24 years ago today, Nolan Ryan threw his seventh and final no-hitter

To a whole generation of baseball fans, there's a good chance Nolan Ryan is simply known as that perpetually grumpy executive sitting in the seats behind home plate --  and, possibly, the guy who taught Robin Ventura a valuable lesson in batting etiquette -- with just a faint idea of the great player he used to be. 

Well, consider the following a brief history lesson.

By 1991, Ryan (then with the Rangers) had established himself as one of the greatest right-handed pitchers in baseball history. He ran away and hid with the all-time strikeout record (to this day, only Randy Johnson is within 1,000 Ks of him), and had won his 300th game the year prior. But at 44, the Ryan Express kept chugging along at a remarkably effective pace, and he saved some of his best work for last. 

Ryan already comfortably held the record for most career no-hitters, and was already the oldest person to throw one when he fired his sixth at age 43 in 1990. Not content with any of that, he decided he'd keep going out there and breaking his own records, just to make all those other slackers feel bad, presumably. Against the Blue Jays on May 1, Ryan sat down 16 batters (!) en route to his seventh and final no-hitter, a record that feels as untouchable today as it did then. 

And, if you are cold of heart and unmoved by all of that, there's this little detail from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's recap of the game:

Let this serve as a friendly reminder that Nolan Ryan is a bad, bad dude.