MILLION-DOLLAR PROBLEM

He never left Alvin, really. He grew up in the town, a half-hour south of Houston. He returned to his Alvin ranch each fall, when he wasn't playing for the New York Mets or California Angels, in the late 1960s and '70s. He thought about moving to Anaheim, Calif. But, when the season was over, he always went back to Alvin.

Then he made the move before the 1980 season that would make him a year-round Alvin resident: He signed as a free agent with the Houston Astros.

He signed a three-year deal for $4.5 million, making him the highest-paid player ever in American team sports.

Making him a stranger in his hometown.

"Those people started looking at us and treating us different because of the money," Ryan said. "They thought it would change us."

He hadn't changed, of course, at least not in what mattered to him. He is so concerned about his image he occasionally works at it, as he did in 1980. He and his wife, Ruth, balked at buying a Mercedes after Astros owner John McMullen signed him. They bought the car only after convincing themselves of its investment potential. Even then, they decided they would make no more ostentatious purchases, so none could think they were flaunting their new wealth.

Ryan certainly hadn't changed as a pitcher when he got to the Astros, either. Critics questioned whether someone with little better than a .500 record was worth $1 million a year, or several times what Astros ace J.R. Richard was making. They could have made the same argument after Ryan went 11-10 in 1980, a season in which Richard would suffer a stroke that ruined his career and Ryan would become the media focus.

Ryan responded in the National League playoffs with two no-decisions in a five-game loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, one of the most memorable series in league championship history.

Even the Astros' general manager, Tal Smith, had doubts as to whether it was a good idea to give up so much money for a pitcher of Ryan's record. He would say more than a dozen years later the salary led to a series of contract renegotiations and financial chaos.

Teammates said they weren't offended and accepted Ryan because of his easy nature.

But Ryan hated the controversy. Everywhere he went that season, the conversation was punctuated by dollar signs.

He was used to the questions from reporters. He didn't expect it from his neighbors.

"We were surprised by their attitude," he said. "The things they said. They always felt they had to comment on it."

He finds it difficult to express his feelings even now, 13 years later. Alvin always had treated him well. The town responded with its third Nolan Ryan Day after he signed with the Astros. Money never had been an issue with friends before, though he was making more than $300,000 a year with the Angels in his last contract.

He was making less than a third of former Angels teammate Rod Carew, then the highest-paid player in the game.

McMullen made up for it in nice, round figures.

Six of them, to be exact.

"You've grown up there," he said, explaining his feelings about Alvin's reaction, "and you've raised your family there, too. Your kids are going to school with a lot of people you grew up with.

"You don't act any different, but a lot of other people do."

Even his brother and sisters seemed overwhelmed, at first, by the money. Ryan made the point to reporters in 1980 that, in a few years, his contract would seem routine. He was right. People became somewhat inured to multi-million dollar contracts, at least until they climbed into the next million.

Smith just didn't believe the first million had to be reached so soon.

Smith spent most of his professional career with the Astros. He held several positions from the club's inception before the 1962 season until 1973, when he left to become an executive vice president of the New York Yankees. He returned in 1975 as general manager and took over a club that, until McMullen purchased it in 1979, had serious financial problems.

"They were run on a shoestring budget," Ryan said.

And Smith knew how to make the most of it.

"Tal Smith had a different type of mentality than McMullen did," said Joe Sambito, an All-Star reliever in 1979 and an Astro from 1976-84. "Tal's orders were to operate on that shoestring budget, and he was very good at it. But McMullen wanted to be the Steinbrenner of the West.

"Tal couldn't change hats."

The perception about Smith was that he heavily favored the farm system. He had built the Astros, playing in the dead-air Astrodome, around speed and defense. He was one of the few Astros officials to go on record saying he was against the eight-player trade in 1971 that sent Joe Morgan to Cincinnati for Lee May. He argued that a club never should trade youth, speed and power, an argument that gained considerable credibility when Morgan entered the Hall of Fame in 1990.

Smith was portrayed as someone who didn't want to waste big money on free agents. Ryan said Smith did not want to sign him because of the impact he knew it would have on the club's salary structure.

Ryan was right about the impact, anyway. Smith said he was in favor of signing Ryan. He noted that he attempted to trade for him after the 1978 season, offering the Angels a package of Sambito and first baseman Bob Watson for Ryan, third baseman Dave Chalk and pitcher Paul Hartzell. The Angels pulled out at the last minute, indicating at least some interest and hope in retaining Ryan.

The money became a problem for the Angels and general manager Buzzie Bavasi, in particular, and eventually a problem for Tal Smith, too.

Smith had no hand in the negotiations with Ryan or his agent, Dick Moss. McMullen handled everything. Smith had just come off long negotiations with Richard's agent, Tom Reich. The deal paid Richard approximately $200,000 in base salary, Smith said, with incentives that could increase it to $950,000.

Smith, who called Richard the most dominating pitcher in the game, said the signing of Ryan for $1 million basically violated the principle of his agreement with Richard.

"One of the most important things you can do," said Smith, who runs Tal Smith Enterprises in Houston, "is maintain some sense of equity in the salary structure. You have that responsibility to the sport and the team."

McMullen didn't understand, Smith said. The Astros had the NL' s second-lowest payroll in 1980, when they won the Western Division, Smith said. But, by the middle of the decade, the Astros were paying what Smith termed "outlandish" incentives.

"He (McMullen) just blew it all out of the water,' Smith said of the pay scale, "simply to buy the headlines."

As a result of Ryan's salary, McMullen felt forced to renegotiate Richard's four-year extension.

He wouldn't finish it.

Richard was 10-4 with a 1.89 earned-run average when he had his stroke on July 30. He was at his best, teammates said. His fastball and 92 mph slider were, in Ryan's estimation, the best 1-2 combination in baseball.

"He was just crazy enough, too, that he scared them," Ryan said of Richard, 6-8 and 237 pounds. "He had everything going for him."

The stroke culminated a series of strange events in which Richard appeared reluctant to compete. He pulled himself out of games and lied to reporters about the reasons or his prescribed treatment.

His reasons for concern proved legitimate, however, when team doctors finally diagnosed a blockage in his right arm on July 25. No surgery was recommended. Five days later, at a workout in the Astrodome, Richard collapsed. He underwent surgery to remove the blood clot, which had moved into his neck and caused the stroke.

Richard made a couple of comeback attempts over the next two years but never was the same, or close. He retired in 1982. He owns and runs a barbecue restaurant in Houston.

Vern Ruhle, the Astros' fifth starter, replaced him in the 1980 rotation. He did well, finishing 12-4. But teammates do not doubt the difference Richard would have made in the playoffs against the Phillies.

The rotation of Richard, 20-game winner Joe Niekro, Ryan, Ken Forsch and Ruhle, combined with a bullpen of Sambito, Dave Smith and Frank LaCorte, formed one of the best staffs in baseball. But what was left of it after Richard's stroke fell through in the playoffs.

All but the first of the five games went extra innings. Ryan started the second game and lasted until the seventh, when he left with the score 2-2. The Astros won in the 10th, 7-4.

They won the next game in 11 innings, 1-0, and were to play the next two in Houston. They needed only one victory to advance to the World Series.

They lost the fourth game, 5-3, in the 10th after going into the eighth with a 2-0 lead. The situation was similar in the fifth game, when they went into the eighth with a 5-2 lead.

And Nolan Ryan on the mound.

Going into the game, Ryan was 112-3 with three no-decisions since 1972 when he had a lead after seven innings. He took great pride in the record, an illustration, he once said, that he was a winner.

He did not win in the playoffs, though. He loaded the bases in the eighth on a walk and two infield singles. He then walked Pete Rose to force in a run before manager Bill Virdon removed him.

The Phillies scored five runs in the inning. The Astros came back with two to tie it in the bottom of the eighth but lost in 10, 8-7.

The Phillies went on to beat Kansas City in the World Series. The Astros did not consider it much of a feat.

"We would have beaten them, too," Sambito said.

"It was so heartbreaking," said catcher Alan Ashby. "The thing was, everybody believed Nolan was the man to be on the hill in that fifth game.

"Who else would you rather have out there?'

Ryan said in 1990 it was one of the few memorable moments of his career. But he does little to illuminate it. In his second autobiography, all he said was that the team was "absolutely exhausted, mentally, physically, and emotionally. We were just glad that year of 1980 was behind us."

Tal Smith was not. Two weeks later, McMullen replaced the man honored in The Sporting News as the front-office executive of the year with Al Rosen.

Over the next decade, McMullen would decide he had spent too much money, as Smith warned. McMullen sold off most of the club's best assets before selling the club to Temple businessman Drayton McLane last year.

Smith, whose son, Randy, recently was named general manager of the San Diego Padres, stayed in baseball only on the fringes, as a consultant in contract negotiations.

The closest he came to a championship in more than 20 years in the game was that 1980 season.

"The club acquitted itself quite well," Smith said. He seemed a bit defensive, particularly when he considered the question of whether the team had blown two victories in the playoffs. He called the 1980 team a group of overachievers.

Overachievers who were led, at the last, by what Smith considered an overpaid pitcher.

The juxtaposition never mattered on the field, he said.

"I'd like to do it all over again," Smith said, his firm bass voice softening, "with Nolan on the mound, a three-run lead and six outs to go."