J. R. Richard

James Rodney Richard (March 7, 1950 – August 4, 2021) was an American professional baseball player.

After graduating from high school, Richard was selected by the Astros as the second overall pick in the first round of the 1969 amateur draft.

The Astros selected him with the second overall pick in the 1969 amateur baseball draft, behind the Washington Senators' selection of outfielder Jeff Burroughs.

Richard later recalled, "There were other guys in my high school with as much ability as I had, but instead of working at a job, they wanted to drink wine on Saturday nights. They thought that was the in thing to do, and consequently our lives went in different directions. For some people it takes that to make a world. It does not for me."

After the Astros drafted Richard, they sent him to play for the Covington Astros, a rookie-level minor league baseball team in the Appalachian League.

Richard started 12 games for Covington, finishing with five wins and four losses.

Despite accumulating an average of 11.41 strikeouts per nine innings, Richard had trouble throughout the season with his pitching mechanics and control.

In 56 innings, Richard struck out 71 batters but walked 52 and gave up 41 earned runs, resulting in a 6.59 earned run average (ERA).

The following year, at 20 years of age, Richard was promoted to the Cocoa Astros of the Florida State League in high-A minor league baseball.

Richard again compiled a low hits per nine innings (H/9IP) ratio by giving up only 67 hits in 109 total innings pitched.

Despite his 4–11 win–loss record, Richard finished the season with a 2.39 ERA and even threw a no-hitter against the Daytona Beach Dodgers.

During the season, Richard was able to throw an accurate fastball which occasionally exceeded 100 miles per hour, and his slider 93 miles per hour, faster than those of most major-league pitchers.

During the 1970–71 off-season, the Astros again promoted Richard: this time to Class-AAA baseball, one step below the major leagues, with the Oklahoma City 89ers of the now-defunct American Association.

Richard wore number 50 and kept that number for the rest of his minor-league and major-league career.

Richard started all but one of the games he pitched that season.

He pitched eight complete games and led the league with 202 strikeouts in 173 innings of work.

He ended the season with twelve wins and seven losses before being called up by the Houston Astros.

He played his entire career in Major League Baseball as a right-handed starting pitcher for the Houston Astros from 1971 to 1980.

From the time he made his major league debut with the Astros in 1971 until 1975, Richard had a limited role as an Astros pitcher, throwing no more than 72 innings in a season.

Richard entered Major League Baseball with the Astros in 1971 as a September call-up.

On September 5, Richard made his major league debut at just 21 years of age, in the second game of a doubleheader against the San Francisco Giants.

Richard used his fastball–slider combination to pick up the win and tied Karl Spooner's 17-year-old major league record for striking out 15 batters in his first major league start.

In 1975, Richard played his first full season in the majors as a starting pitcher.

From 1976 to 1980, he was one of the premier pitchers in the majors, leading the National League twice in strikeouts, once in earned run average, and three times in hits allowed per nine innings, winning at least 18 games a year between 1976 and 1979.

Richard led the National League (NL) twice in strikeouts and was named an NL All-Star player in 1980.

On July 30, 1980, Richard suffered a stroke and collapsed while warming up before an Astros game.

The cause was found to be a blood clot in his neck.

His condition brought a sudden end to his major league career at the age of 30.

In 1981, Richard attempted a comeback with the Astros, however this failed because the stroke had slowed down his reaction time and weakened his depth perception.

He spent the next few seasons in the minor leagues before being released by the Astros in 1984.

After his professional baseball career ended, Richard became involved in unsuccessful business deals and went through two divorces, which led to him being homeless and destitute in 1994.

Richard found solace in a local church and later became a Christian minister.

His 313 strikeouts in 1979 remained an Astros franchise record until Gerrit Cole surpassed it on September 24, 2019, and he held the team's record for career strikeouts (1,493) until 1987.

Two-time National League MVPs Johnny Bench and Dale Murphy both named Richard as the toughest pitcher they ever faced.

In 2019, he was inducted into the Houston Astros Hall of Fame.

Richard was born to Clayton and Lizzie Richard in Vienna, Louisiana, and gained prominence in both baseball and basketball at historically black and since closed Lincoln High School in nearby Ruston.

By the time he was a high school senior, Richard stood 6 ft tall and weighed 220 lb. That year, he was one of the starting pitchers for Lincoln High School and did not concede a run for the entire season.

In one game Richard hit four consecutive home runs while pitching his team to a 48–0 victory against its local rival, Jonesboro's Jackson High School.

Richard, whose baseball idol was St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson, never lost a game he started during his high school career.

Upon graduation from high school, he turned down more than 200 basketball scholarship offers to sign with the Houston Astros.