Opening Day: A view from the hill against Nolan Ryan

I beat Nolan Ryan on Opening Day 1991.
Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Brewers

Donald Fehr had just wrapped up his annual spring training visit and team meeting with the Milwaukee Brewers, when several of us approached him to ask an additional question or two. We were one of the last clubs Fehr and his staff from the Major League Baseball Players Association would visit in 1991, and the calendar was about to switch over to April. That meant Opening Day was getting close. 

“Who do you guys open up with?” he wondered out loud. The answer came back quickly from someone in the back of the room: “Texas…in Arlington.” Fehr got a strained look on his face. “That means Nolan, right? Good luck.”

Nolan was of course the great Nolan Ryan, an elder statesman by that point in his career, but still one of the top pitchers in the game and capable of throwing yet another no-hitter pretty much any time he took the mound. Even at 44 years old, Ryan remained capable of dominating any lineup. Fehr’s response, a sarcastic “good luck,” was his way of telling us that we didn’t stand much of a chance in our season opener.

It was easy to see why he felt that way. Nolan Ryan vs…who would the Brewers be sending out to the mound on Opening Day? The answer was yours truly. It was by default, mind you, that I got that Opening Day start. I was slated to be the club’s number three or four starter that season, but injuries to Teddy Higuera, Chris Bosio and Juan Nieves moved me up the pecking order.

“You’ve had a great spring,” Manager Tom Trebelhorn told me as he broke the news. “You’ll be in the number one slot coming out of camp.” That not only meant I’d be going against my former teammate and future Hall of Famer on Opening Day, but most likely I’d be facing most team’s top starters as the season unfolded.

Maybe I didn’t know enough to be nervous about it.  But really, for some strange reason, I wasn’t. Something about being such a huge underdog was calming. No one expected us to win, no one expected me to be around to earn the victory…yet both things actually happened.

It was an experience I certainly won’t ever forget. President George Bush (the first) was on hand to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. (His son, the future president, was at that time the owner of the Rangers.) I should not have been surprised when the Secret Service showed up with bomb-sniffing dogs a few hours before the game to check through everyone’s locker. I was alone in the clubhouse, actually doing a radio interview over the phone with Irv and Joe, when the dogs came into our locker room and began sniffing everything…and everyone.

As I went out on to the field to begin warming up, I was greeted with thousands of fanatical Texas Rangers fans waving miniature American flags at me and calling me nasty names. Last time I checked, I was still an American myself, but that night—after they had unveiled a statue of Nolan outside the stadium – I was being treated like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV.

When I was finished warming up, I headed for the dugout and took a seat just as President Bush, a former college baseball player, headed to the mound for his first pitch. I found out later he had had a heated argument with this security people about their insistence that he wear a bullet-proof vest under his wind breaker. The President knew it would restrict his ability to throw. The security people won the argument, and sure enough, Mr. Bush’s attempt at throwing a strike was short of home plate.

He had entered the field through the home team’s dugout, meaning he would exit through ours. All of my teammates stood to shake his hand as he came off the field. I was deep in thought and had a wet towel draped over my head, so I didn’t even see him coming. I was sitting just at the bottom of the dugout steps when I looked up and saw the president right in front of me.

“I threw the damn thing in the dirt,” he said to me, obviously mad that he had not made a better showing on the mound. Not knowing exactly what to say to the president, I just smiled and nodded as he headed for the clubhouse. I was too focused on the task at hand to realize what had just happened.

Once the game started, it was apparent that neither Nolan nor I were at the top of our games. I certainly didn’t pitch the best game of my career, giving up a couple of long home runs.  But our offense did even better against Nolan, and when I left the game in the sixth inning, we were ahead 5-3. Our bullpen pitched well, and we ended up 5-4 winners. I had earned the win against one of the best pitchers who ever lived.

As the years go by, it becomes an ever better story, of course.  The time I ‘beat Nolan Ryan on Opening Day.’ The significance of that win, as opposed to other wins against Roger Clemens or Randy Johnson, is that was Opening Day, a term synonymous with baseball and the beginning of better days.