| Ryan Racing to Flash Start as Met Greenie at Greenville |
by JIM ANDERSON
MAY 28, 1966 |
| GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINATwo years ago, Lynn Nolan Ryan, Jr., was pitching for the Alvin High School team in Texas, was dating Ruth Holdorff and dropping by the Dairyland or Oasis for a snack after a movie. |
| That's the full excitement for teenagers in the town of about 10,000 people in the oil country20 minutes' drive from Houston. |
| Now Nolan Ryan is in his first full season of organized ball, wears the uniform of the Greenville Mets and ranks as one of the parent New York club's top mound prospects. |
| He started the Western Carolinas League season by tossing 25 scoreless innings and, in six games, compiled 62 strikeouts and a 4-0 record. |
| Ryan began pitching eight years ago when an older brother, a catcher, needed someone to pitch to him at home. |
| "I guess he made me a pitcher," Nolan said of his brother Robert, now an Air Force lieutenant in Okinawa. |
| Nolan went through Little League ball to the Babe Ruth League and on to the high school team in Alvin, where his father is supervisor with the Pan American Petroleum Co. In high school, he pitched two no-hitters and his prep record was 20-4. "The only thing I had was a fastball," he said. |
| Mets scout Red Murff first saw Ryan pitching in his junior year. |
| "He seemed to see something in me no one else did," said Ryan. |
| Ryan pitched Alvin to the runner-up spot in the Texas Triple A baseball playoffs. Needing to win the last two games from Waxahachie, Nolan pitched a two-hit, 2-0 shutout and tried to come back the next day and start again. He was lifted in the first inning because of wildness. |
| After the playoffs, he was drafted by the Mets as a free agent. |
| "I wasn't sure I was going to sign," he said. |
| "Several colleges had offered me scholarships and I was planning on going to Sam Houston." But Murff talked Ryan into signing for a modest amount. |
| "Now I'm glad I signed," said Nolan. "Now that I've been in baseball, I like it better than I thought I would." |
| Ryan reported late to Marion, Virginia, in the rookie Appalachian League last year. He appeared in 13 games and had an unimpressive 3-6 record and 4.38 earned-run average. But he struck out 115 batters in his 70 innings. |
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