Time For Ryan To Go Home -- Ranger Pitching Legend Winding Up Career After 26 Years

Peering down at his notes through reading glasses, the interviewer stopped in the middle of his question and began again. Nolan Ryan smiled patiently and waited. This was in New York last month, and the interviewer was Tom Seaver, Hall of Fame pitcher and New York Yankees broadcaster.

Seaver is 48.

Ryan is 46.

Each has one World Series ring, and they won it together, as New York Mets, way back in 1969.

"I'm sitting there looking at Tom and knowing I'm right around the corner from doing that," said Ryan, who plans to end his 26-year pitching career when the Texas Rangers' season is over. "The only reason I don't have to now is that I've put it off . . .

"But maybe I ought to go out and get some Ryne Duren glasses for this last month."

Renowned for his wildness, Duren threw 95 mph as a member of the New York Yankees' bullpen in the late '50s. Squinting through thick glasses, he frightened batters out of their gourd. Legend has it that he once hit an on-deck batter with a pitch in the minors. When he came into games, he sometimes intentionally hit the backstop with his first warmup pitch for effect.

Ryan is scary enough without the specs. The all-time leader in strikeouts, walks and wild pitches, Ryan put together a three-inning stint last month in Baltimore that was like a microcosm of his career. In the first inning, he walked four Orioles and tied a major-league record by surrendering his ninth career grand slam, this one to Mike Pagliarulo. (Ryan shares the record with Jerry Reuss and Ned Garver.) He then retired the next seven batters, but pulled a rib-cage muscle in his left side, apparently while fielding a ground ball in the third, and had to leave after a few warmups the next inning.

In a 6-5, 12-inning Oriole victory, he received a no-decision - another Ryan staple.

The injury was Ryan's third this season alone, and it kept him out for two weeks of his final season.

"A rib-cage injury usually isn't something you get over right away," he said dejectedly, "because there's not real good blood flow over there."

Team physician John Conway said the veteran right-hander had a strained muscle in his left lower rib cage.

As Ryan put it a couple of days earlier: "Even though I've had some good outings, my body is telling me it's time to quit."

A LEGEND WHO CHEATS?

Who is this future Hall of Famer anyway? He's a legend who has had to lay down the law with players on opposing teams: He will sign autographs for them only on the first day of a series.

But he also is being accused of being a cheat whose indiscretions are conveniently overlooked by baseball's powers that be.

The latest rash of Ryan-bashing came in the wake of a bench-clearing brawl that was triggered when he plunked Robin Ventura, Chicago White Sox third baseman, on the elbow with a 96 mph fastball, apparently in retaliation for a pitch that hit a Ranger.

Ventura, born three weeks after Ryan married his wife, Ruth, stutter-stepped before deciding to confront a legend on the mound. He charged Ryan, who got Ventura in a headlock and delivered six punches to the head in quick succession ("noogies," Ventura called them) before other players arrived.

"If you don't think he did it on purpose, you don't know the game," Ventura, 26, explained then.

Ventura was tossed by the home-plate umpire, Rich Garcia. Ryan was not. Ventura later was fined and suspended by Dr. Bobby Brown, American League president. Ryan was not.

"Ryan should have been ejected," Ventura said. "But it's not going to happen because he's Nolan Ryan."

`RYAN IS NO ANGEL'

Surprisingly, Ventura's words were echoed by people throughout baseball.

A Chicago Cub scout spoke anonymously of the league looking the other way when proof of Ryan scuffing the ball was presented a few years back.

"He's a cheater and it's about time someone went after him," Yankee Manager Buck Showalter said. "The next time I see Ventura, I'm going to shake his hand."

"Nolan Ryan is no angel," said Buck Rodgers, California Angel manager. "Don't let the legend cloud your judgment."

"It's like he's god or something," said White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell, who predicted derisively - and accurately - that Ryan would be injured again before the season was through. "He's been throwing at people forever, but people are gutless to do anything about it."

Said Ryan: "I didn't read any of the quotes, and I didn't pay much attention to it. You know there's a lot of people I guess who have feelings about you one way or another. I don't really get caught up or involved in those things. I just try to concentrate on what I'm doing and do the best I can."

Ranger Manager Kevin Kennedy said the remarks from other pitchers were "particularly disappointing."

NEEDS TO PITCH INSIDE

Ryan's wildness, perceived as intentional at times, is seen by many as self-preserving, born of the need to pitch inside in a day when more and more batters lean over the plate to command the outside corner of the plate.

To be his best, Ryan admits, he needs to pitch inside. That, too, was at the core of Seaver's interview with Ryan, an interview that became a virtual symposium on the negative effects the changes in baseball have had on pitching in the last 26 years.

As Ryan reached the major leagues to stay in 1968 (he pitched two games for the Mets in 1966), dominant starters and an increased emphasis on relief pitching had left hitting in both leagues anemic. In 1969, the mound was lowered 10 inches, and the strike zone tightened, signaling the start of several hitter-friendly rules, not to mention pulling in fences and alleged ball-juicing and bat-corking.

Ryan has pitched through it all, amassing 324 victories and 290 losses. Some say he has suffered the worst of it, pitching for some of the most hitting-lethargic teams of each decade - the Angels in the '70s, the Astros in the '80s.

RULES AGAINST PITCHING

"Every rule change that's come down in baseball during my 27 years has been against pitching," he said. "From the DH to pitching inside. You put it in the umpire's hand now, and it's the umpire's discretion (to rule whether a pitcher is throwing at a batter). I think we've had one crew in the league that has thrown out four pitchers without a fight. . . . There seems to be a lot of discrepancy per crew on how to handle that."

As the rule now stands, an umpire can issue a warning when he feels that a pitcher intentionally has thrown at a hitter. If an ensuing pitch from either team is thrown at a hitter, in the umpire's opinion, both the pitcher and the team's manager are ejected.

Kennedy lauded the umpiring crew that ejected Seattle's Randy Johnson earlier this season when he drilled the Rangers' Julio Franco with a 3-0 pitch.

"What I felt then and in other cases is that the pitcher gets a free shot," he said. "Then the warning comes. Then if my guy comes inside, my pitcher gets thrown out and I get thrown out. Why should they get a free shot? Do something there when you know it's intentional. The umpire on that particular day I was impressed with. Johnson went 3-0 and he hit Julio right there. (Mariner coach) Lee Elia said, `I couldn't argue because I knew in my heart that Randy Johnson threw at him.' "

Kennedy had no such view about his pitcher in the Ventura incident. Never mind that an inning before, Ranger left fielder Juan Gonzalez was hit by a pitch. As Kennedy pointed out, it was a breaking ball. But the manager also did not fault Ventura for rushing Ryan.

Kennedy did suggest, though, that the harsh words uttered about Ryan afterward by McDowell and others displayed a lack of respect toward the game's traditions and legends, a fault he witnessed firsthand as a minor-league manager in the Los Angeles Dodger system during the '80s.

"I'm not surprised by anything these days," he said. "I've had young players in the minor leagues for the Dodgers who signed as No. 1 picks and didn't know who Don Drysdale was. When I grew up, you knew who the players were, you studied the game, you pretended you were one of these guys when you played in little baseball games. Now these kids have other things out there. There's video games and there's all types of distraction . . .

HISTORY IN HIS WAKE

"I mean, to not know who Don Drysdale was in 1984 . . . You're trying to instill Dodger tradition in these guys during team meetings and none of them know who Drysdale or Koufax was. That's like signing on with the Red Sox and not knowing who Ted Williams was."

Or signing with the Mets, Angels, Astros or Rangers and not knowing who Nolan Ryan is.

Ryan has left pieces of history almost everywhere he has been, throwing a record seven no-hitters in six different parks. That is just one of the 52 major-league records he held entering this season.

He struck out Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson 22 times. Jackson also broke up a no-hitter in 1979, one of five Ryan lost in the ninth inning. Ryan struck out Rod Carew, another Hall of Famer, 29 times. His strikeout victims include 17 men already in the Hall of Fame, with at least a dozen more to follow.

It's enough to make a man feel old. Which is what Ryan was finally feeling, even before last weekend's injury. Ryan had minor surgery on his right knee less than two weeks into this season, returned and pulled a hip muscle in his first start back and missed 72 days. That was his longest stint ever in a career seemingly spent between disabled lists. But since returning from that injury July 19, he had become the Rangers' most dependable starter, going 4-1, including three consecutive victories.

RELATIONSHIPS NOT THE SAME

"It's disappointing," he said of has most recent injury. "I'm tired of dealing with injuries. Those are the things you have to deal with at this stage of my career, and I'd rather not be doing that. I'd rather be out there helping the ballclub on a regular basis, instead of constantly having to deal with injuries, and trying to come back from them."

He's tired of other things, too. "Road trips and hotels," he said. "Traveling in the middle of the night. Night games. The time changes and the travel problems that television has produced."

His relationship with his teammates is not the same, either, as it was when he was younger. Indeed, Ryan often flies home between starts.

"A lot of the ages in this clubhouse are the same as my oldest son," he said. "They look at me more as management than they do as a teammate as far as the age difference. So I think, obviously, they're going to have a different attitude toward me than they do to their other teammates . . .

"The older you get and the further age difference there is with your teammates, there's less interests, I think. Less common interests. Because of that, it makes it a little harder to talk. I feel good about this group of teammates that I have, and I have a good relationship with them. But it's different."

TIME TAKES TOLL

Money as well as age makes it different, he said. But so does doing the same thing for a quarter of a century. Nights like the recent one in Cleveland, when he allowed two hits over seven innings, used to convince Ryan to press on. Now he looks upon them as an anomaly, an ode to muscle memory.

"If I could pitch next year I would," he said. "The Rangers have pretty much left it open to me. I just really feel like time has run out. . . . My health has finally been a factor that has made me decide it's time to deal with it (retirement)."

So he will. When the Rangers' season concludes, Ryan will return to the farm in Alvin for the rest of his unnatural life.

He signed a 10-year personal-services contract with the Rangers in 1991, so he still will trip in and out of baseball from time to time in a capacity yet to be determined. But the long chapter of day games after night games, ice packs on the shoulder and grueling rehab are about to finally close.

FEELS LIKE 27 YEARS

Ryan was asked by Seaver if it had felt as though it had been 27 years since he first wore a Met uniform. He responded without hesitation.

"Yeah, it does," he said. "I mean, it's hard to visualize that. And you wonder where the time has gone. And you think about all the people's paths you've crossed and the teammates you've had and the seasons start to run together. But you look at old pictures and you look at what you look like now, and what time has done to you and your body when you get up in the morning, and all your aches and pains . . ."

He stopped and smiled at that thought as he had smiled at the sight of Seaver in reading glasses.

"I don't know about this growing old graciously," he said. "There must be something I'm doing wrong."