Perhaps, Ryan Should Have Hit Nails on the Head

Nails Dykstra almost took one in the head.

He was minding his own business, this tough little russet-headed Dutch boy, when Nolan Ryan buzzed one right by Nails’ noggin.

Nails did not come up fighting. Sometimes, he does. This time, he restrained himself. All he did was glare.

“I gave him a look,” he said. “But I didn’t say anything to him. I said something under my breath, but I didn’t say anything to him.”

Nails still had a baseball bat in his hands. He decided to go after Ryan with that.

Before this sounds any more like an Elmore Leonard novel, let it be known that Lenny (Nails) Dykstra is a New York ballplayer, an outfielder out of Garden Grove, Calif., and that he is a rambunctious Dead End Kid type who takes his nickname seriously and doesn’t take much crud from anybody.

But when Dykstra dug in against Ryan during Thursday night’s National League playoff game at the Astrodome, holding back instead of fighting back, it was the bravest thing he could have done--a real Rocky Sullivan, scared-to-go-to-the-chair act of courage. Besides, remember what discretion is the better part of.

“I figured there were better ways of getting even,” Nails said.

In the fifth inning, Dykstra ducked a Ryan fastball, one pitch after hooking a near-homer past the right-field foul pole. The Mets already were beating Ryan, 2-0, by that point, so the Houston pitcher was hot. He low-bridged Dykstra more or less to say: Don’t mess with me.

The Mets understood. This was street stuff. This was a show of force, protection of turf. If anybody could understand something like that, it was a gang from New York.

“Nolan knew what he was doing, and so did we,” said Wally Backman, who was on deck when Dykstra was at bat. “Nolan’s the type if he wants to get you, he’s going to get you. He can hurt you. When he pulls something like that, he’s trying to make a point. He’s not out to make you think less of him. He’s trying to make you respect him more.”

Added another Met, Ray Knight: “Nobody throws like Nolan. He’s the epitome of fastball pitchers. Nobody throws harder, and I’ve faced most of ‘em. He’s out there making a point. He’s saying if you want to stand up there taking shots at him, you’d better be prepared to take your medicine, too. Better be prepared to pay for it. He’s saying, ‘Here, you want to jerk one out of the park on me? Try one of these.’ I can appreciate that. I might have done the same thing.”

Dykstra, a bantam who likes to fib to people that he’s 5-10, was tough enough to shoot Ryan a look, stand right back up to him and whack a single. By so doing, he set the table for a two-run triple by Keith Hernandez that put Game 2 of the playoffs in the bag for the Mets, who went on to a 5-1 victory.

Not that Nails wasn’t unnerved, at least a little. You just can’t show it, that’s all.

“I’ll probably think about it later, lying in bed,” Dykstra said. “It’s got the same effect as a car accident. When it happens, you don’t think about it much. But when you get home, you say, ‘Wow. That was close.’ ”

Tough it out. Be hard as nails.

“You gotta be a fighter,” Dykstra said. “You can’t go down without a fight. And I’m a professional pest. That’s what I do. I try to cause a little trouble out there. I’m the little guy who’s out there trying to give the pitcher a hard time. And sometimes he’s going to want to give some back.”

What mattered to the Mets was that Dykstra didn’t show any fear, just as the team needed not to show that they were rattled by losing the playoff opener to the other fastest gun in the National League West, Mike Scott.

“None of us minded so much what Nolan did, so much as it opened our eyes,” Knight said. “Everybody wanted Dykstra to get right back in there and give it back.

“When he got the hit, we were all yelling at the mound: ‘Yeah! Take that!’ ”

Dykstra was asked if having a Nolan Ryan hummer zoom over his head like the Concorde woke him up, got his attention.

“Did it get my attention? My attention! What do you think? Wouldn’t that wake you up?”

The Mets thought that the brushback--or brushdown, whatever it was--was a moment of truth of sorts, as meaningful as any batted ball has been so far for the Mets.

“You’re not going to intimidate Nails, and you’re not going to intimidate the Mets,” Backman said. “We felt we were going to win this one, anyway, but that opened our eyes even more. It reminded us we were in a fight, that we better get our warpaint on.”

As businesslike as some baseball players like to be, they occasionally have to rev up their emotions. They have to do things and say things to get themselves into the right frame of mind.

Like when Hernandez was called out on strikes while batting against Scott in the eighth inning of Game 1. He was asked later how he felt about facing Scott, who had been throwing bullets.

“Oh, I was scared to death,” Hernandez said. “Shaking in my boots.”

He was doing nothing of the kind. But the sarcasm helped him deal with the disappointment.

The next night, he struck back against Ryan for a triple and a single and was walked intentionally twice.

“We’re not supermen,” Hernandez said. “We’ve got the same human frailties everybody else has. You have to be strong to play this game. You have to take it and dish it out, and that means everyone. Nobody’s spared.”

Including Nails Dykstra, who gave Nolan Ryan the sort of look Thursday night that said: See you in New York.