During his 1999 Hall of Fame induction speech, Nolan Ryan credited pitching coach Tom House:

“While I was [with the Rangers] I was very fortunate to have a pitching coach by the name of Tom House. And Tom and I are of the same age and Tom is a coach that is always on the cutting edge. And I really enjoyed our association together and he would always come up with new training techniques that we would try and see how they would work in to my routine. And because of our friendship and Tom pushing me, I think I got in the best shape of my life during the years that I was with the Rangers.”

House has admitted to using steroids in the 1970s, making him one of the earliest players to admit to using performance-enhancing drugs. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he described his use of steroids as “a failed experiment”, although he increased from around 190 pounds to around 220 while using them. He viewed the experience as a failure since the extra muscle did not enhance his substandard 82-MPH fastball, while the drugs contributed to knee problems, eventually necessitating a total of seven operations. He claims to have stopped using them after learning about the potential long-term effects of steroid use in college classes during the off-season.

House has stated that “six or seven” pitchers on every major league staff in the 1970s were “fiddling” with steroids or HGH. He attributes players’ willingness to experiment with performance-enhancing substances to the permissiveness of the drug culture of the 1960s, and he believes that steroid use has declined in major league baseball since the 1970s, as players have become more aware of the potential long-term drawbacks.