THE GRAND<i> OLD</i> GAME : Many Are Aging in Majors Today, but They’re Doing It With Dignity

It didn’t start out this way, but joining the movement to acknowledge the possibility of dignity in the aging process is major league baseball. Consider this an upset.

This is baseball, supposedly the sole province of the fittest and the strongest, which used to mean the youngest. This is the game in which players’ roles were rigidly prescribed. They were middle aged at 28, through at 33 and by 40, fit only to become coaches, hit fungoes to the kids and see how big they could grow their bellies.

Look again. What we’ve got here gives new dimension to that phrase, “the old ball game.”

Of the 650 players now in the majors, an unofficial count shows 80 who are 35 or older, including eight who are 40 or older.

Of the eight plus-40s, six are regulars. Even if one of them, 44-year-old Pete Rose of the Reds, is a player-manager and gets to write his own name in the lineup.

Six are pitchers (Phil Niekro 46; his brother Joe, a mere 40; Jerry Koosman and Tommy John 42; Don Sutton and Tom Seaver, both 40). All but John, who just joined the A’s, are in their teams’ starting rotations.

Take pity on these codgers? Not hardly. To say that the old guys--uh, matureplayers--are contributing is way too light.

Consider:

--One day last week, the National League’s top five in on-base percentage included Rose and 39-year-old Graig Nettles of San Diego.

--The NL’s six .300 hitters include 37-year-old Jose Cruz of Houston and 34-year-old Dave Parker of the Reds.

--The American League’s leading home run hitters are Carlton Fisk, 37, of the White Sox and Dave Kingman, 36, of Oakland. Darrell Evans, 38, of Detroit, is tied for seventh.

--The AL’s top 10 hitters last week included Lee Lacy, 36 of Baltimore; Cecil Cooper, 35, of Milwaukee and Juan Beniquez, 35, of the Angels.

--The NL stolen base leaders include 39-year-old Davey Lopes, who has 33 in 35 attempts. He finished setting a baseball record this season for most successful consecutive attempts before he was picked off first base.

--The Yankees’ Ron Guidry, who’ll be 35 Aug. 28, has won 10 straight decisions.

--The Chicago Cubs, defending NL East champions, will have started seven players 35 or older (Lopes; Larry Bowa 39; Ron Cey, Larry Gura and Richie Hebner, 37, and Gary Matthews and Chris Speier, 35).

--The Padres, defending NL pennant winners start Nettles at third and Steve Garvey, 36, at first and often bat them 3-4.

--The Angels, the World Champions of Age, have started eight men who are 35 or older (Reggie Jackson and Rod Carew 39; Ken Forsch and Geoff Zahn 38; Bob Boone 37; Bobby Grich 36; Jim Slaton and Beniquez 35). They start two more, Brian Downing and Doug DeCinces, who’ll be 35 before the season ends. Fifteen of their 25 players are 30 or older. And this is after their youth movement, which consisted of releasing Tommy John. The Angels, of course, are way out in front of their division.

There have been peculiar consequences from all this maturity, but in few areas like the game’s hallowed record book, where the longevity records are falling like dominoes.

The record they said would never be broken, Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs, disappeared 11 years ago, broken by Hank Aaron, a 22-year-man in the big leagues (Ruth was also a 22-year-man, though he had fewer at-bats).

The record they then said would really never be broken, Ty Cobb’s 4,191 base hits, is all set to drop this August. You may have heard something about this.

In the 40 seasons after Lefty Grove won his 300th game in 1941, only two more pitchers (Warren Spahn, Early Wynn) did it. Then Gaylord Perry did it in 1982, followed by Steve Carlton in ’83. Now three more (Seaver, Sutton, Phil Niekro) are on the doorstep.

Cobb’s record for games played (3,033), he finished his career in 1928, has been broken three times in the last decade, by Aaron (3,298), Carl Yastrzemski (3,308) and by Rose, who started the season with 3,371 and might get 5,000 with a little luck and a sharp enough pencil. Whatever number Rose winds up with would seem to be a good candidate to be the record that lives forever.

Walter Johnson’s career strikeout record lasted 56 years before Nolan Ryan broke it, after which he and Carlton started to play Ping-Pong with it, each of them re-taking the lead almost every time he pitched for the next year.

Ryan, who is 38 and has two more years on his contract at $1 million-per, last week became the first pitcher ever to reach 4,000 strikeouts, a mark that should last forever.

Unless Carlton pitches until he’s 50.

Or Dwight Gooden lasts ‘til he’s 35.

Don Sutton has said that his generation, which grew up on tales of the exploits of the legends before them, is the last one that cares about records. Of course, few members of Sutton’s generation care about records the way he does.

Sutton recently threw his first shutout in more than a year, tying him with Pud Galvin for No. 10 on the all-time list. After which, Sutton said, straight-faced:

“Now I can stop worrying about Pud Galvin. It was really becoming an obsession with me.”

And the Milwaukee Brewer publicity office, which had had charge of Sutton’s records for the last three seasons, sent him a telegram. It said:

“We only wish we were there, because we’ve had Pud Galvin quotes ready for two years.”

Galvin died 83 years ago.

Says a baseball official, not happily: “This could never have happened if Branch Rickey were alive.”

Well, it wouldn’t have happened under the Rickey of the ‘40s and ‘50s, but it probably would have happened in the ‘70s and ‘80s, just as it did, with or without the Mahatma.

Rickey believed in youth, hunger and competition for jobs. As head of the Cardinal and Brooklyn Dodger organizations, he signed up hundred of players, stocked dozens of minor league teams, let the talent fight its way to the top and underpaid everyone to the max.

Of course, a few things have happened since Rickey’s time. Americans discovered other games, like pro football and basketball, which siphoned off athletes. They discovered recreational activities such as college sports, TV and dune buggies, which killed minor league attendance and made large farm systems too expensive.

Baseball players discovered agents and lawyers, resulting in free agency and salary escalation.

And baseball discovered physical fitness, just like Jane Fonda.

All this resulted in an ever-smaller pool of talent, and an ever-larger incentive to stay in the pool, along with ever-more sophisticated techniques for enhancing durability. Voila! Hold the plans for that retirement banquet for a couple of years, will you Chief?

“When I first broke in the major leagues,” drawls Nolan Ryan, remembering all the way back to 1968, “once pitchers got set to turn 30, they were usually either relegated to the bullpen, or they were through. When I started in the big leagues, I just wanted to get four years in and get my pension. Then I got four years in and I thought maybe I’d get 10.”

Ryan was talking from the telephone in his pickup truck, on his way down Texas Highway 6 from his ranch in Alvin, Tex., to the nearby Astrodome.

“Aren’t you carrying this cowboy stuff a little too far?’ he was asked.

“I’d put one on my horse if I could,” Ryan said, laughing.

OK. An open mind toward new technology probably comes in handy in meeting the future, too.

Ryan is now in his 18th season, with no plans to retire until after his 20th. Even then he isn’t completely positive he’ll hang ‘em up. Ryan says now that he would only pitch beyond 1987 if “everything was just right.”

Ryan provides a nice study of the aging player.

First, as concerns money:

“Now you’re talking about the big money coming at the end of your career,” he says. “I tell young players now, third and fourth-year guys, they’re making more than I did after 12 years in the big leagues. The first years I was with the Mets, you were talking about $8-10-12,000. You had to borrow money to live in the winter . . .

“My last year with the Angels (1979), I made $330,000. I asked Buzzie (Bavasi, then general manager) for a three-year contract, for a total of $1.2 million. And he wouldn’t give it to me.”

“He would now,” someone says.

“He’s a little late,” drawls Ryan.

“When I signed over here with the Astros, I had a three-year contract. I thought that would be the end of it. I just signed a two-year extension (his second since going to the Astros). That’ll take me through my 40th birthday and my 20th year in the big leagues. Then I think that’s it.”

And, as concerns conditioning:

Nothing, not weight-lifting, aerobics or Zen could account for the phenomenon of a 38-year-old man who still throws 95 m.p.h.-plus. Even noting that the Astros’ radar gun is set 1-2 m.p.h. on the hot side, Ryan’s readings are Astro-nomical.

“I think they got me up as high as 98,” he says. “The highest I averaged was 95.5 one night against San Diego. It’s still hangin’ around.”

What is in that right arm is the stuff of miracles. But the rest, Ryan has always worked on.

As limber as a 13-year-old gymnast, he can fold his torso straight down onto his thighs and touch his nose to his knees. He used to be an avid jogger, until a series of calf and hamstring pulls drove his various trainers to devising new regimens for him.

He ran long, slow distances, and short, fast ones. He ran up hills. He ran in shallow swimming pools. He stopped running and rode Fitron machines.

If he had come along 10 years before, he would never have had to do anything more strenuous than the sprints before games when the pitching coach would run his staff in the outfield. His winters would have been nothing but carb-loading on the banquet circuit. His spring trainings would have been like a month on a fat farm to sweat off all the weight he’d put on since season’s end. He’d have never lifted a weight or met a doctor who’d ever heard of a rotator cuff.

A lot of hitters would have been a lot happier, though.

“If I ever lose my velocity, I’m going to have to get out of the game,” Ryan says. “I’m pretty close now.”

To getting out of the game, he means. His velocity looks as if it might last long enough for his grandchildren to see him pitch.

For the baseball traditionalists offended by the presence of all these graybeards, it should be noted that long-term contracts don’t explain it all.

It is true that to sign a productive 32-year-old free agent these days, you’re probably going to have to give him a four or five-year no-cut contract, or lose him to the team that will.

Thus the Dodgers decided to move Cey and Lopes. Remember Davey Lopes for Lance Hudson? Ron Cey for Vance Lovelace and Dan Cataline?

Al Campanis, who grew up at the Mahatma’s knee, never forgot what Rickey had to say on the subject: better trade a player a year too early than a year too late. It might be argued that the new approach to conditioning makes this rule obsolete. As a case in point, we have the Dodgers’ bumpy transition into their Baby Blue era.

And a look at the aging shows that in most cases, it isn’t that the club is obliged to keep them, but wants them. They include players like Enos Cabell, 35, whom Campanis just traded for. Lacy, Hebner, Gura, John, Gary Lavelle, Al Oliver, George Hendrick and Kent Tekulve are all playing for teams that recently traded for them, or signed them as free agents.

There is another theory that what we’re seeing now is a freak, that it stems from the fact that free agency and the real big money didn’t hit until 1976, that this generation is just trying to make up for its relatively impoverished early years.

What will happen to Fernando Valenzuela, who started earning $1 million a season at age 21, when he reaches 33?

Or Pedro Guerrero, who hit $1.4 million a season when he was 27?

Or Gooden, who is 20 and up to $450,000?

Come back in 10 years and find out. Try to stay in shape ‘til then. THE OVER-35 ALL-STAR TEAM

Here’s one All-Old-Timers Team, all 35 or older by season’s end. Statistics are going into weekend action.

Player Pos. Avg. HR RBI Cecil Cooper 1B .313 5 50 Frank White 2B .227 11 38 Dave Concepcion SS .259 5 23 Toby Harrah 3B .291 6 23 Jose Cruz OF .306 5 39 Davey Lopes OF .305 7 29 Dusty Baker OF .305 11 37 Carlton Fisk OF .242 22 53 Dave Kingman DH .257 21 53

Pinch-hitters--Bill Buckner (.288, 8HRs, 45 RBIs), Steve Garvey (.269, 13, 45), Reggie Jackson (.268, 15, 44) and Rod Carew (.275, 1, 24).

Starting Pitchers-- Tom Seaver (8-7, 3.14 ERA) Nolan Ryan (8-6, 3.55), Joe Niekro (7-7, 2.95), Jerry Reuss (7-6, 3.18), Don Sutton (9-5, 3.98), Ron Guidry (11-3, 2.69)

Long Relief--Steve Carlton (1-7, 2.43 ERA) and Jerry Koosman (3-2, 3.45).

Short Relief--Rollie Fingers (1-4, 4.58 ERA, 10 saves) and Kent Tekulve (4-4, 3.64, 8 saves).