An Old-Timer for All Seasons

By RICHARD CORLISS

Sport is too often a cruel reminder of life's diminishing returns. Fans watch an aging hitter's creaky swing, or a runner's lethargy on the base paths, or a pitcher's loss of velocity and feel the beer breath of mortality on their own necks. Nolan Ryan, whom sportswriter Thomas Boswell has called "the Act of God," is the wondrous exception to this melancholy rule. The Texas Ranger hurler is 43 years old now, and he has more major league records than candles on his next birthday cake.

Last week, in a 5-0 victory over the World Champion Oakland A's, Ryan pitched the sixth no-hit game of his career, two more than anyone else in baseball history. His strikeout total (5,152 after the Monday no-hitter) is more than a thousand higher than Steve Carlton's all-time second best. He has allowed the fewest hits per nine innings (6.56) of any player in the game. He has struck out 19 Hall of Famers, 44 Most Valuable Players and six father-son combinations. He is the first pitcher to throw no-hitters in three different decades. Ryan is the best pitcher ever by one crucial standard: people don't hit what he throws.

Watching Ryan's smooth, ferocious delivery, a fan sees the sport at its elemental best. For baseball is a game of catch. A pitcher throws the ball, and the batter watches. Half the time, according to a study in The Stats Baseball Scoreboard, he does not even swing. On more than 60% of all pitches, his bat does not touch the ball. The result is a lot more whiffs now than in the old days. Last year batters earned 3% more bases on balls than in 1930, but struck out 75% more often. Flash, not finesse, is the hallmark of modern, macho baseball, where a slugger would rather corkscrew himself into the batter's box on a swinging third strike than ground out meekly to the shortstop. This all-or-nothing attitude is catnip to Ryan, whose fast ball ! still approaches stock-car speeds. The hitters say, "Show me" -- and he shows them up.

In his early years, the contest was fairer. Young Nolan Ryan was the typical flamethrower: all power, no control. His fast ball could zip across the strike zone or into the twilight zone. Years before he became the strikeout leader, he was the all-time walk king. As Bob Feller notes in his new autobiography: "Walks by a power pitcher like Ryan or me are like strikeouts by a power hitter. If you swing hard, it's more difficult to control the bat. If you throw hard, it's more difficult to control the ball." But in recent years Ryan has taught himself discipline. He still throws hard, but now he has a good idea where the ball is going. He gives up far fewer passes to first base. In his third no-hitter in 1974, he struck out 15 but surrendered eight walks; last week he struck out 14 men and walked only two.

Every year or so, a doctor examines Ryan and announces that, no, there is nothing physically or genetically unique about the man. His exercise routine is strenuous but not fanatic; his preparation for each game is exhaustive; his dedication to the game is exemplary; his no-frills personality allows him to focus utterly on the craft of humiliating batters. This regimen helped spirit him off last month's disabled list, where he had languished with a bad back, and onto the Oakland mound last week. A healthy mind in a healthy body: as simple as one, two, three strikes, you're out.

Or so the argument goes. It does not convince most sandlot swamis, who know that even to hurl a baseball at 70 m.p.h. to 100 m.p.h. is a preposterously unnatural activity. Many a splendid athlete has retired to an early car dealership after suffering a warped rotator cuff in his pitching arm. How could Ryan throw close to 100,000 pitches, most of them fast balls, in 24 pro seasons -- and get better at it?

Fans may register astonishment; Ryan does not. Awe is not in the arsenal of a man who has been doing so well for so long. He is an uncomplicated genius with sensible priorities. In 1988, when the gentleman farmer from Alvin, Texas, became a free agent, he spurned heftier offers in order to play with a team near his home and family. His second family is the Ranger teammates, who mobbed him after the no-hitter. Because some of them were barely in Pampers when Ryan first pitched for the Mets in 1966, the scene also suggested a Father's Day celebration -- a bunch of baseball's children swarming around the , grandest old man in the game.

After last Monday's game, Ryan received a congratulatory call from the team owner's dad. No big deal -- except that the owner's dad is George Bush. "It's a great symbol," Bush, 66, later said, "for kids around this country that love baseball as much as I do." Forget the kids, Mr. President. Nolan Ryan's never ending glory is inspiration for the geezers, for those folks of a certain age whose hairlines are ebbing (like Ryan's, bless him) while their waistlines spread. When the pitcher appears on TV in an Advil commercial and drawls, "Ah feel ready to go another nahn innin's," all of middle-aged America cheers him on. What man in his 40s would not like to look in the mirror and find Nolan Ryan?

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CAPTION: RYAN'S STATS