HOW DOES EXPRESS ROLL ON? : Ryan’s Longevity Defies All the Odds

History tells us that being a 38-year-old fastball pitcher is a contradiction in terms. In comedian George Carlin’s routine on such nonsensical phrases, this would fall somewhere between “jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence.”

You find 38-year-old fastball pitchers at old-timers’ games or Hall of Fame induction banquets. They’re recognizable because one arm is usually shorter than the other. They need help putting on their jackets and comb their hair with the only arm that will reach their bald spot.

You don’t find them pitching in pennant races. You don’t find them still being timed by radar guns. They don’t keep nicknames like “The Express.”

That’s why it’s news every time aging Houston Astro pitcher Nolan Ryan steps on the mound and fires a 95 m.p.h. baseball toward the plate.

That’s why when he pitches, you’re tempted to send a team of scientists to the ball park to check his inner workings just to make sure he’s really not like the “Twilight Zone” robot who pitched for the mythical Hoboken Zephyrs.

Lynn Nolan Ryan has long been baseball’s classical case study. He’s a lab project in spikes.

At one time, Ryan could throw a baseball faster than a speed gun could measure it. So, a specialist from Rockwell International was called in, the theory being if man could put a man on the moon, by gosh, then he certainly should be able to time a Ryan fastball. Rockwell caught one at 100.90 m.p.h.

Ryan, again, has the experts scratching their chins and running for their text books.

Saturday night, Ryan took the mound against the Dodgers possessing an 8-3 record and one the most feared fastballs in baseball--still. It is true that he’s slowing down. Gene Coleman, operator of the radar gun at the Astrodome, reports that Ryan’s fastball is two-tenths of a mile an hour slower this year. But don’t shed a tear. He’s still averaging 95 m.p.h. for nine innings.

Ryan turned 38 in January, yet the hands of time refuse to turn with him.

“He’s just amazing,” Astro pitching coach Jerry Walker said.

Ryan is in his 18th major league season. He’s 24 strikeouts away from 4,000, but his arm doesn’t dangle from his side like a wet dish rag. And it doesn’t make sense. Sandy Koufax’s arm didn’t last much past his 30th birthday. Thirty-one-year-old Frank Tanana, baseball’s blazing left-hander of a decade ago, is hanging on in the major leagues with an assortment of junk pitches. There are a million stories about guys who used to throw a fastball.

Ryan is tampering with an axiom in baseball previously believed to be sacred.

“All I can go on is history,” Ryan said. “And history says that power pitchers don’t last.”

Ryan is the exception. Why and how he has lasted this long remains the question.

Ryan doesn’t know the answer. For years he’s been walking around with an arm that refuses to die. Sure, he keeps himself in good shape, but a lot of players do that.

Naturally, everyone wants to get technical and scientific when talking about Ryan. You want to pick his brain about muscle makeup and kinetic energy and leverage and torque. You want to talk about balance of power and leg drive.

Ryan would rather leave that to the specialists.

The best he’ll offer is sort of a Pep Boys analysis.

“I think I have proper mechanics,” he said of his delivery. “I don’t put a lot of stress on my shoulder. But pitching isn’t a proven thing as far as physiology. You can talk about hip rotation, trunk rotation, arm speed and leg drive. But I think it’s just like being a sprinter. Some people are great sprinters, some aren’t. You have to have the natural talent. I was blessed with ability.”

Yeah, but it goes deeper than that. How deep?

Along with a couple of noted orthopedic surgeons, let’s take a Fantastic Voyage of sorts inside the body of Nolan Ryan.

Dr. Frank Jobe, one of the nation’s foremost orthopedic surgeons, has longed marveled at Ryan’s longevity. Jobe, who performed historic arm surgery on former Dodger pitcher Tommy John 10 years ago, has devoted a career to repairing arms that were ravaged by the tortures of pitching.

But remarkably, Ryan, in his 18 years in the major leagues, has had arm surgery only once. He had bone chips removed from his right elbow following the 1975 season when he was with the Angels.

“There’s probably a combination of reasons that make him what he is,” Jobe said. “The primary one is that he has first-class connective tissue, the cartilage and the tendons are good at tolerating stress. Some people have a disease known as Indian Rubberman disease, which is entirely opposite of what Ryan has. It (cartilage) will wear out in a hurry. It doesn’t tolerate stress. I see pitchers who, once they get to be 25 to 30 years of age, their elasticity begins to leave them. That’s why you’ll see a pitcher who can throw 95 m.p.h. fastball at 20 but can only throw 85 at 30. Ryan’s cartilage is of high quality.”

Then Jobe praised what Ryan refers to as his “good mechanics.”

“His pitching motion is one of the best as far as the economy of energy expended,” Jobe said.

This is Ryan’s balance of power. Ryan doesn’t waste any motion or energy during his windup. This generation of power, Jobe says, starts at his feet and and builds upward through his body as his windup progresses.

“He has tremendously strong legs,” Jobe said. “I know t “There’s probably a combination of reasons that make him what he is,” Jobe said. “The primary one is that he has first-class connective tissue, the cartilage and the tendons are good at tolerating stress. his because I’ve seen him. He doesn’t get the fatigue that most pitchers get.”

Jobe said that leg fatigue often causes pitchers to transfer the burden of pitching to their arms, oftentimes causing injuries.

“You have to look at what a pitch is,” Jobe said. “It’s the development of power, energy that’s transfered through the body with a system of levers until you throw the ball. He’s a marvel because he’s got all these things you can theorize about in his body. And he happens to be in the right place (on a pitcher’s mound). He’s got it all put together.”

Ryan said long ago that his career would probably end because of problems relating to his legs, not his arm.

And that certainly has been the case.

In a 10-year span from 1968 to 1978, Ryan was placed on the disabled list just three times. But twice he made that list in 1983 because of muscle pulls in his legs. Last season, he was again disabled because of a blister problem and pulls to his calf and hamstring muscles.

In May, the only month he was completely healthy, Ryan was 5-0 with a 0.20 ERA.

Ryan has always maintained a rigid conditioning program.

He’s tried just about everything to stay in shape, even resorting to underwater workouts.

After Ryan pulled a hamstring muscle in the 1983 season, Dr. Gene Coleman, the Astros’ physical conditioning director, suggested he run underwater to relieve the pounding on Ryan’s legs. Fortunately, Coleman also recommended Ryan use a snorkel.

Coleman took the idea from the University of Texas track team, which was using the technique to rehabilitate sprinters who had suffered muscle pulls.

Though Ryan still had leg problems last year, he swears by his underwater program and has included it as part of his between-game conditioning routine.

“I used to run in the shallow end of the pool, but never in the deep end,” Ryan said. “Still, you’re still only about six inches underneath the top of the water. I do it four or five days a week when we’re at home and whenever I can on the road. In the pool, you don’t have the pounding on your legs that you get while running and you can feel the full range of motion in your body.”

But Ryan is anything but a stiff out of water.

He’s off to a fast start this season and has remained injury free.

And again the question arises: “How long can he continue?”

Dr. Glen Almquist, for 12 years the Medical Director for SCAR (Sports Conditioning and Athletic Rehabilitation) in Orange, took time out to observe Ryan in his last start against Fernando Valenzuela last Saturday night at Dodger Stadium.

Equipped with nothing but a Dodger Dog and a beer, Almquist, sitting in the stands behind home plate, set out to unravel the mysteries of Nolan Ryan.

Almquist, who hadn’t seen much of Ryan over the years, was immediately impressed. He started dissecting Ryan’s windup in terms of kinetic energy, which made for interesting eavesdropping for nearby fans.

He agreed that Ryan’s smooth windup was energy efficient and compared it to the power generated by the perfect golf swing. He could see easily how the strain of Ryan’s fastball is dispersed throughout his body, taking the pressure off his shoulder and his arm.

Is it any wonder that Ryan hasn’t had arm problems?

Almquist considered Valenzuela’s motion less efficient and thought he placed much more strain on his arm.

Of course, this was the night Valenzuela struck out 14 while Ryan, the game’s all-time leader, had just two. This was the night that Ryan had what he described as his “worst stuff all year,” the night Ryan left after sixth innings trailing, 6-1.

“If Nolan Ryan acts every night like he’s acting tonight, I wouldn’t bet he’d still be pitching at 38,” Almquist said.

Still, Almquist caught a few glimpses of the legendary Ryan fastball.

Ryan stared down at Steve Sax, standing in the batter’s box in the first inning. Ryan flicked at his cap and went into motion. His delivery is slow and fluid, each one the same as the last. In mid-delivery, he tucked his left leg up under his chin and then uncoiled toward the plate. The ball, as opposing hitters say often, exploded toward the plate.

Sax grounded out.

“He’s got a natural hop on his fastball that has to be God-given,” Almquist said.

Almquist, as does Jobe, says Ryan’s delivery places little strain the arm.

And he credits that to Ryan’s development of kinetic energy, which is the energy released at the point the ball leaves Ryan’s hand.

“He’s just more efficient at building kinetic energy,” Almquist said. “Other pitchers can lose that energy when they kick their foot in the air. His generation power is like that of a javelin thrower. It’s the ability to have everything come together at one point and one time, to release kinetic energy at the same time. It starts at his feet and works up. His arm is just acting as a whip whereas with other pitchers, the arm and the shoulder are the suppliers of power.”

Of course, being Nolan Ryan helps.

“Some guys work on that all their life,” he said. “You couldn’t take Nolan Ryan’s mechanics and make a pitcher out of someone without his potential.”

There are some things that are left unexplained.

Ryan knows he’s unique. There are some things not even he can explain. He’s thrown a baseball faster and longer than any man to play the game. That’s a fact.

Why? Why aren’t there more Nolan Ryans?

“I don’t know,” he said. “But you see less fastball pitchers now then when I was young. I think some of it has to do with the coaching kids get and the different pitches they develop. I didn’t have to develop other pitches. I didn’t even throw a curveball until I got to the pro level. When I came out, I was a thrower out of Texas.”

Twenty years later, who would have believed that he’d still be just that.