These Guys Were in Fast Company

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to face Nolan Ryan, here is some testimony as gathered by Ben Walker of the Associated Press:

--Henry Aaron: “You could hear his ball hiss. It didn’t sound like anyone else’s. I used to tell young hitters, ‘You don’t need to run up there to hit it. It will get there plenty quick, and when it does, you better be ready to swing.’ ”

--Len Matuszek: “I was a rookie and I was batting .090. He just stared at me and gave me one of those ‘get-in-there-and-stop-wasting-my-time’ looks. I hit a long one that had a chance to be a home run, but it curved foul. I was feeling pretty good about that and then I looked at him. He was glaring at me, and I knew I was in trouble.”

--Jim Watson, Ryan’s high school coach in Alvin, Tex.: “At the start of games, I used to tell him to throw at batters. Heck, he was so wild then that I didn’t need to tell him. By the second inning, he could lob the ball up there and strike out people. They were too busy running out of the batter’s box.”

--Reggie Jackson: “He was the only pitcher I was ever scared to face.”

Add Ryan: Willie Mays was 0 for 3 against him but said: “He never struck me out. He struck out a lot of people, but not me.”

Postscript: According to the Associated Press, Ryan made three more starts against the San Francisco Giants during Mays’ career, and Mays sat out all three games.

Trivia time: What pitcher gave up the most career home runs to Henry Aaron? Would-you-believe-it Dept.: Red Barber was the announcer 50 years ago this week when the first televised baseball game was played at Ebbets Field between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds.

Barber told Norman Chad of the Washington Post that he wanted a memento of the occasion, so he asked NBC for a small, engraved silver cigarette box.

NBC obliged. When Barber opened the box, there was a bill for $35.

Barber: “I would have been pleased not to get the bill, but I paid it.”

In the blood: Junior Reynolds, a bartender in Pete Rose’s old neighborhood in Cincinnati, told the New York Times: “Pete’s dad would bet on which cube of sugar a fly would land on.”

Back for more: Wrote Murray Chass of the New York Times, after George Steinbrenner named Bucky Dent to manage the Yankees: “Steinbrenner already has broken him once, back when Dent was still the shy hero of the 1978 playoff game with the Boston Red Sox. Within a few years, Steinbrenner was harpooning Dent so frequently that Dent barely had the psychic strength to lace up his spiked shoes. A friendly priest used to visit the clubhouse to tell him everything would be all right, but George’s goading ended Bucky’s playing career.”

41 years ago today: On Aug. 20, 1948, the Cleveland Indians’ Satchel Paige, 42, beat the Chicago White Sox, 1-0, on a three-hitter. It was his second shutout in a row. The crowd of 78,382 at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium was the largest ever for a major league night game.

Trivia answer: Don Drysdale, with 17.

Quotebook: Archie Moore, former world light-heavyweight champion, on Doc Kearns, his legendary manager: “Give Doc 60 pounds of steel wool and he’d knit you a stove.”