Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

“Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.”

“I am Evil Forest. I kill a man on the day that his life is sweetest to him.”

* * *

The 1979 season drew to a close, and the Astros finished 1 1/2 games out of first place behind Cincinnati. A wretched offense and the lack of a fourth starter somehow still teased 89 wins, fifteen more than the previous year. J. R. Richard was truly feared and at the top of his game, but the supporting cast was wanting. So very close, but those last steps up the mountain would prove more difficult and more costly than all the ones that had gone before.

In 1979, there was really only one Gunslinger, and the Astros needed him to prove that they were serious at last. Four no-hitters, over 2400 strikeouts, 383 in one season, a fastball that often touched 100 miles per hour and a knee-buckling curve that couldn’t be ignored had placed Nolan Ryan in the pantheon. When Ryan was on the mound, the game was reduced to a series of one-on-one confrontations and that’s the way he liked it. His history of pitching for weak teams shaped his approach, seeding the mythic appeal of One Man Against All Comers. Proud and alone, he would stand or fall based on the strength of his peerless right arm.

This Gunslinger ethos matched up well with Houston, and they made him the highest paid player in the game with that three-year, $3.5 million dollar contract before the 1980 season. The million dollar club option in the fourth year was expected to be Nolan’s last before he hung up the leather for Alvin, to ranch and raise his kids. Now all the Gunslinger had to do was to ride into town and take center stage, mowing down challengers over the seasons and hoisting the Astros into the postseason.

So he did. Three times in seven seasons the Astros made it to the playoffs. Ryan’s pitching wasn’t the only reason, but he was the public persona of the team, the shiny gold belt buckle or the star behind the capital H. With his growing success as a gunslinger in a gunslinging town, a better cast followed that improved the team steadily. Now in the reflected light of success, the Astros were on the map nationally.

The knock on Nolan had always been that he played for himself and because of that was a .500 pitcher. His gifts were such that reducing the singular conflicts might mean denying the special talent, denying the very reason for his celebrity. Celebrity it truly was, for he was alone in the American conscience as the Gunslinger Personified. He transcended the sport, his legend drawing upon the history of the American Experience and those echoes were wildly popular. “Things happen when I pitch,” he said. “A sinker-ball pitcher gets three ground outs and nothing happens. It’s boring watching guys get singles and groundouts. My games are exciting.”

The trappings of this celebrity warped that initial expectation of ending after four years in Houston. After all, he was still at the top of his game, still winning those challenges, and his star continued to grow and his legend exploded. A fifth no-hitter. 3,509 strikeouts, then unthinkably on to more than 4,700. His continued success defied all of the concepts of the aging ballplayer. At the age of 40, Ryan led the National League with a 2.76 ERA and 270 strikeouts. Despite the 8-16 record that year, he finished fifth in the Cy Young voting. As Mark Belanger said, “It’s a moral victory not to strike out against him.” Age and those 16 losses were difficult foes to subdue, however. Fearing the unkind diminution that age was sure to take on the Gunslinger, Astros owner John McMullen offered to re-sign the star but with a 20% pay cut.

===============

Texas Rangers vs. Houston Astros
Sunday, March 31, 7:05 PM CDT, Minute Maid Park

Matt Harrison, LHP – 18-11, 3.29

Bud Norris, RHP – 7-13, 4.65

Two pitchers getting their first Opening Day assignments. Norris pitches pretty well in MMPUS, but he’s prone to getting that fastball up and against this team, that’s not the way to stay in the game for long.

Promotions: Opening Day Street Fest, Schedule Magnet Presented By United Airlines

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Texas Rangers vs. Houston Astros
Tuesday, April 2, 7:10 PM CDT, Minute Maid Park

Yu Darvish, RHP – 16-9, 3.90

Darvish held the Astros to two runs in eight innings last season, the only time he’s faced Houston. He’s expected to be much, much better this year. Great.

Lucas Harrell, RHP – 11-11, 3.76

A groundball pitcher with a good sinker, Harrell has a decent puncher’s chance to go deep in this one. Say, a Chuck Wepner’s chance.

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Texas Rangers vs. Houston Astros
Wednesday, April 3, 1:10 PM CDT, Minute Maid Park

Alexi Ogando, RHP – 2-0, 3.27

Ogando is making the conversion from reliever to starter. What better way to do this than against Houston?

Philip Humber, RHP – 5-5, 6.44

Humber has thrown more perfect games than anyone on either team.

==============

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

“There is no story that is not true.”

“It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.”

* * *

Once again The Gunslinger was cast off from his home, sent away because no one could do what he had already done, and anyone could do what was left for him to do. In Anaheim, they figured it was easy to find .500 pitchers for much less money, so they let Nolan Ryan walk. At 42, Ryan was already past where anyone else had been on the thin ice of possibility. He couldn’t possibly have anything left, and no owner in his right mind would commit to paying what he wanted, only to see it all go down the tubes.

Even more futile and downtrodden than the Astros had been, the Texas Rangers had won as many as 94 games once, in 1977. Since then the club had slid into that hell of 65-75 wins a season, never able to crack the code that would bring them to the next level. Motivated by the burning need to imprint his middle fingers on the psyche of the Astros’ owner, Ryan’s signing provided the Rangers with a sorely-needed marquee draw and legitimacy in the baseball world. His five years with the Rangers didn’t bring any postseason appearances – the best finish the team had was 86-76 in his final year – but his mythic status finally took on a size commensurate with the Gunslinger’s ego. Every start was An Event, covered ad nauseum by national press, filled with entire stadiums lighting up from camera flashes as he struck out challenger after challenger. Personal rewards were the ultimate culmination of a career seen through the lens of individual challenge and combat; he was a Texan, and he pitched for the Rangers, but Nolan Ryan was and always had been a mercenary, a modern gladiator. Accepting his pay and then turning a team game into a series of small battles that he needed to win by himself. This was the basis of his story. The fact that he won so many of them, raising his middle fingers to the disbelievers, is what made him so special.

Fittingly, the end occurred on the field when he blew out his elbow, trying to win another battle. Stopped at last, the tidal wave of myth crested and slowly drew back. After his playing days Ryan struggled to find ways to quell his restlessness, his need for personal victory that in the end could not be stilled. Dabbling in business and politics, he found that the friends he’d made while riding high as gunslinger weren’t quite as deferential now. He found that courtesies were only extended based on a quid pro quo, not freely given just because he had been The Gunslinger who once had slain all comers. This time, he’d cast himself adrift into a world that no longer cared about his every move but would like an autograph.

==============

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”

“It is against our custom, It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it.”

* * *

Eventually he came back to the game. It was the place where his currency was brightest and crispest; the constant attempts to relive youth through remembrance fill the veins of baseball and pump a new but different life into the husks of old stars. Like washed-up boxers retelling dim stories in a bar, they come alive and feast on memories. He parlayed his wealth and connections first into significant Texas minor league ownership and then he accepted the mercenary’s role once more and became the public face of a group who purchased the Rangers. The competitive fire was burning hard in him still; the challenges were shadowy and potent. It was easy for Ryan to work the public and grin for politicians, but fending off the quizzical bumps he got from all directions at the hands of multi-billionaires threatened to be overwhelming. The old gunslinger had learned some tricks though, and soon enough he could function in this new arena too. He learned the game of keeping focus off of yourself, while making sure that what he wanted to do didn’t interfere with enough of the Really Big Money to cause him problems.

It was an inevitable but delicious circumstance that resulted in the takeover of Texas baseball. Sticking it to Houston had long ago been replaced by much larger challenges, but in order for him to be successful with the Rangers he had to do just that – find ways to dominate the competition on every possible front. An addled and complacent Astro owner, flush with success but without a plan to maintain it, provided the perfect opportunity and Ryan seeded the state with an aggressive crop that strangled the Astros into submission. Their minor league teams fled the state. The major league team became a moribund laughingstock, ripe for the ultimate takeover, and was finally subjugated as weak and ineffectual prey in a killing field designed to strip them of all cover.

Internally though, the Rangers were slipping. Ryan’s bullish style and outsized ego resulted in a series of missteps that required action by other hands on the rudder. Once this realization became public, it was now more clear than ever that Ryan had been used again, his celebrity and mystique bartered for public interest and acceptance as long as it didn’t interfere with the larger questions at hand. At 66, facing the possibility that he couldn’t win this last challenge, he played the last public card he could and floated the humiliation to the press. The call to arms was noted, but not heeded. This is the last showdown for the old gunslinger.

===============

Much has changed for the Astros since 2012; actually, almost all has changed for them. It’s still the same ballpark, but new paint and colors are everywhere as they cast bread and circuses to the fans. New players, new broadcasters, new front office, new logo and uniforms, new business model, new frontiers in public relations stumbling. It’s normal to see extensive change under new ownership and expected that those changes would be even more pervasive when a failing one is taken over. Any way you look at it, it’s a New Era. Ice Age or Age of Reason? We aren’t going to have answers to these questions for years. It is, however, baseball season. It’s the greatest game, and we still get to see it played in Houston, night after night. Take the solace you can in this and continue your journey with patience. There is a horizon, and the sun does rise above it.