COMMENTARY : A Record-Shatting Day and Night by Two of Game's Brightest Lights

By Alan Greenberg

May 4, 1991 12 AM PT

Hartford Courant

In baseball, a sport that tends to proceed slowly and unremarkably, like the daily rhythms of life, two remarkable things happened Wednesday.

Against the New York Yankees in Oakland, Calif., Rickey Henderson stole his 939th base, breaking Lou Brock’s 12-year-old record.

Against the Toronto Blue Jays in Arlington, Texas, Nolan Ryan pitched his seventh no-hitter. Sandy Koufax, second in the category, pitched four.

Don’t lump their accomplishments in the same paragraph. They deserve to stand alone.

Such different skills. Such different men.

To look at Rickey Henderson’s lean and extremely muscular physique is to feel a twinge of envy. He claims never to have lifted weights, but at 5 foot 10, 190 pounds, he’s built like a sawed-off Evander Holyfield.

Walking around the dressing room in his shorts, Nolan Ryan looks every inch the middle-aged, 44-year-old man he is. Despite being a fitness fanatic who religiously rides a stationary bike, the balding Ryan has a slight paunch, concave chest and slender arms. Barring a trip to Beverly Hills to get his skin tightened, he has no discernible muscle definition. Most guys in your slow-pitch softball league are built better.

But don’t be misled by their radically different physiques.

Ryan, not Henderson, is the freak.

“Freak” has an ugly connotation, one not intended here. But what else do you call a guy who has accomplished, and is still accomplishing, things men 10 years younger can’t touch? What do you call a guy whose performance -- even when compared with those of other superstars -- is the antithesis of normal?

As remarkable as Henderson’s record is, you could project it, expect it, based on his yearly brilliance. If he stayed healthy, if he refused to give in, as most others have, to the mental strain and physical battering that comes with stealing 80 bases a season, he would eventually break Brock’s record.

That he did it in seven fewer seasons and 91 fewer attempts is testament to his cumulative brilliance, but the record -- unlike the actual sight of Henderson streaking off first base -- was hardly a bolt out of the blue.

As Ryan’s was.

When Ryan came up to the New York Mets and the big leagues 25 years ago, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were alive and JFK was less than three years dead. Lyndon Johnson was president and most Americans still didn’t know where Vietnam was. The Beatles were together, and Ed Sullivan led the Sunday night TV lineup. Lew Alcindor was a sophomore at UCLA. Roger Clemens was 4.

Doctors and experts who have written papers on such things suggest major league pitchers who aren’t forced to pitch a lot of innings in their teens and early 20s, before their arms fully mature, last longer.

Ryan, who in his early years kept getting called away from the Mets to fulfill his obligation to the Army reserves, fits the profile. But if he ever fit the mold, he broke it a long time ago.

When Ryan pitched the sixth no-hitter of his career last season, against Henderson’s A’s, he became the oldest person to accomplish the feat. We might have believed we were seeing the last exclamation point of his career, inasmuch as that June 11 no-hitter was his first in nearly nine years.

Now this. To make Ryan’s seventh no-hitter even more special (not that it’s possible), the major leagues’ all-time strikeout leader struck out 16. And these weren’t the free-swinging Tigers he was taming, these were the Blue Jays, who entered the game with a major league-leading .276 batting average.

Never one to let a virtuoso performance distract him from his regimen, Ryan, as he is wont to do, conducted postgame interviews while on his exercise bike.

“I had the best command of all three pitches. This is the best,” he said of his seven no-hitters. “This is my most overpowering night.”

Ryan, who became a 300-game winner last season, has had lots of overpowering nights as a Met, Angel, Astro and Ranger. Besides his seven no-hitters, he has pitched 12 one-hitters.

Too bad “amazing” is such an overused word. Amazing is the only word for Nolan Ryan.

The most amazing thing about Henderson, 32, is how many people look at his physical gifts and consider him “a natural,” thereby unfairly diminishing his accomplishments.

Sure, speed is essential for being a great base-stealer, but a lot of major league players have speed. What sets Henderson apart is his ability to “read” pitchers, and his willingness to take the pounding that comes with hurling yourself to the hard ground several hundred times a season. A lot of base-stealers have one or two great seasons, but then they back away from the daily sacrifice such greatness requires.

Nothing subjects a baseball player’s body to wear and tear like base-stealing does. It’s hardly an accident that Henderson has had his share of injuries, and his petulant I’m-A-Star personality, so different from Ryan’s regular-guy style, has rankled managers, especially Lou Piniella.

And fans. In the wake of baseball’s newest wave of astronomical signings this spring, Henderson publicly complained loud and long about the inadequacy of the $3 million-a-year contract he willingly signed last season. He sat out the start of spring training, demanded to renegotiate, told the A’s he might not play the season, and generally came off in the public mind like an egocentric ingrate.

Ryan is a family man and a Texas rancher. Henderson is single, and a self-proclaimed Mama’s Boy whose most famous quote is, “It’s Rickey time.”

But even if you’re put off by his mouthing off, don’t dismiss his achievement.

Rickey Henderson is the greatest base-stealer of all time.

Nolan Ryan is not the greatest pitcher.

But he is an amazing freak.