STAR-CROSSED ASTROS

The club's long list of calamities in a relatively short history - i.e.,two deaths from cancer, a suicide, a stabbing, a player fined $100 in the shooting death of a woman - provided ample reason for a fan to fear the future.

As the Astros belly-flopped from the playoff precipice of 1980 and 1981 into the cold mediocrity of the mid-1980s, the fears proved well-founded.

Nolan Ryan, who would consider himself just as mediocre as his teammates in 1984, arrived in plenty of time to catch the fall. All he knew of the Astros before he signed was their reputation for wildness, and not on the field.

By the mid-1980s, he would know something of their perennial misfortune, too.

"Houston," he wrote in his 1988 autobiography, "has had more than its share of those bad breaks."

One of the worst happened in 1980, when a stroke ruined J.R. Richard' s brilliant pitching career. Other losses would be less dramatic but damaging, nonetheless. Reliever Joe Sambito's 1982 elbow surgery robbed the Astros of an All-Star and led to the trade of starting pitcher Don Sutton, Ryan said. When New York Mets pitcher Mike Torrez hit shortstop Dickie Thon on the head in 1984, the Astros lost their third key player in five years.

Ryan, never one to dabble in hyperbole, said he didn't feel like the Astros were cursed.

Of course, he hadn't spent much time around them until 1980.

"Being with them from the very beginning, said Gene Elston, who broadcast Astros games from 1962 until 1987, "I saw a lot of people that went under.

"We had a lot of basic tragedies."

Walt Bond, a first baseman, and Jim Umbricht, a pitcher, died of forms of cancer. Don Wilson threw no-hitters in 1967 and 1969 and was pulled by manager Preston Gomez when he was within six outs of another. One night after the 1974 season, Wilson pulled into his garage and left the engine running. The carbon monoxide killed him as well as his daughter, asleep in an upstairs room.

Jimmy Wynn, once the Astros' most prolific home run hitter, survived a stabbing by his wife. Cesar Cedeno, once voted the second-best player in the league by NL general managers, was convicted in January 1974 of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of his teen-age mistress. A Dominican judge fined him $100.

The incidents involving Wynn and Cedeno, as well as rumors of alcohol and drug abuse on the team, contributed to an Astros reputation that Ryan characterized diplomatically as "a bunch of rebels in a sense, wild, fun-loving and real free spirits."

The new regime under managers Bill Virdon and then Bob Lillis changed that reputation. But not always for the better.

After the 1980 season, Ryan's first with the Astros, the club traded Dave Bergman and Jeff Leonard for the San Francisco Giants' Mike Ivie, a power-hitting first baseman with "a history of emotional problems, " Elston said.

"He had tremendous physical potential," Ryan said of Ivie, who, at 27, hit .289 with 27 home runs and 89 RBIs in only 133 games for the 1979 Giants. "The ball really jumped off his bat. I didn't really know him well. He was friendly. But I got the impression he just wanted to hunt and fish.

"The bottom line was, he just didn't want to play."

So he didn't. He played in 26 games for Houston during the 1981 and 1982 seasons before the Astros traded him to Detroit. He lasted one season and was out of baseball after 1983.

Ivie cost the Astros key contributors to the playoff teams of 1980 and 1981. There were other losses. Sambito's elbow surgery, which caused him to miss half of 1982 and all of 1983, led to a defection. Ryan said Don Sutton, who didn't want to pitch on a team lacking its best reliever, worked a deal with Astros owner John McMullen in 1982 that allowed him to negotiate a trade to the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Astros struggled after 1981. The club's 85 victories in 1983 was its third-most ever but good only for a third-place finish. The Astros moved up to second in 1984 but ended up 12 games out.

Ryan was not much of a factor in 1984. He twice went on the disabled list. He missed all but two days of June with blisters on his right hand and a pulled left calf muscle. He didn't pitch after Sept. 20 because of a pulled left hamstring.

The injuries caused him to pitch his fewest innings (1832/3) in a non-strike year since 1971, his last year with the New York Mets.

But Ryan's absence was not the Astros' biggest problem in 1984.

Thon had been the club's best player in 1983. At 25, he hit 20 home runs, batted .286, stole 34 bases and had a league-leading 18 game-winning RBIs. Dale Murphy, upon receiving the league's MVP award after the 1983 season, said he thought Thon deserved it more.

Thon was hitting .353 and had hit in each of the club's first four games in 1984 when Torrez's fastball hit him on the left temple. He missed the rest of the season and, after frustrating years in 1985 and 1986, sat out 1987.

He returned and even played with Ryan on the Rangers in 1992. He plays for Milwaukee now. But he never has shown the promise he did in the early 1980s.

"He was probably the most complete shortstop in the league," Ryan said. "He had some power. He could run. He wasn't as good defensively as Ozzie Smith, but he was good enough. And he was a lot better offensively."

By 1984, he was just another Astros casualty.

"What people don't realize about the Astros," Ryan said of the missing, "is how good those people were."