Houston Astros: At 70, legend J.R. Richard has a hard-earned peace
By Jeff Kallman
The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back
It took a decade for Richard to harness his talent and his intimidation factor and one fateful workout to undo it completely. On the disabled list with shoulder fatigue after starting the 1980 All-Star Game (above), Richard put himself through a small workout in the Astrodome on July 30, 1980, while the Astros went on the road.
As he’d remember to WBUR’s Bill Littlefield five years ago, he heard “a lot of high-pitched ringing in my left ear,” but in the moment he thought nothing of it.
"I kind of just shook it off and kept on throwing a few more. Then I threw a couple more, then I became real nauseated, and I lay down on the Astrodome floor. And the next thing I remember I was waking up in the hospital. I had been complaining to the Astros for almost a month or two about something was wrong. And if I’m such a valuable asset to the ball club, why wasn’t I immediately rushed to the doctors from Chicago when it first started? Again, if I was such a valuable asset to the company?"
The stroke Richard suffered embarrassed everyone around the Astros, team and press alike, who’d speculated previously that the giant righthander was dogging things. Some of the speculations were racism-based; much of it was mere ignorance. Many of those doubting writers and broadcasters apologized publicly in the wake of the stroke, but it couldn’t help him.
Richard underwent a subsequent CAT scan that showed three separate strokes and a presence of thoracic outlet syndrome, leaving him with an artery pinch while he pitched. He was also told his shoulder muscles were overdeveloped enough to contribute. No wonder Richard looked less than himself in that All-Star Game despite striking out three and surrendering no runs in two innings.
His career was over despite a subsequent comeback bid or two. (During one fielding drill, a couple of hard-line drives shot past him . . . and he was completely unaware of their coming his way.) In an empathetic essay called “The Uneasy Ghost of J.R. Richard,” Thomas Boswell observed just how profoundly the strokes changed him:
"Richard is more pleasant, more outgoing, more generous with other people than ever before in his life. Once he was the most forbidding Astro. Now he may be the least, signing autographs and seeking out chitchat. After a lifetime as the Goliath overdog, he is now everybody’s underdog, and he enjoys it. Richard may even have become the symbol of a decent, long-out-of-fashion idea: mutual tolerance."