Throwing Smoke

When California Angels Righthander Nolan Ryan pitches, curious things happen. Batters edge back from the plate, opposing managers bench their red-hot hitters, Angel outfielders let fly balls drop in for base hits, and the Angel catcher stuffs a half-inch-thick pad of foam rubber into his glove. The reason: Ryan throws so hard he rewrites the basic customs of the game. Batters inch back because they are scared, managers yank top hitters because they can't connect on high fastballs, Ryan's own outfielders are lulled to sleep by the preponderance of infield outs his pitches produce, and his catcher will do anything to keep his hand from turning to raw meat.

With a fastball that has been clocked at 100.9 m.p.h. (3 m.p.h. faster than Bob Feller's and 7 m.p.h. faster than Sandy Koufax's), Ryan's influence on a game isn't surprising. Nor is his record. He has struck out more batters (383) in a single season than anyone in baseball history, pitched as many no-hitters (3) as Feller, and has thrown four one-hitters, six two-hitters and 14 three-hitters. This year, after two seasons as a 20-game winner, Ryan is setting a 30-win pace with eight victories and only two defeats while flourishing a 2.25 ERA. All that on a team of otherwise marginal talent. "The man is unbelievable," says Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver. "He has the potential to pitch a no-hitter every time out."

When Ryan, 28, first came up to the majors seven years ago with the New York Mets, potential was all he had. "I was in the big leagues because of my arm, not because I could pitch," he recalls in a languorous Texas drawl. "My idea of pitching was to throw as hard as you could." That he did, walking batters by the dozen. His difficulties were not eased by chronic blisters on his pitching fingers or long stints in the bullpen.

When he failed to improve after the Mets traded him to the Angels following the 1971 season, Ryan nearly quit the game. Angel Pitching Coach Ted Morgan (now with San Diego) urged his frustrated pupil to slow his delivery. With that, Ryan started to develop a sharp curve and an effective change-up--"the only 90 m.p.h. change-up in the majors," jokes Fellow Angel Pitcher Bill Singer. Meanwhile Ryan had started using a scalpel to shave off the scar tissue and calluses on his ringers, under which blisters were forming. (To this day he spends five minutes before every start carefully trimming excess skin off the tips of his pitching fingers.) Soon the results were visible in the win column: 19 victories his first year in Anaheim.

Basketball Dream. Though Ryan still suffers from control woes--he led the majors in walks for the past three seasons--he is now the compleat pitcher. By combining powerful leg thrust off the rubber with whip action in his arm, the 6-ft. 2-in., 198 lb. pitcher fires a fastball that, if anything, is fastest at the end of a game. When he doesn't want to throw smoke, he is not shy about switching to his curve or change-up, even when the count is 3 and 2. By that time batters are usually so intimidated that they simply stand motionless, watching a called third strike. Says Oriole all-star Third Baseman Brooks Robinson: "Is there fear? Sure there's fear. There's an old baseball saying, 'Your heart might be in the batter's box, but your ass ain't.'"

Ryan's heart wasn't in baseball until he realized his dream of being a basketball center was impossible because he just didn't have the height. That was while he was in high school in Alvin, Texas, a small town 25 miles from Houston. Ryan, the son of an oil company supervisor, still lives in Alvin with his wife Ruth and three-year-old son Reid, and has no intention of abandoning his unpretentious country-boy life, despite a salary of more than $100,000 a year. A duck, deer and quail hunter in the offseason, Ryan complains that even Alvin (pop. 15,000) is getting too big. "Houston is encroaching and I'll probably have to move out," he says. There are a lot of hitters in the American League who wish he would move out of baseball--fast.

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