Thank you, Baseball

Turning 50 and hopping on the Ryan Express

I turned 50 not too long ago. It was a getaway day for most of the league, but I stayed put.

There’s always been baseball on my birthday, and I generally remember more about the games than the candles.

My parents, sister, and I were driving home — probably from Pizza Hut — on the Friday evening when I turned 12. We tuned into the Orioles game in the late innings and heard them secure their first win of the season. In case anyone doesn’t remember those 1988 O’s, my birthday is way too late in April for any team to be winning for the first time.

Many birthdays later, during my first year working in baseball, a couple friends visited me in San Diego. With two outs in the top of the ninth of a 4-3 game and Shawn Green on first, one friend, who didn’t follow baseball closely, asked if we’d need to play the bottom of the ninth if the Diamondbacks failed to score. Before anyone could answer, Trevor Hoffman surrendered a double to Tony Clark. The game was tied.¹

Then there was my first year in Arizona, when some coworkers brilliantly pranked me with a scoreboard message. It was hilarious in 2011.

It’s a different kind of funny today. In the immortal words of George Thorogood, “Everybody funny. Now you funny too.”

On the day after my 50th — the first day of the rest of my life — I was on the field coaching my son’s team. Alas, the 8u Yanks never managed to put one in the win column, but a lot of kids and parents deepened their love of the game this season. For that, I am grateful.

Fifty years in, almost every relationship involves at least a little baseball.

Look, I realize it was a birthday and not an Academy Award, but it still feels right to thank my mother and father for raising me with love (period) and the space and opportunity to form my own relationship with the game. My dad for the hours of catch in the backyard and for mastering — like Superman in a phone booth — the art of changing out of a suit and tie and becoming baseball ready in a few minutes, for being my coach and setting an example rooted in a father and son, two gloves, a ball, and a transistor radio; my mom for safely getting me where I needed to be and being the voice I always heard cheering me on, for keeping my baseball pants as white as possible, and for making baseball more than a game of fathers and sons, for making it a family value. They supported every decision along the way, and I’m grateful.

The Orioles game is probably on at their house right now.

In the evening after that final game of the 8u season, my son was processing his emotions. There were a lot of heavy sighs and dramatic pauses for a kid who wasn’t answering a question about his homework. He had already expressed to Mrs. WTP that his real sadness stemmed from the season coming to an end.

“Dad, do you promise you’ll play baseball with me on Saturday?” he asked, the words fighting past the pain of a tomorrow with no game on the calendar. “You see, the thing is,” he continued in a way that’s usually reserved for informing me that he’s not yet tired and/or still hungry, “I can’t be a human without playing baseball.”

Cancel the paternity test, Geraldo. The boy is mine.

Trying to put back into the game all that it has given to me guides me on many of my best days. Thank you all for being a part of it.

Even you, Nolan Ryan.

The Express

Someone thought it would be a fun quirk in the 2013 schedule if the Diamondbacks hosted the Rangers for a Memorial Day doubleheader before both teams traveled to Texas for a two-game series. And when Didi Gregorius delivered an eighth-inning home run off Yu Darvish, sparking a holiday sweep for Arizona, the arrangement became more palatable.

Then we arrived in Texas. After a scheduled off day on Tuesday, the weather in Arlington jeopardized the Wednesday game. A heavy thunderstorm rolled through around an hour before first pitch. The grounds crew couldn’t get the tarp down, and the field took on a lot of water. Too much water, in fact.

Scheduled D-backs starter Brandon McCarthy, intelligent and usually articulate, was quoted as saying: “It was a wasted off day for nothing.”

Though I’m still not exactly sure what that means, I can attest that those sentiments were shared throughout the visiting clubhouse at Rangers Ballpark.

Before the game was canceled, there was a discussion. Kirk Gibson and I walked down the third base line to meet the top Rangers decision makers: GM Jon Daniels, manager Ron Washington, and team president Nolan Ryan.²

By then, I had already reviewed our remaining schedule as well as the Rangers schedule. Nobody wanted a second doubleheader in the same week. That said, the calendar didn’t accommodate another logical trip to Texas. We knew August 1 would be desirable to the Rangers; they were already hosting the Angels over the final days of July. For the D-backs, an August 1 game meant flying from Tampa Bay to Arlington to Boston over the course of 24 hours: three road games in three different cities on three consecutive nights.

I think we preferred a date a couple weeks later, when the team could have broken up an eastbound itinerary with a quick stop in Texas. That date had its own complications.

There I am in the green shirt that I never wore again after this photo made its way around the offices at Chase Field. There’s Nolan Ryan with his back to the camera, imposing his will upon Gibby and me. And there’s head groundskeeper Dennis Klein in shorts and flip-flops, looking like he knows something the rest of us don’t.

The game was soon to be postponed due to “unplayable field conditions.”

It was determined that the makeup date would be August 1. The man I had rooted for throughout the ’80s and ’90s seemed to make this decision for all of us, while somehow also making it our decision. Nolan Ryan was so gentle in controlling the conversation that I didn’t even feel bullied until a couple days later.

I regret the green shirt, and I regret not being better prepared to push back at the Rangers’ preferred makeup date.

It was May 1, 1991. I had just turned 15, and the 44-year-old pitcher was carving up a Blue Jays lineup that included Devon White, Roberto Alomar, John Olerud, and Joe Carter. The game that night was broadcast only by Canada’s TSN.

Hours earlier, Rickey Henderson had become MLB’s all-time stolen base leader. I believe ESPN had aired that game.

Whether I had been in my room doing homework or was already I was in the family room with my dad, once coverage of Nolan Ryan — deep into the bid to complete his seventh no-hitter — appeared on ESPN, I was staying put.

These memories were sparked as I read Tim Brown’s fantastic book NOLAN: The Singular Life of an American Original.

It comes out galloping. The pace is quick as Brown navigates Nolan Ryan’s Texas.

Early on, the book spends a lot of time in Texas. (So did its subject.)

I’m certainly no cowboy, and I liked how the initial chapters made me feel a bit insecure, a bit uneasy because of my lack of understanding of Nolan Ryan’s Texas.

Once Brown begins to walk the streets of Alvin, Texas, Ryan’s hometown, a slower tempo — one designed to go the distance — sets in. “Any story about Nolan Ryan is a story about Alvin,” the author announces.

It bears out. The earliest chapters are as much about Texas as the pitcher known as Tex. There’s a codependency between the state and the star, and a toughness that runs through both of them.

Ryan’s 292 career losses trail only Cy Young and Pud Galvin on the all-time list. Young threw his last pitch in 1911; Galvin in 1892. Brown frames the modern-day record through the soul of Texas: “A true Texan sees past the box score and into the heart of a man.”

Once that’s understood, we proceed and it’s a lot of baseball. Fantastic baseball.

There’s a magical chapter that examines Ryan’s legacy, at one point calling on a story from Justin Verlander to help frame it. Brown takes us into the home dugout at Oracle Park as Verlander watches — essentially as a fan — Reds starter Hunter Greene attempt to complete a game. Verlander is a derivative of Ryan and a torchbearer for the way a starting pitcher used to approach his assignment. While reading Brown’s biography of Ryan, I was left wondering how many big league biographies Nolan had helped author.

While you’re waiting for the book to arrive, let me recommend reading a deleted chapter from the original manuscript called “Nobody Knows a Pitcher Like His Catcher.” You can find it by clicking here (on Tim Brown’s Substack); enjoy it, and begin to appreciate how good the book must be if this was the chapter that didn’t make varsity.

P.S.

I got a root canal yesterday, the second of my career. The needles and drilling aren’t a lot of fun, but they’re not the problem. I struggle with the accessories that go in my mouth and over my face. I can psyche myself into forgetting how to breathe pretty quickly.

After a false start of sorts, we — my endodontist, his assistant, and I — decided that a little nitrous would help me relax. Less than 10 minutes later, life was much better. I drifted away, carried by the soundtrack of the room, featuring Neil Young, King Harvest’s “Dancing In The Moonlight,” and Pink Floyd (seriously). Cozy on laughing gas, my mind ventured to the local softball field where my daughter’s team would practice in just a few hours. While Dr. Andrus (no relation to Elvis that I know of) removed the inflamed pulp of my tooth, I was dreaming up drills to encourage backing up bases.

Was this my Hunter S. Thompson moment? Could this be Fear and Loathing in 10u Softball?

Ouch. I felt that. “You’re waking up,” Dr. Andrus said. “Good timing.” That was it? We were done already? One hour earlier, I wasn’t sure how I would make it through the procedure. Then, in one flip of the switch, I had tripped my way through an entire softball practice plan and regained the ability to eat hot and cold food.

With the right combination of nitrous and compassion, anything is possible.

I am grateful to Dr. Kevin Andrus and his assistant Chloe. They made a bad situation comfortable. I hope you never need his services, but if you find yourself in San Diego and in need of an endodontist, I’ve got you covered.

On my way out, the receptionist helped me get ahead of my pain with a couple Advil. I washed them down and thought of Nolan Ryan, who spent the tail end of his career slinging the ibuprofen in commercials when he wasn’t firing fastballs. (It was gentler on his stomach than Aspirin!) He helped convince an entire generation that proper arm care was only two tablets or caplets away. Just like Nolan, I felt ready to go another nine innings.

1. In the bottom of the 15th, Phil Nevin had had enough. He singled home Xavier Nady. All was forgiven by the time my friends and I made it to The Field, an Irish pub in the Gaslamp.

2. There were a handful of moments during my time in baseball when the young fan inside of me couldn’t believe what the adult version of me was experiencing. Meeting with Nolan Ryan to discuss field conditions of a Major League game was one of those moments.