Angels Can’t Afford to Wait on Ryan

So Nolan Ryan has been inducted into the Angels’ Hall of Fame.

Aren’t you supposed to be retired to do that?

Well, yes. . . .

And we see that Ryan’s old Angel No. 30 has been taken out of commission and embossed above the 362-foot sign on Anaheim Stadium’s right-field wall.

Aren’t you supposed to be retired to do that?

Well, yes. . . .

So why couldn’t the Angels wait until Ryan retired?

Well, could you?

Gene Autry is 84. Jimmie Reese is 90. They are two of Ryan’s closest friends in the Angels’ organization and they wanted to guarantee their attendance at the inevitable induction ceremony.

On this one, waiting on Nolan was definitely not the way to go.

Forty-five going on 90 miles per hour, a 25-year veteran plunging head-on toward 30, Ryan had his Angel jersey retired Tuesday, on the evening before his 744th major league start, 13 years after leaving the Angels and who-knows-how-many years before he leaves professional baseball.

Maybe that’ll be the only way to end it for Ryan. Retire him systematically. First his jersey, then his glove, then his cap.

Eventually, the arm will catch on, right?

Reese isn’t so sure.

“A man like him can play till he’s 50,” said Reese. “It’s been done. Joe McGinnity was still pitching when he was 50. Iron Man McGinnity. He used to pitch whole doubleheaders in his younger days.”

Jimmie’s memory isn’t quite what it was when he was, oh, 87. McGinnity, according to the Baseball Encyclopedia, was born in 1871 and pitched through 1908, which means he was 37 when he retired.

Iron Man was a mere pup compared to Ryan.

Just the same, Jimmie says, “Mentally, Nolan’s just as strong as ever. And he does have a 10-year contract with the Texas club. It’s all contingent on his health.”

Actually, what Ryan has is a 10-year “personal service” contract with the Rangers. And right now, he’s personally serving the Rangers every fifth day, give or take a strained hamstring or a tweaked Achilles’.

Ryan did tease the crowd Tuesday, using the home-plate microphone to tell the fans, “I’m looking forward to starting here tomorrow night. It very well may be my last start at Anaheim Stadium. That, I don’t know.”

We’ve heard that before, of course, which is one reason why the Angels went ahead and scheduled the induction anyway.

Traditionally, the Angel organization holds two retreats every year--one in November to prepare and plan for the one that customarily lasts from April through September.

So it was then, in a hotel suite in Tempe, Ariz., that the topic was first broached. The club needed a Hall of Fame inductee for 1992 and after four go-rounds, the short list was pretty well depleted.

Bobby Grich was in. So was Jim Fregosi. Don Baylor. Rod Carew.

Who was left?

Bob Boone?

Doug DeCinces?

Dick Enberg, maybe? Before Ryan arrived in 1972, he was the one who carried the franchise.

Tim Mead, the team’s publicity director, threw out a name. The Name.

“What about Ryan?”

“But he’s not retired. We have rules, you know.”

The more they talked about it, though, the more those rules started to bend.

“We made an exception to the rule,” Mead said Tuesday, “but Nolan Ryan is the exception to the rule.”

“It’ll probably never happen again,” said the man who coordinated the ceremony, Tom Seeberg, the Angels’ vice president of civic affairs. “People look at Brian Downing and say, ‘Why not him? He’s not retired, either.’

“With all due respect to Brian, Nolan is a phenomenon. To be 45 years old and throw like that?”

And draw like that. A Ryan night at Anaheim Stadium was always an automatic attendance boost during the lean years of the 1970s--and it was again during the lean years of the 1990s.

Angel attendance on Monday night, Ryan-less: 19,127, a season low.

Angel attendance Tuesday: 51,401, a season high.

And he pitches tonight, a most fortuitous piece of rotation scheduling by Bobby Valentine.

Ryan Nights I and II figure to be the highlights of this dreary Angel summer and the club certainly sold them as such. Before Tuesday, the No. 30 on the right-field wall was covered by a mammoth blue-and-white sign that tantalized “Coming June 16, 1992,” as if this were the State College Octoplex bracing for “Batman Returns.”

Radio and television plugged the event and local newspapers printed special Ryan editions. Everyone, from the front office to the media to the community, seemed to agree--this was a welcomed occasion.

“The way we’ve been going,” Reese said, “you’ve got to do something to break the monotony.”

Not that the Angels ever planned it that way, CEO Richard Brown insisted.

“This has been nice publicity for us, but that was not the intent,” Brown said. “We really do love him; it was not our intention or purpose to do this as a money-maker. If you do that, that’s sad.

“We may be losing, but we’re not sad.”

And Ryan did appear truly touched by the moment, particularly when a brand new cherry-red Sierra Club Coupe pickup made its way out of the Angel bullpen, even if MC Ernie Harwell had to interrupt the proceedings with a brief commercial for GMC.

See, GMC donated the truck. The Angels could have bought one and presented it themselves, but, you know, they are going to lose $8 million this season and times are tough everywhere.

Nonetheless, Ryan seemed happy, the Angels were giddy and the only glaring omission was Ryan’s name on the 1992 Angel roster.

What might have been if only Buzzie Bavasi had consulted a palm reader in 1979. . . .

“I probably wouldn’t be able to find an extra finger for all the rings,” Brown said.

The Angels would own three or four of them, at least, Reese had to figure.

“You have the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes in this game,” Reese mused from the dugout before the festivities began. “But that one stands out more than most.”