TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062590/0625260.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 68

An Old-Timer for All Seasons



For Nolan Ryan, 43, it's no hits, no runs -- and no peers

By RICHARD CORLISS


    Sport is too often a cruel reminder of life's diminishing
returns. Fans watch an aging hitter's creaky swing, or a
runner's lethargy on the base paths, or a pitcher's loss of
velocity and feel the beer breath of mortality on their own
necks. Nolan Ryan, whom sportswriter Thomas Boswell has called
"the Act of God," is the wondrous exception to this melancholy
rule. The Texas Ranger hurler is 43 years old now, and he has
more major league records than candles on his next birthday
cake.

    Last week, in a 5-0 victory over the World Champion Oakland
A's, Ryan pitched the sixth no-hit game of his career, two more
than anyone else in baseball history. His strikeout total
(5,152 after the Monday  no-hitter) is more than a thousand
higher than Steve Carlton's all-time second best. He has
allowed the fewest hits per nine innings (6.56) of any player
in the game. He has struck out 19 Hall of Famers, 44 Most
Valuable Players and six father-son combinations. He is the
first pitcher to throw no-hitters in three different decades.
Ryan is the best pitcher ever by one crucial standard: people
don't hit what he throws.

    Watching Ryan's smooth, ferocious delivery, a fan sees the
sport at its elemental best. For baseball is a game of catch.
A pitcher throws the ball, and the batter watches. Half the
time, according to a study in The Stats Baseball Scoreboard,
he does not even swing. On more than 60% of all pitches, his
bat does not touch the ball. The result is a lot more whiffs
now than in the old days. Last year batters earned 3% more
bases on balls than in 1930, but struck out 75% more often.
Flash, not finesse, is the hallmark of modern, macho baseball,
where a slugger would rather corkscrew himself into the
batter's box on a swinging third strike than ground out meekly
to the shortstop. This all-or-nothing attitude is catnip to
Ryan, whose fast ball still approaches stock-car speeds. The
hitters say, "Show me" -- and he shows them up.

    In his early years, the contest was fairer. Young Nolan Ryan
was the typical flamethrower: all power, no control. His fast
ball could zip across the strike zone or into the twilight
zone. Years before he became the strikeout leader, he was the
all-time walk king. As Bob Feller notes in his new
autobiography: "Walks by a power pitcher like Ryan or me are
like strikeouts by a power hitter. If you swing hard, it's more
difficult to control the bat. If you throw hard, it's more
difficult to control the ball." But in recent years Ryan has
taught himself discipline. He still throws hard, but now he has
a good idea where the ball is going. He gives up far fewer
passes to first base. In his third no-hitter in 1974, he struck
out 15 but surrendered eight walks; last week he struck out 14
men and walked only two.

    Every year or so, a doctor examines Ryan and announces that,
no, there is nothing physically or genetically unique about the
man. His exercise routine is strenuous but not fanatic; his
preparation for each game is exhaustive; his dedication to the
game is exemplary; his no-frills personality allows him to
focus utterly on the craft of humiliating batters. This regimen
helped spirit him off last month's disabled list, where he had
languished with a bad back, and onto the Oakland mound last
week. A healthy mind in a healthy body: as simple as one, two,
three strikes, you're out.

    Or so the argument goes. It does not convince most sandlot
swamis, who know that even to hurl a baseball at 70 m.p.h. to
100 m.p.h. is a preposterously unnatural activity. Many a
splendid athlete has retired to an early car dealership after
suffering a warped rotator cuff in his pitching arm. How could
Ryan throw close to 100,000 pitches, most of them fast balls,
in 24 pro seasons -- and get better at it?

    Fans may register astonishment; Ryan does not. Awe is not
in the arsenal of a man who has been doing so well for so long.
He is an uncomplicated genius with sensible priorities. In
1988, when the gentleman farmer from Alvin, Texas, became a
free agent, he spurned heftier offers in order to play with a
team near his home and family. His second family is the Ranger
teammates, who mobbed him after the no-hitter. Because some of
them were barely in Pampers when Ryan first pitched for the
Mets in 1966, the scene also suggested a Father's Day
celebration -- a bunch of baseball's children swarming around
the grandest old man in the game.

    After last Monday's game, Ryan received a congratulatory
call from the team owner's dad. No big deal -- except that the
owner's dad is George Bush. "It's a great symbol," Bush, 66,
later said, "for kids around this country that love baseball
as much as I do." Forget the kids, Mr. President. Nolan Ryan's
never ending glory is inspiration for the geezers, for those
folks of a certain age whose hairlines are ebbing (like Ryan's,
bless him) while their waistlines spread. When the pitcher
appears on TV in an Advil commercial and drawls, "Ah feel ready
to go another nahn innin's," all of middle-aged America cheers
him on. What man in his 40s would not like to look in the
mirror and find Nolan Ryan?


____________________________________________________________
RYAN'S STATS

                            Total     Rank

    No-hitters                  6      1st     Strikeouts
         5,152      1st     Hits per nine innings    6.56
 1st     Walks                   2,566      1st     Shutouts
                 59      9th     Victories                 294
    20th