Ryan, 38, Not Just Getting Older, He’s Getting Better

Nolan Ryan has been flirting with immortality for all his remarkable career, but who would have thought he’d take the concept quite so literally?

At 38, Old Man Ryan, he just keeps steamrolling along. And there’s nothing to suggest that the end is in sight.

“He’s better than he ever was,” teammate Phil Garner said late Tuesday night.

Now, hold on. This is a man who has been terrorizing hitters in two leagues for 18 seasons. He is the all-time, major league strikeout leader with 3,878. He has pitched a record five no-hitters.

When he is good, he is very, very good. Except when he’s awesome.

And now he’s better than ever?

“He’s always had a great fastball and a great curveball, but he was inconsistent,” Garner said. “Now he has better command of his fastball, better command of his curveball. And he’s got a changeup. He busts you with a 95-mile-an-hour fastball and then throws you the change. That’s just not fair.”

Life, they say, isn’t fair. But batting against Nolan Ryan is a lot worse than that, as the Dodgers can attest.

On Opening Day of the 1985 baseball season, on Ryan’s 18th opening day, the old man pitched seven innings of three-hit baseball, and his Houston Astros beat the Dodgers and Fernando Valenzuela, 2-1.

His fastball was clocked as high as 98 m.p.h. He didn’t walk anyone and struck out four. In five of the seven innings, the Dodgers didn’t get a baserunner.

The only time Ryan got rattled was when Morganna came onto the field and headed straight for the pitcher’s mound. He got down on one knee, opened wide his arms, accepted a kiss and then directed the stripper to shortstop Dickie Thon.

He had thrown six consecutive strikes at that point. His next two pitches were balls.

“I’ve caught her act before,” Ryan said, and then added, “At the ballpark.”

It’s an old act, and so is Ryan’s. But not everyone had seen it before. For instance, there was Mariano Duncan, the Dodgers’ rookie second baseman who was pressed into service Tuesday night. He had never faced so much as Triple-A pitching, and here he was asked to make his major league debut against Nolan Ryan.

The first pitch was a fastball. Duncan looked at it. The second was a curveball, and Duncan swung and missed. The third was a changeup, and Duncan swung and missed again. Welcome to the big leagues--and then some.

“He throws very hard,” Duncan said, “but not that hard.”

The “very hard” was the fastball. The “not that hard” was the changeup.

He had them all working, fastball, curve and change. “I feel like I pitched as good a game as I’ve ever pitched,” Ryan said.

Of course, Ryan has pitched games better than anyone has pitched them, and this one may not have been quite that good. But Ryan liked it, and you can understand why.

Last season, he was on the disabled list twice because of a blister and then he missed the last three weeks of the season with a hamstring pull. When he wasn’t hurt, he was 12-11, but still had 197 strikeouts in 183 innings.

He wanted to get this one over with, just to see how it would go.

“I’m just relieved,” he said. “There were a lot of distractions out there. It was the 20th anniversary of the Astrodome, and there was a big crowd, and I just wanted to get through it.”

He got through it with little enough problem. In the second, Mike Marshall doubled and Sid Bream singled him home, and that was all the trouble Ryan had to face.

And he was relieved because, well, he’s 38. And every spring, it’s a little bit tougher.

“I go through it every spring,” he said. “I’m throwing as hard as I can and nothing happens. There’s no speed. Then I get a dead arm. Between the first and second games this year in spring training, I had a dead arm, and you start to wonder if you’re losing it.

“I’ve been around long enough to know that it happens every spring. But it still gets my attention.”

Ryan smiled. This is one of the nice people in sports. Modest, unassuming. He can still get embarrassed by all the attention that naturally comes his way.

Ryan, a native of nearby Alvin, was in the stands here 20 years ago for that Astrodome opener and never dreamed he’d someday pitch here. And when he did get to the big leagues, he always wondered how long he’d stay.

“I knew that power pitchers usually start to lose it in their early 30s,” he said. “I had no idea what to expect. I had arm surgery in ‘75, and I didn’t know if the fastball would come back.

“You know, when I came up, I felt if I could get four years in, I would qualify for the pension. That was a goal. After four years, I hoped for 10. After 10, I thought maybe I could get 15 in. Now it’s my 18th year and I’m hoping to pitch 20.”

Ryan says the secret of longevity is improved mechanics, hard work in the off-season and, yes, the changeup.

Even so, it has to end sometime. Just don’t hold your breath.