Greg Dahl never played in Major League Baseball, but he caught some of the biggest names in baseball history.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It started with a name in an old Astros media guide.
Someone living not far from the Houston Astros’ spring training home in West Palm Beach. So, we went looking for him.
Greg Dahl answered the door.
Dahl never played in the major leagues. But for one spring in 1980, he had one of the best seats in baseball — catching bullpen sessions for some of the game’s most electric arms.
“The Nolan Ryan and J.R. Richard and Joe Niekro,” Dahl said. “God… Nolan Ryan was the easiest out of the three to catch.”
“It was heat and it was straight,” he said.
In 1980, Dahl was a non-roster minor league catcher invited to Astros spring training in Cocoa Beach.
Back then, the Astros trained at a modest complex about 45 miles east of Orlando. The bare-bones stadium seated about 4,000, with players’ dorms behind the practice fields.
But the talent was undeniable.
“The 1980 Astros have some of the most talented and promising players in all of baseball,” television reporter Dan Patrick of KHOU 11 said during a spring training report that year.
Much of that talent was on the mound. Manager Bill Virdon’s pitching plans included three intimidating names.
“J.R. will open the season,” Virdon said in 1980. “Niekro pitches second, and Ryan pitches third.”
Each pitcher brought something different.
Ryan’s blazing fastball. Richard’s overpowering heat. And Joe Niekro’s dancing knuckleball.
“Joe Niekro… nobody wanted to catch him and it was a knuckleball,” Dahl said with a laugh. “So we get beat up.”
Dahl still keeps a scrapbook from those baseball days — photos, newspaper clippings and a trading card — reminders of his six seasons in professional baseball, most of them in the Cincinnati Reds organization.
Tucked among the pages is another piece of history: the letter inviting him to Astros spring training in 1980.
When Dahl arrived in camp, he quickly learned the reality of being a non-roster catcher.
“You guys are here because we need bodies,” Dahl remembers Virdon telling the group. “But it could help you. There’s a chance.”
Dahl held onto more than just the letter.
“I think I had that helmet ’79 and ’80… and I kept it,” he said, pointing to the helmet he wore catching bullpens that spring.
His moment in camp came during live batting practice.
“The only time I really got to show anything… we had live batting practice and I got the hit off Ryan,” Dahl said.
Not bad against a Hall of Famer.
“I did make some good contact,” he added. “But he’s just getting his work in.”
Moments like that kept the dream alive.
But Dahl says his baseball future had already changed years earlier after an elbow injury that never fully healed.
“The doctors even told me it’s going to take you a year to get where you need to be,” he said.
He never quite got there.
“No… never the same.”
The 1980 season turned out to be Dahl’s last in professional baseball.
Today he lives just minutes from the Astros’ spring training complex in West Palm Beach, though he admits he rarely goes.
Cocoa Beach, however, still crosses his mind.
“My one son lives in Daytona, so every time I go over that I-95 overpass, I look to the left,” Dahl said. “That was, to me… that was good times with the Astros.”
He said he was surprised anyone came looking for him.
Then again, how many people in West Palm Beach can say they once caught Nolan Ryan, J.R. Richard and Joe Niekro during one unforgettable spring?
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