout and told the manager he was having trouble seeing the signs from catcher Alan Ashby and felt sick to his stomach.
Richard had told trainers for a few weeks he was suffering from a dead arm and ask for a month to rest, but the Astros were in the pennant race and didn’t put him on the DL until he left the Braves game.
Doctors found a blot clot limiting circulation to his pitching arm but said he could continue to work out. He was playing catch at the Astrodome on July 30 when he suffered a stroke and collapsed.
Epilogue
Richard survived, but Matthews told the Times the stroke changed his friend.
“After the stroke, he was never, ever the same again, from the laughter, from the mannerisms, you could tell. . .he was a totally different person after the stroke…
Richard attempted a couple of comebacks but couldn’t command his pitches. He sold cars for a while, made some bad investments, and by 1995 was sleeping under an overpass in Houston.
Eventually, the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) stepped in helped him recover, get a job and find some peace.
Tyler Kepner ended his story for The Time with this.
Johnny Bench, the Hall of Fame catcher, is famous for holding seven at a time. Richard held eight. It sounds impossible, but that is what Richard should represent: the ability to top whatever you can imagine. His career will always be unfinished. It will never be forgotten.
If you’ve seen this picture of J.R. Richard, you would probably enjoy the story behind it. #RIPJRRichard #Astros #ForTheH #PHOTOS #photograghy https://t.co/8TV6F69zOw pic.twitter.com/ZPh3gUzCrT
— Our Esquina (@OurEsquina) August 6, 2021
Editorially speaking
As I researched this post, I learned James Rodney “King” Richard was a pitching savant who was as intimidating as Gibson and Randy Johnson, threw harder than Nolan Ryan, and learned how to throw a slider from a book he found in a ditch when he was a sophomore in high school. I also learned that the Astros didn’t take the situation seriously. Several things slapped me in the face when I dug deeper into the story.
The press and his teammates questioned whether there was anything wrong with Richard. The pitcher who struck out 616 batters combined in 1978-1979 and was 100 strikeouts ahead of Steve Carlton when he had the stroke was faking his injury.
The Astros delayed Richard’s DL stint, and his medical evaluation missed a life-threatening problem. After the event, the team and the doctor said that Richard had a blocked artery to his arm adjacent to an artery leading to his brain and had a stroke, but they weren’t connected, and we didn’t bother to fix the blockage to his arm.
Richard was 6’-8, putting him in the population prone to vascular thoracic outlet syndrome. In 1980, that wasn’t something baseball fans heard about. Today, teams do know, but it still takes a while to diagnose… ask Phil Hughes.
Once Richard was no longer essential to the Astros, the club gradually forgot he existed; If not for BAT, he may have vanished into the homeless population and died on the street; that, my friends, is a disgrace. I’ll let you decide why it happened as it did.
That’s a wrap
Baseball endures because its history is woven into our history and passed on from parent to child. Fans who weren’t lucky enough to see pitchers like Paige, Gibson, Seaver, Ryan, and Richard, and everyday players like Banks, Musial, Mantle, and Mays, sometimes assume they wouldn’t be as great in today’s game because we don’t hear the stories often enough. It’s up to us to let them know that’s not right.
Tell your kids and any kids who’ll listen about watching Smoltz, Glavine, Maddux, Chipper, McGriff, and Avery. Tell them about watching Johnson throw a perfecto in Atlanta, Schilling’s bloody sock, Andruw climbing a wall, Ender decoying a runner, Blauser trying to call a time out then hitting a homer.
Next. Will Dansby stay hot?. dark
If we tell the stories, good and bad – big and small, players like Richard won’t fade into the ether. It’s our one true job as a fan, it keeps the game alive, and it’s something we can do eating popcorn in the living room.