Ryne Duren Throws Away Problems by Going Home

Today he lives in the same small town where he, his fastball and his legend grew up.

Cazenovia, Wis., (pop. 400) once was the destination of baseball scouts who wanted to see firsthand whether a boy really could average 22 strikeouts a game.

It is now the end of the long, winding journey through baseball made by Ryne Duren, that pitcher scouts first came to see some 45 years ago.

In his prime, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Duren’s fastball was as feared as Nolan Ryan’s would be about a decade later. He was one of the game’s best relief pitchers, and pitched three shutout innings in the 1959 All-Star game in Pittsburgh. Yet even in his prime he was sowing the seeds of his own demise.

Wearing thick, shaded glasses, Duren would make crowds roar when he purposely fired a warmup pitch 10 feet over the catcher’s head. He also was sinking ever deeper into a drinking problem but unaware where or how to find help.

Success and disappointment always kept in close touch. Nothing better or more bitterly illustrated that than his selection as one of the two players--Ken McBride was the other--chosen to represent the expansion Los Angeles Angels in the first of two All-Star games in 1961.

Duren never made it to the game’s site, Candlestick Park. The night before, he was told his 10-day-old son died. Duren left San Francisco for his home in San Antonio.

The tragedy increased his drinking. In the next five years, drinking would contribute to four trades, his retirement from baseball and the the breakup of his marriage. By the late 1960s, he was a sore-armed alcoholic who felt as if “I was falling off the edge of the earth.”

He finally returned to Cazenovia in south-central Wisconsin about 80 miles west of Madison. He said he hasn’t had a drink since May 1, 1968.

In that time he has rebuilt his life and helped others rebuild theirs through a rehabilitation center he helped found. Duren, 60, is comfortable in semi-retirement in Cazenovia.

It figured someone who traveled so many roads, but rarely one straight and narrow, would end up where he started.

Ryne Duren first discovered how strong his arm was at age 15 when he heaved a stone over a pond and onto the roof of a barn more than 400 feet away. His friends fell silent in disbelief.

“I was a little bit in awe myself,” he said.

Slowly his reputation grew until, as a junior in high school, he hit a batter with a fastball and broke three of his ribs.

Duren and has fastball were deemed too dangerous for the youth of Wisconsin and he was banned from pitching in high school games.

“The coach made the decision,” Duren said. “I guess he felt he had to if he was going to keep on living in Cazenovia.”

So Duren would pitch every Sunday in the local adult leagues, where he averaged 22 strikeouts a game. Word of this phenom spread and eventually scouts were drawn in to see him for themselves.

“The people in town would have some fun with those fellas,” Duren said. “The scouts would ask the people if I always threw that hard and if I always struck out 22 people and they’d tell the scouts that I was actually off my game that day.”

He was signed by the St. Louis Browns organization, which had become the Baltimore Orioles when Duren made his major league debut in 1954. He was traded to the Kansas City Athletics in 1957 and to the New York Yankees in 1958.

He was credited by the Baseball Encyclopedia with an American League-high of 20 saves that season. In the World Series against the Milwaukee Braves, he pitched nine innings and struck out 14 batters. The Yankees won the series in seven games.

Duren had made, and would continue to make, his reputation as an overpowering pitcher. In 1958, he struck out 87 batters in 75 innings. In 1959, he struck out 96 in 76 innings. In May of 1961, pitching for the Angels, he became only the eighth man in major league history to strike out four batters in an inning. In June of that year, he set an American League record by striking out seven consecutive Boston Red Sox.

Duren’s power so impressed the folks at NBC, the network proposed a throwing contest between Duren and Dick Farrell of the Philadelphia Phillies.

“They said they’d give $1,500 to the winner,” Duren said. “At the time I was making only $8,000 for the season, so I was more than willing.”

But the deal fell through. To this day Duren isn’t sure how fast he threw. All he has to judge by is the looks on batters’ faces and the comical jabs they sometimes made at the ball.

“Some of them looked just like Zorro,” he said. “They’d be backing away as they took a cut. Professionals usually never laugh, but sometimes I’d make these guys look so funny that I’d see the guys in the Yankee dugout cracking up.”

A batter’s piece of mind couldn’t help but be rattled at the sight of Duren with his thick, shaded glasses--he had 20-200 vision in his left eye, 20-70 in his right--throwing that hard. Nolan Ryan once admitted that he didn’t know where one of his fastballs was going, Duren didn’t appear able to see where it was going.

Duren, 6-foot-2, and 200 pounds, perpetuated the notion.

“Just about every inning he would walk off the mound and take off those big glasses real slow and start cleaning them,” said Lee Thomas, Philadelphia Phillie general manager and a former Yankee and Angel teammate of Duren’s.

Yankee Manager Casey Stengel got into the act when he had catcher Elston Howard paint his fingers red so Duren could see the signs from the mound.

But Duren’s most famous tool of intimidation came about quite by accident when he relieved Bob Turley in one game.

“Turley’s style of pitching meant that he liked to have the mound sloped low,” Duren said. “Because I was a power pitcher I liked a steep drop so I could really push off.

“Well, I was feeling pretty good so I decided to really let the first warmup pitch go. When I planted my foot, my knee hit me in the chin and the ball just took off.”

It took off several feet over the catcher’s head. The crowd roared with laughter. Duren knew he had hit on another ploy to intimidate hitters.

“He would not only throw that first pitch high, but he’d throw it between the catcher and the guy waiting to come up to bat,” Thomas said.

Duran’s drinking was also picking up steam. He felt it getting out of control, but did not come forward with his problem.

“Baseball did nothing but contribute to my drinking,” he said. “It was a life style. You played ball and you drank after.”

Eventually, Duren drank himself out of New York in 1961. The final incident came when he pinched a flight attendant who then threw a drink in his face.

After the death of his son in 1961, Duren was admitted to the hospital for walking pneumonia, but actually was suffering from a combination of shock, exhaustion and drinking.

“Ryne would come into the clubhouse with just these horrendous hangovers,” Thomas said. “His eyes would be bright red and he looked like hell. It was times like that I thanked heaven I never had to face him as a batter.”

Duren’s skills were so formidable that while he was ripping himself apart he was able to have a respectable 1962 season with the Angels, getting eight saves and striking out 74 in 71 innings. He also pitched well with the Phillies in 1963, going 6-2 with a 3.30 ERA.

In Philadelphia, he stopped drinking for a while--one of numerous attempts. But by 1964 he was back at it. He was traded to the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds traded him back to the Phillies in 1965, the Phillies traded him to the Washington Senators, where his career came to a less-than-glorious end. A hotel maid found him face down, thought he was dead and ran off screaming to Senator Manager Gil Hodges.

He was released by the Senators and went on a week-long drinking binge. His marriage to Beverly soon ended. One night he fell asleep at home with a cigarette in his mouth and burned down part of his house.

Eventually he was admitted to a Texas state mental hospital. There he met a doctor who thought it might help if Duren worked with delinquent kids.

“Working with those kids was the greatest thing for me,” he said. “It gave me a lot of insight into myself. An alcoholic always looks for excuses and this forced me to look at myself.”

Eventually, Duren helped start a rehabilitation center in Stoughton, a small town in Wisconsin.