The opponent that night will be the Kansas City Royals — the team that was part of the drama that took place on Sept. 8, 1990.<\/p>\n
Ryan was pitching against the Kansas City Royals at Arlington Stadium, according to Retrosheet.org<\/a>. The website noted that in the second inning, Bo Jackson led off by grounding out, pitcher to first.<\/p>\n It was a little bit more dramatic than that. Jackson\u2019s hard-hit one-hopper bounced off Ryan\u2019s glove and hit him in the mouth<\/a>. The ball split Ryan\u2019s lip, but the 43-year-old picked up the ball and threw Jackson out at first.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ball got lost in the raindrops,\u201d Ryan later said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Blood streamed down Ryan\u2019s chin and stained the front of his white Rangers home jersey.<\/p>\n MLB\u2019s all-time strikeouts leader resumed pitching and worked into the eighth inning, striking out eight and allowing an earned run. He did not figure in the decision, but the Rangers won 2-1.<\/p>\n Ryan needed six stitches to close the split lip, but he waited until after the game to receive medical attention.<\/p>\n Photos showed Ryan glaring in to take a sign, with blood smeared on his jersey. The Pacific trading card company used one of the images in one of its sets from the 1990s, Sports Collectors Daily<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n Iconic photo: Nolan Ryan prepares to pitch while sporting a bloody jersey. The Hall of Famer continued to pitch after a ground ball caromed into his face and split his lip. (Fanatics)<\/p>\n Chuck Morgan, the Rangers\u2019 executive vice president of ballpark entertainment, promotions and production, told KXAS<\/a> in a statement that fans had been asking about a giveaway with the bloody lip theme.<\/p>\n \u201cThis would rank pretty high (in a list of Nolan giveaways),\u201d Morgan said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cYou can go almost to any sports bar in the country and see a picture of that hanging on the wall. It\u2019s just an iconic moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Morgan has been the Rangers\u2019 public address announcer since the 1983 season, according to MLB.com<\/a>. Ryan has had some great moments during his career, but Morgan believes this might have been one of the fireballer\u2019s signature moments — toughness personified.<\/p>\n \u201cAnytime Nolan pitched, it was an event,\u201d Morgan said<\/a>. \u201cThere was a little bit of a drizzle, but we had a big crowd (34,412<\/a>). If there was a chance of Nolan getting hurt, it was always of some concern. So when that actually happened, all I could think was, \u2018I hope he can stay in.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so legendary that here\u2019s a guy that\u2019s this tough Texan and he goes out there and gets hit in the face and continues to pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a9 2025 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 The Texas Rangers announced a different kind of giveaway for a game in late May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[5,74874,74875,74876,74877,26133,74878,55,4,18917,149,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-573578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bloody-lip","10":"tag-bloody-lip-jersey","11":"tag-bloody-lip-replica-jersey","12":"tag-bloody-lip-replica-jersey-promotion","13":"tag-bo-jackson","14":"tag-chuck-morgan","15":"tag-kansas-city-royals","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-nolan-ryan","18":"tag-rangers","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-texas-rangers","21":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116073459982620321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nolan](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/cmg\/NMUQJLZEYJBSLDD6APBA6J2O7M.jpg\")
<\/p>\n