ENTERING THE EXPRESS LANE

By 1968, before Nolan Ryan had won a major league baseball game or set many of the 52 records to come over 26 seasons, his career outline already had been sketched. He was so fast in the minors he knocked out a teammate with a changeup. He was so wild he hit a woman leaning against the backstop, breaking her arm.

He was so dominating he struck out 21 batters in a 10-inning game.

He was so luckless he lost it, 2-1.

"I've had a lot of games like that," he said, a smile creeping up on his stoic expression.

All that changed over the years about Lynn Nolan Ryan Jr. was that he got older, balder, thicker. He never really grew out of his wildness or his fastball, though both have mellowed. His luck hasn' t gotten much better, either.

He goes into his 27th and final season with only two 20-win seasons despite a career earned run average of 3.17 and 5,668 strikeouts. As for his personality, he remains as even as the coastal prairie of his beloved hometown of Alvin, Texas. A question about his redoubtable past invariably elicits a small sigh and raised eyebrows, what amounts to a facial shrug.

He is as unpretentious about his formidable skills at 46 as he was at 21, when he brought them to the big leagues for good.

He had no real goals when he made the New York Mets in 1968, three years after Red Murff signed him as a 6-2, 150-pound, 10th-round draft pick. He was not much younger than his peers on the Mets pitching staff. But he lacked their polish and seasoning and, perhaps, their drive. Tom Seaver came from a USC background. Jerry Koosman, a lefthander who would win 19 games that season as a rookie, was a military veteran.

Ryan, who had broken Texas' borders only twice before he signed, arrived in 1968 with hopes as slim as his profile.

"My goal was to get four years in to qualify for the pension," Ryan said, his chin raised as he gently scratched his throat. "Then I'd go to work. My goal wasn't to pitch every fifth day or win a bunch of games. It was all a little overwhelming, and it wasn't fun.

"Growing up, my life revolved around Texas. I was from a little smaller scale, and it was a little intimidating for someone from Alvin, Texas."

Whitey Herzog, who was the Mets' farm director, said Ryan's famous work ethic also had yet to evolve.

"You really had to push him to run and do other stuff," said Herzog, now the general manager of the California Angels. "I really think Tom Seaver had a lot to do with Nolan's success."

Seaver gave Ryan perspective. He taught him about goals and the game and his place in it, none of which had made much of an impression on Ryan in minor league stops at Marion, Greenville, Williamsport, Winter Haven and Jacksonville. Even a brief trial with the Mets in 1966 hadn't given him much confidence.

He had been nearly unhittable at Class A Greenville in 1966, where he went 17-2 with a 2.51 ERA and 272 strikeouts in 183 innings. He also broke the arm of a season-ticket holder who happened to be leaning against the backstop, 30 feet behind home plate.

The ball hit the screen, and her arm, on the fly.

"It was over the catcher's head," Ryan said, casually, of the errant pitch. "It was over the hitter's head, too."

He spent three weeks of the 1966 season at Williamsport. One of his more memorable moments came during a warmup session, when he threw a changeup that hit the front of the plate, bounced up and hit catcher Duffy Dyer in the forehead, cold-cocking him.

When Ryan wasn't knocking out teammates, he was punching out opponents. He struck out 21 Pawtucket batters, only to lose in the 10th on a bunt, wild pitch, passed ball and a steal of home, Pawtucket's second of the game.

He almost threw his career away, too. He was warming up for what would have been his last minor-league appearance on June 12, 1967, when he felt something give in his forearm.

"It popped just like a rubber band," Ryan said of the tendon. "I thought it was over."

He couldn't throw the ball across the room. His prescription: go home. No one was doing exploratory surgeries in the late '60s. There were no arthroscopes, the popular and relatively risk-free surgical device now used on athletes.

He returned to Alvin and, two weeks later, married his high school sweetheart. Ruth Ryan salvaged his season. He did not pitch again until the spring of 1968, when he reported to a major league team that had not won more than 66 games in its slap-happy, six-year history.

The Mets of Casey Stengel and "Marvelous Marv" Throneberry were baseball's comic relief. Game but clueless, they won the admiration of their fans and little else.

Stengel and his managerial successor, Wes Westrum, were gone by 1968, though. The Mets' new manager was Gil Hodges, Brooklyn-born and Dodger-bred. An imposing ex-Marine, Hodges did not tolerate the buffoonery that made the Mets such lovable losers.

He put together a pitching staff supplied by Herzog, who put a priority on pitchers in scouting. The concept wasn't novel, then or now. But few were as good at it as the Mets in the late 1960s. Herzog had 14 pitchers working under him at the 1967 fall instructional league. Within a year, 11 would be in the major leagues.

At least three members of the Mets' pitching staff threw faster than 90 mph. Gary Gentry, who would come along a year later, was almost as fast as Ryan, Herzog said.

"At that time, you had to throw hard to make in the big leagues," said Koosman, who is retired and living in his native Minnesota. "Some of us threw that hard on an occasional basis, but no one did as consistently as Nolan. He threw exceptionally hard.'

Koosman, 24, went 19-12 with a 2.08 ERA in 1968. Seaver, 23, was 16-12 with a 2.20 ERA. The Mets won a club-record 73 games and finished ninth in the 10-team National League during the last season before divisional play.

Nolan Ryan, 21, went 6-9 with a 3.09 ERA in 21 appearances, all but three of them starts. He had 133 strikeouts in 134 innings. He relieved concerns about his forearm, as indicated by a picture in the Mets' 1968 yearbook, under the caption "The Gee-Whiz Kid." Ryan is shirtless in the photo. His slender right arm is in the grip of Gus Mauch, the Mets' trainer, who apparently is pointing out the source of Ryan's arm problems for the benefit of manager Gil Hodges, standing in the background.

The forearm no longer was a problem, though. The injury that bothered Ryan, as it had since childhood, was blisters.

He spent a month on the disabled list in 1968 because of blisters on his middle fingertip. The movement of his fingers over the seams caused callouses to build on old scar tissue from a childhood injury. At 11, he was attempting to remove the top of an old coffee can when he sliced three fingers and the tip off his right thumb.

He sought no medical help. "I set it and lined it up the best I could," he said of the thumb tip. Over the years, the more he pitched, a callous would build on the scar tissue. Blisters would form underneath.

The blisters became quite a topic in New York, for a couple of reasons. Mauch stopped by a delicatessen next to his apartment one day and bought some pickle brine. Brine was used to toughen the feet of boxers, allowing them to do extensive road work. He thought soaking Ryan's fingers in it might do them some good.

It did some good for the deli, which posted a sign in the window: "Nolan Ryan buys his pickle brine here."

Life magazine even photographed his finger in the liquid. He underwent the smelly treatment for a month; it didn't do any good. Only later, when another Mets trainer told him to shave the callous with a scalpel, was he at least able to manage the problem.

Mets management already was growing tired of Ryan's injuries, though. In what would prove to be an ominous statement, general manager Johnny Murphy told New York reporters in 1968: "That Ryan always has some ache or pain. You guys call him the myth, and I believe he is one."