Gil LeBreton 
After 100 days, Ryan is proving patience is a wiing formula
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
A hundred days on the job, and Nolan Ryan still hasn't gotten anybody in a headlock.
What gives?
If anyone needed a neck-squeezing, Robin Ventura-style flogging after the first four weeks of the season, it had to be your Texas Rangers.
But Ryan, as the Rangers' new club president, chose to interject patience and his seasoned perspective into the mess that the club found itself in on April 25.
"Because of my career and being in so many different situations with different organizations, and so many different managers and make-ups of different teams," Ryan explained, "I understand that in the course of 162 games, you're going to go through some stretches like that."
So, Ryan waited. The Rangers washed themselves of their April incapacities. And, stunningly, here they are, playing good and almost-.500 baseball with the Houston Astros coming to town.
His patience has been a knee-buckling rebuke for those who hailed Ryan's homecoming last February, blindly presuming that it was the precursor to a much-needed housecleaning.
Instead, 100 days have passed, and Ryan hasn't fired, fanned or flogged anybody.
It's good business, and does anybody understand good Texas business better than Nolan Ryan?
General manager Jon Daniels already knew about Ryan, the Hall of Fame pitcher. But if you ask him, he sounds just as impressed these first 100 days with Ryan, the consummate businessman.
Strikeout king, bank owner, cattle rancher, restaurateur, pain tablet and foundation repair spokesman, and successful minor league farm team operator.
The Rangers are fortunate to be included on that résumé.
There is a bronze statue of Ryan in the plaza beyond the ballpark's center-field bleachers. How many other people go to work with a statue of themselves right outside their office window?
Yet, Ryan remains the humble Texas gentleman. He isn't carrying his Hall of Fame plaque in his briefcase. But he's at the ballpark -- watching, listening, asking questions.
One day at spring training he said it was his style to "give people the room to do their jobs."
At the height of the Rangers' abysmal April start, Ryan said that he wouldn't respond with any knee-jerk reactions. But does anybody really think that if the circumstances and the moment justified it, Nolan Ryan wouldn't have the belly to take action, whether it involved a trade, a free agent, a manager or a coach?
For Hicks, Ryan's hiring was blessedly genius. For all of the owner's millions, Ryan's credibility may be the most solid asset Hicks has.
Daniels, meanwhile, should be forgiven if he finds Nolan's long shadow confining. But a general manager has to answer to somebody, and better to answer to a wise and seasoned Hall of Famer than a distracted owner with many projects on his plate.
Ryan's playing career spanned 27 seasons. He understands the big picture.
I can't imagine that he'd let a botched trade, a misjudged draft choice or a rash in-game decision from the dugout persuade him to fire someone. That game is best left to the newspaper columnists and talk-show callers.
Some of them apparently are disappointed by that. Good. Let Ryan's patience be the enduring lesson of these first 100 days.
He came back to Arlington, after all, with no apparent agenda, other than to learn the new job and undertake the daunting challenge. His neutrality is refreshing.
OK, so Ryan pitched around his team's first major crisis of the season. If it taught the organization a lesson, if it prompted the players to be accountable, Ryan did the proper thing by doing nothing.
But he won't always do nothing.
Nolan himself has told the story of his trip last year to Japan, where he was invited by Bobby Valentine's Chiba team one night to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Before Ryan took the mound, however, Valentine informed him that his Japanese hosts expected the Hall of Fame pitcher to bring the heat.
Dressed in street shoes, therefore, and though he hadn't thrown a baseball in earnest in more than 10 years, Nolan Ryan, at age 60, walked to the mound halfway around the world and let the not-so-ceremonial first pitch fly.
The pitch registered 85 mph on the radar gun.
The team president still has his fastball. Another lesson worth remembering.
glebreton@star-telegram.com
