Joining the Texas Rangers

If you've followed my blog or read my newsletter, you know my three passions in life are my family, my beef operation and baseball. So you can imagine my excitement when Texas Rangers' owner Tom Hicks appointed me as president of that professional baseball team.

My family agreed that I should accept the position. So I took over all aspects of the Texas Rangers' organization at the beginning of February. Between settling in the headquarters in Arlington and traveling to Arizona to watch veterans and prospects at spring training, time has flown by.

So I'm a little late in getting this message out to you. But I want you to know how important it is to me to balance out this new pursuit with everything else I have built.

At the top of that list is Nolan Ryan's Beef. I pledge to you that I will continue to maintain the highest standards for our beef products from our pastures to your table.

Today, I am on my Texas ranches checking my cows during their spring calving season. And even as you read this, many of your stores are rolling out a battery of new Nolan Ryan's Guaranteed Tender Beef products including pre-cooked burgers.

In partnership with Kroger, we also are launching a distinct new line of beef called Nolan Ryan's Premium Reserve.
This new line features beef from cattle of verified age and from identified producers who “never, ever” administered antibiotics or growth-promoting hormones. You told us you wanted this product, and now it will be available at Kroger by the end of March.

These are just a few ways I'll continue to listen to you at the same time I'm watching the Rangers move toward a pennant.

Before closing, I want to comment on the recent beef recall sourced to a plant in California. We did no business with the companies impacted by the recall. At the same time, I can assure you this was an isolated incident caused by a breakdown in process that may never happen again.

As an industry, beef producers follow best management practices that ensure animal care and provide our customers with only the safest, most wholesome beef. For an example, you need look no farther than Nolan Ryan's Beef procurement and processing program. Once you do, we feel certain you'll understand why you can be confident in the process controls we have in place. Visit our website at www.nolanryanbeef.com for more details.

Cow Watching

Over the years, my favorite pastime outside baseball is driving through a pasture looking at cattle. It doesn't matter whether they belong to me or one of my ranching colleagues.

I got the inspiration for this from one of my cattle mentors, Homer Herring, who has ranched for many decades in South Texas. When I just started in this business, Ruth and I visited Homer and his family every year. After lunch, we'd climb in his pickup and look at his cattle all afternoon. Homer would teach us how to determine whether his cattle progressed from the previous year.

We've adopted Homer's techniques for our own cattle. First thing Ruth and I do when we arrive at each ranch during calving season is check the condition of the cows and calves. Then we'll examine the pairs one by one to notice whether our personal herd decisions are helping move our calves in the direction that we want to go as a beef company. We repeat the appraisal again about nine months later when we wean the calves off their mothers.

The process doesn't stop even after the calves go into the feedlot. I'll make a visit every time I'm in the area to observe my calves in their pens and make sure they are making progress toward becoming what I consider the perfect beef animal. If you have tried our beef, email us at info@nolanryanbeef.com and let us know how we're doing.

I guess it's understating when I say I really enjoy looking at cattle. In fact I'll bore people riding with me because I look at them so long. I can't tell you how many times I've looked over at Ruth after an afternoon of driving through pastures, and she's been asleep. But Ruth and I will never stop doing it because we know the ranchers that truly excel in this business have a passion for their cattle and are always striving to get better.

Well, calving season is just around the corner and I'll enjoy every minute of driving those pastures.

Happy Holidays from the Ryan's!

On behalf of Ruth, myself and our entire family, I want to extend our sincerest wishes for a safe and happy holiday season to you and your family! We'll be spending the holidays at the ranch with our children and grandchildren. We hope that you'll be spending special time with your family and loved ones as well.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A Day in the Life

People often ask me what I do these days now that I’m not playing baseball. Sometimes it can be hard for athletes to go from a professional career to the real world. But I’ve been blessed to continue to work in baseball while also focusing on my other loves – my family and raising beef. Balancing those three passions is my biggest challenge.

In baseball, I’m an owner of the minor league baseball teams the Round Rock Express and the Corpus Christi Hooks. On days that I’m home in Central Texas, I’ll work from my office. And if it’s during the season, I’ll attend as many of the Round Rock Express home games as I can.

I’m also special assistant to the president for the Houston Astros. That means I go to Houston a couple of times a month during the season. In the off-season, I attend the mini-camps, and then I go to spring training in Florida for a couple of weeks to work with the minor leaguers.

Every week I’ll also make it to one of my ranches. I have managers at each of the ranches and they do the daily operations, but I like to spend two or three days at each ranch working cattle or other chores that need attention. When I go to the Ray Ranch in South Texas, I’m just a short drive from Corpus Christi. So I’ll incorporate a trip to the Hooks office and maybe see a game or two while I’m there. That way I’ll combine my ranch visits and my baseball commitments on one trip to the area.

But of all the things I do, family is the most important. Ruth and I helped solve the family dilemma by moving to Central Texas to be near our three children and their families. Ruth’s parents also moved to the area so we’re all able to stay in touch on a regular basis. And being with my family makes the rest of my “jobs” all that much more enjoyable.

The Natural Approach

Some people confuse the terms “organic” and “natural.” Organic beef follows stringent requirements that include never allowing the cattle to eat anything but certified organic feed and never giving it antibiotics even for healing purposes.

By comparison, the beef that my partners and I send from our ranches to your plate is an all- natural product. We manage our cattle to meet the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) definition for natural: Our products never contain any additives. In addition, the products we produce are never more than minimally processed.

I've included a few pictures here of ranchers and partners involved in our program. The first photo is of Chuck Schronk, Charlie Harrod, a rancher from Arkansas, myself and Wendell Schronk of Beefmaster Breeders United, San Antonio, Texas. The second picture is of me talking with Dr. Charles Graham, DVM of Gonzales, Texas.

We provide our customers this assurance by working only with licensed feedlots that feed only high quality grain. We even guarantee that our cattle receive no growth hormone implants or antibiotics during the last 100 days of the feeding period to go beyond the “minimally processed” requirement.

But there’s much more going on with our natural beef products. Because we want to provide you with some of the finest beef that you’ll ever eat, we work with others in the beef industry to achieve huge strides in beef quality assurance.

That means we raise and handle our cattle with the finest care. Our customers have demanded this and we have moved much further down the road in providing high levels of cattle care than ever before.

Ranchers refer to the mood of cattle as their disposition. And it’s our goal to create an environment that generates only cattle with good dispositions 100 percent of the time. We have built our cattle working facilities so that our cattle are always comfortable. And we support beef industry efforts to educate the trucking companies that transport our cattle from the feedlot to the processing plant to ensure that they understand how to keep these cattle stress-free through harvest.

Our commitment to you doesn’t end there, however. Nolan Ryan's Guaranteed Tender Beef selects only the tenderest beef at the processing plant. We then age it for 14 days to be sure every bite is tender and full of flavor. We are proud that USDA certifies our tenderness and aging process.

Remember: Natural does not mean organic. However, perhaps what you are really looking for is beef that is minimally processed yet provides other quality and cattle-care components. If so, that’s what we produce with Nolan Ryan's Guaranteed Tender Meats.

Being Grandparents

Ruth and I are grandparents of one boy and four girls, and when fall comes around we really miss the activity that our grandkids generate during the summer. Although not all of them are school-age yet, fall months seem to lower their speeds.

Our grandkids are the reason Ruth and I moved from our longtime home in Alvin to Central Texas. We wanted to be near them and it’s been really nice to see them all the time. During summer, it’s not unusual for all of them to come by my office during the same day. And if they don’t, I know they’ll filter through at some point during the course of the week.

As parents, I remember hearing people tell me: “Just wait until you’re a grandparent.” And I thought that didn’t make any sense. How can being a grandparent be any different than being a father and raising your own children and participating in all the things that your children experience? But now I can honestly say that having grandchildren is completely different than I ever anticipated. They bring a lot of joy to our lives. We’re already looking forward to the holiday season when we’ll gather all the kids up and take them to the ranch because they love playing down by the river.

Promoting Beef in Japan

About the middle of July, Ruth and I and our three children—Reid, Reese and Wendy—some of their spouses and one grandchild traveled to Japan to promote U.S. beef for a couple of weeks. It was a great learning experience for our children as well as an opportunity for them to enjoy a different culture. We attended a lot of functions geared around the beef trade in Japan and learned a great deal about the Japanese consumer.

A highlight of the trip was attending a professional baseball game between the Chiba Lotte Marines and the Orix Buffaloes. Chiba is coached by Bobby Valentine, who was my teammate on the California Angels and my manager when I played for the Texas Rangers. Before the game, Bobby and I jointly promoted U.S. beef at a special event for the fans. Then I had the pleasure of throwing out the game’s first pitch. To round out our day, my family and I hosted a reception in one of the stadium’s open-air boxes for Japanese beef buyers.

We enjoyed visiting with the Japanese people. We discovered that, like Americans, the Japanese place a premium on tenderness and all-natural qualities in their beef. But there are differences too. Japanese homes don’t have a lot of freezer space, so they don’t shop in volume. Instead, Japanese consumers shop for fresh food every other day to prepare the next couple of meals. They take a lot of time selecting the right beef cut.

The Japanese enjoy a wide selection of beef products ranging from their native Kobe and Holstein beef to imported beef from the U.S. and Australia. Yet what I came away with was the respect that the Japanese have for U.S. beef and their excitement about being able to purchase it.

It was a great trip because it combined all my passions – family, baseball and beef.