https://www.texasmonthly.com/culture/new-nolan-ryan-biography-tim-brown/ Brown’s theory is that Ryan possessed a deep-rooted psychological need to throw harder and longer than other power pitchers. “He believes his right arm was a gift,” Brown said. “[Many players] have been equally blessed. What separated him from most was his desire to honor that gift—with effort, with dedication, with curiosity, and with the sort of commitment he saw every day in his father, who worked two jobs and slept a few hours and never, as far as anyone knew, uttered a word of complaint.”
Very true. In this day and age when athletes attain generational wealth within a few years of becoming stars, the prevailing thoughts of long term health effect vs. quality of life over meaningless records wrestle within said athletes. Most current athletes pick quality of life over records for the most part (but of course only those that can afford to do so). We are probably at a place where we will see fewer and fewer records being broken, simply for the fact that athletes want to be healthy to spend some of their gazillion dollars.
