Astros’ Ryan Plans to Pitch With Power or Quit

At an age when most pitchers of his generation are wearing blazers instead of throwing them, 41-year-old Nolan Ryan dominates power pitching the way no one ever has before.

Tom Seaver retired. Gaylord Perry retired. Phil Niekro and Ferguson Jenkins went home, too. Steve Carlton? Not much left. Don Sutton? Gets by with offspeed pitches. But Nolan Ryan goes out every five days and throws smoke. Still blazing after all these years.

“I’m going to be a power pitcher until the day I can’t be and when that comes I’m going to get out of baseball,” Ryan said one morning during the offseason.

He’s not power. He’s overpower. For big league batters, he is proof of George Bernard Shaw’s assertion that “every man over 40 is a scoundrel.”

Ryan struck out 270 batters in 211 2-3 innings last season, the most strikeouts in the the majors and the most ever by a pitcher 40 or older.

He was 8-16 only because the Astros averaged 3.35 runs in his 34 starts. In his 16 losses, Houston scored 13 runs while he was still in the game. He went 0-5 in July, but had a 2.36 earned-run average that month.

“Each year, people ask how he does it,” said Alan Ashby, the Astros’ catcher. “It’s a never-ending story, and they’ll probably be back asking me again next year.”

It seems ages ago that Ryan was the wild Texan the New York Mets unloaded to California because his pitches did not follow predictable paths from the mound to the plate.

He became a star for the Mets during the 1969 playoffs and World Series, winning the playoff clincher with seven innings of three-hit relief and saving Game 3 of the World Series with 2 shutout innings. But after he struck out 137 and walked 116 in 152 innings in 1971, the Mets traded him to the Angels.

Since then: a record five no-hitters, the career strikeout record with 4,547, the season record of 383 in 1974, eight strikeout titles. Surprisingly, no Cy Young Awards.

“I take each year as they come along,” Ryan said. “Going into last spring, I didn’t know how I’d fare.”

He had gone on the disabled list twice in 1986 with a sore elbow caused by a sprained ligament. But he won 11 of his last 13 decisions and pitched masterfully in the playoffs, beating the Mets in Game 2 and pitching a two-hitter with 12 strikeouts in nine innings in Game 5, which the Mets won in the 12th.

He still throws more than 96 m.p.h., faster than Dwight Gooden, faster than Roger Clemens, faster than Mark Langston, who have the advantage of youth.

How does he do it?

“My ability is a God-given talent,” he said, not wanting to try to divine any reasons.

While pitchers have gotten bigger and stronger with each generation, the top ones of this era throw slower than those of the last. Ryan thinks it may be because the ball movement has been emphasized over speed in the age of the split-fingered fastball.

“I think young pitchers nowadays are much further ahead than pitchers coming up in my era because of the fact that there are so many more people out there who are qualified to teach pitching,” Ryan said.

“There’s more known about it. There’s more pitchers out there now that like the split-fingered, the slider, and those are two pitches that are fairly easy to teach, so kids are having success throwing them. I think that’s one reason that we don’t see as many hard throwers as we used to.”

Things were different when Ryan came up in the late 1960s.

“I never had to throw a breaking ball until I got the major league level,” he said somewhat incredulously.

And it was years after he arrived until he could throw it for strikes. The first six seasons he won the American League strikeout title, he also led the league in walks.

Last season, he had 3.1 strikeouts per walk, the best ratio of his career. And he also is training harder than he did before.

“When I first came up into the league, with the way salaries were, we were working in the offseason. Spring training was for getting in shape,” Ryan said.

“When I first broke in the major leagues, all pitchers did was run a lot. They didn’t expect pitchers to last that long. After you turned 30, they started phasing pitchers out. I didn’t anticipate being any different.”

But now, Ryan, along with almost every pitcher, has a daily offseason conditioning program. He also has become a sponsor of Sports Sense, a fitness program for high school students.

“I enjoy working with young pitchers because I have something to offer,” Ryan said. “A lot of kids, they overdo it. Too much, too soon. A lot of kids overcome improper mechanics because they’re young and strong.”

Even with conditioning and a better knowledge of pitching, baseball people still want the kids who throw heat.

“The scouts are always looking for that real outstanding arm,” Ryan said. “They still feel like the fastball is the best pitch and that if you find somebody with good velocity and teach them good mechanics, you can teach them the other pitches.”

But eventually, the heat escapes from most pitcher’s arms and they must survive with offspeed stuff. Carlton, who dueled with Ryan for the career strikeout lead in 1984, is trying to hang on with curves and an unreliable slider. Carlton has even experimented with knuckleballs.

“Each person’s attitude and the way they play the game is different,” Ryan said. “He’s no doubt a different-style pitcher than he was when he won 27 games with Philadelphia. But I’m sure in his mind he feels that he can still pitch and be successful.”

But while Carlton struggles to remain in baseball, Ryan is still at the top.

“It’s clear no one wants to hit against him,” Ashby said. “I don’t know how to explain what he does. It’s a combination of ability and pride and work habits. There is nobody like him.”

How long can Ryan keep up the heat?

“Anytime you see a man his age throwing in the mid-90s, it’s amazing,” Houston pitching coach Les Moss said. “You know it won’t happen forever, but you wonder when he will stop.”