Gary Nolan
Confidence Came Easy
He looked around in the minor leagues and right away he knew something:
There was no way they could stop him from going to the big leagues. And he was right.
By John Devaney
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Gary Nolan stomped into the house, the reddish dirt caking on the tops of his construction worker's boots. For the past week he had been steering a roaring truck on a road-construction job not far from his home here in Oroville, a small town of 7,000 in central California. He sat down on a chair in the kitchen, a smile slowly, spreading over his cherubic face. "Yes," he was saying in answer to a question, "yes, I remember that day."
A visiting writer had reminded Gary of they day they had met---last April on Opening Day, at Cincinnati's Crosley Field. At the time Gary was 18 Years old, shiny-eyed and smooth-faced, a rookie, who had been pitching high school baseball only a few months earlier. Now here he was, in the Reds' clubhouse, slipping On a big league shirt, just a few days away from his first big league start.
"Are you nervous?" asked the Writer in the clubhouse.
Gary looked at the writer as though he had said something insane. "Nothing to be nervous about,'' he said in the jaunty way he has. "There's no difference pitching up here and in the minor leagues. You throw good pitches down there, you get them out. You throw good pitches up here, you get them out. If you have the confidence, you win down there. If you have confidence, you win up here."
He began to whistle. "Nothing about pitching," he said, "bothers me."
He got up from the stool where he had been sitting. "Next Saturday," he said laughing, "I'm a big league starter and I'm only a kid. Just a kid." He was laughing hard, doing a little dance step, the joy of it all showing through. He was only a kid and he was wearing a big league uniform and soon he would be starting his first big league game.
The writer went away smiling. "The kid," he thought, "will find out on Saturday that there is a difference between minor league hitters and big league hitters."
That Saturday, though, Gary Nolan struck out eight Houston batters in seven innings. He gave up only six hits and won 7-3. So began a truly remarkable year for Gary, who was only 19 in May. He won 14 games and lost 8, finishing with an earned-run average of 2.58. He struck out 206 batters in 227 innings of pitching while walking only 62.
Not bad statistics, are they? Yet they don't tell all of the way it was during this rookie's remarkable year. Five of his victories were shutouts and only Jim Bunning had more in the National League. In two games he went into the ninth inning with shutouts, but once the Red defense collapsed behind him and the other time a two-out double scored a run. If Gary had collected those two shutouts, he would have joined a distinguished name in the record books. In 1907 Grover Cleveland Alexander set the record for shutouts by a rookie with seven, and since then no rookie ever has pitched more.
Grover Cleveland, however, surely had more luck than Gary had during the 1967 season. Midway through the year manager Dave Bristol told reporter Earl Lawson, "This boy Nolan, with any kind of luck, should have at least five more wins." A look at a three week stretch in July shows you the kind of pitching performances Gary turned in all year long and the kind of bad luck that dogged him much of the way.
On July 4th he beat the Cardinals, 1-0. Five days later he faced the Pirates and gave up only one hit over seven innings. But an error cost him an unearned run and he left the game trailing 1-0 (The Pirates won, 2-1, but Gary wasn't charged with the defeat). In his next start he beat the Mets, 1-0, in ten innings.
Five days later he again faced the Cardinals. In seven innings the pennant winners got only five hits and one run off Gary while he was striking out 12. But again he left the game losing 1-0. The Cards won, 3-2, in 12 innings, and though Gary also was not slapped with the loss, a beautiful bit of pitching went unrewarded. Six days later--there are times like these in every pitcher's life--he lost a l-0 game to the Braves.
On other occasions Gary lost games by making the mistakes of youth. In one game he was blanking the Giants, 1-0, in the eighth (the Reds never seemed to get many runs when Gary was pitching). There was one out, two Giants on base, Willie Mays at bat. Gary shot three fastballs by Mays, striking him out--the fourth time he had struck out Mays and his 14th strikeout of the game.
Now there were two out, Willie McCovey at bat. After that strikeout of Mays, maybe Gary relaxed--it can happen--but his first pitch to McCovey was too good. McCovey hammered the pitch for a home run, the score was tied, 3-3, and Gary was out of the game. The Giants went on to win, 4-3.
Despite such bits of bad luck and bad pitches, Gary could look back on an auspicious season. Now, this winter, sitting here in his home in Oroville, the California sun glinting through the windows, Gary was smiling as he talked about Opening Day in the clubhouse at Crosley Field and how confident he had been."
"Your confidence really impressed me that day," said the writer. "Did you really feel all that confident?"
"Yes, I did," Gary said, with that choir boy's smile of his. "I wasn't awed by anybody. I mean, I know Willie Mays is a great hitter. And so is Roberto Clemente and so is Henry Aaron. But they didn't awe me. And I didn't feel any more pressure pitching to them than I did pitching to some guys back in the minor leagues. Like I told you that day in Crosley Field, you throw good pitches and you'll get them out--no matter who they are."
Where did he get such confidence? "I've always had good stuff," Gary said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. "I'd always wanted to be a pitcher, for as long as I can remember, way back when I was seven or eight years old. I don't know how many no-hitters I pitched in the Little Leagues here in Oroville and in sandlot games. I got my share. In American Legion baseball, I think I won something like 30 games and lost only three or four. I knew I had talent.
"Then the Reds signed me [in the summer of 1966 for an estimated $40,000]. They sent me to Sioux Falls. When I got there I saw other pitchers throwing, if looked at them and l had the feeling I was better than any of them."
Gary wasn't speaking cockily. He seemed to be stating what were, to him, the simple facts of the case: He had talent, he knew he had talent, so why shouldn't he have had confidence?
At Sioux Falls he proved he was better than any of them by striking out 163 batters in 104 innings while winning seven and losing' three. Last fall he pitched in the Florida Instructional League. Dave Bristol, the tough Reds' manager, saw him pitch and liked what he saw. Bristol invited Gary to report to the Reds' 1967 spring training camp.
Gary came to camp confident he would make the big team. "They had a lot of money invested in me," he was saying last winter, shucking off those construction boots to make himself more comfortable. In the kitchen his wife, Carol, was cooking dinner while Gary Jr., 2, played on the floor and Timmy, four months old, slept in his crib. "And I like to pitch; there's no other job in the world that's more important to me than pitching. When you like something, you do it just as perfectly as you can."
Pitching near perfectly, Gary astounded people in Florida. In one three-inning job against the Red Sox, he struck out six. After the game umpire Marty Springstead told reporters: "That kid can really throw the ball hard." Springstead pointed to his chest protector. "I'm just I had this in front of me."
In 24 innings oŁ pitching in Florida, the rangy Nolan gave up only four unearned runs. "Can the kid make the Club?" the writers asked Bristol. "Normally, it's not what you would expect of an 18-year-old kid," said the blunt-faced Bristol, always truthful. "But we need pitching. If the season opened today I'd have to say that Gary would pitch the third game of the season." Gary did pitch the third game of the season for the Reds, beating the Astros. In his second start he went against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium and was leading 1-0 when Jim Hickman rapped a double with two out in the ninth inning to tie the score.
"You didn't see him fold his tent and call it quits, did you," Bristol barked, after the game, which the Reds' Gerry Arrigo won in 13 innings. "He just reared back and struck out the next hitter." The next hitter was Dick Schofield, who became Nolan's 13th strikeout.
In his next start, against the Giants at Candlestick Park, Gary pitched before some hometown fans. In the stands were his father and some 300 people from Oroville. They went away disappointed as the Giants scored three quick runs while the Red bats were being turned into putty by the pitches of Juan Marichal. In the sixth the Giants drove Gary out of the box.
On the plane flying out of San Francisco, Gary looked depressed. "Don't worry," Bristol told him. "You'll be out there again Sunday."
Gary looked up at his manager. He wasn't worried, not one bit. The confidence was showing in the glint in Gary's cold blue eyes. "I won't let you down twice in a row," Gary said. "I promise."
"I don't believe you will," said Bristol.
And Gary didn't let Bristol down. That Sunday, April 30th, he pitched the Reds to a 3-2 squeaker over the Mets. Two weeks later he beat the Phils in another pressure game, 1-0.
"All those 1-0 games helped me," Gary was saying this winter back in Oroville. "They gave me a lot of experience for next year, pitching in tight games; you concentrate harder. You learn things. I would rather pitch in a 1-0 game than a 9-2 affair. In a 9-2 game, that's not pitching. That's throwing. You're just throwing the ball up there and you don't care whether they hit it or not.
"In a 1-0 game, you got to be thinking about every pitch. You have a man on base, you work to get the batter to hit the ball on the ground. In a 9-2 game there can be three men on base and all you're doing is throwing that ball up there so the guy will hit it and you can get into the clubhouse.
"People talk about the pressure of those 1-0 affairs. I think a lot of pitchers put pressure on themselves, worrying about what they're going to do. At my age I don't see how there could be very much pressure. I was only 18. I knew that if I didn't make the Reds last spring, there were plenty of years ahead of me.
Of course I wanted badly to make the club. And I worked hard to make it. But I didn't feel any great pressure because I knew I was young enough to try again.
"People said of me last season that I was very mature for someone my age. I don't think I would call it maturity. First of all, I take pride in what I do. When I pitch or when I'm out working on this road job, driving, a truck or helping with the survey. I take pride in doing my job well. I'm the kind who moves slowly, takes my time, doesn't worry. But I'm the kind who makes sure I do a good job."
He did an excellent job several times last season but lost 1-0 or 3-2 games because the Reds' artillery suddenly lost its thunder at the plate. "What you got to remember about those games, said Gary, getting up to fetch a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, "is that in baseball the hitters sometimes will pick up the pitchers and the pitchers sometimes will pick up the hitters. There were several times last season when I won even though I wasn't pitching 100%. I won because I got help from the hitters. And when they weren't hitting, I picked them up with those five shutouts."
In one of the many tight games he pitched last season, Gary beat the Mets, 1-0, when Tony Perez slapped a single in the tenth inning with two out and the bases loaded. After the game Gary was invited to appear on the radio show, "Star of the Game," for which the star receives a $25 fee. "They should have picked Tony, not me," Gary told catcher Jim Coker just before he went on the show.
After the show, Gary came back m the clubhouse where the Red players were hollering as they stripped off wet uniforms. Gary asked someone to change a $5 bill, then went over to Perez and shoveled $13 into the big third baseman's hands. Perez tried to refuse the money.
"No, sir," said an adamant Gary. "You won the game, too, every bit as much as I did."
That kind of thing has got to make friends and influence people on a call club. What the Reds like most about Gary, is his toughness under fire. Stumpy Floyd Robinson, a veteran of baseball's wars, told Earl Lawson one day last season: "The kid has much heart as stuff. That's what makes him great. Other guys have as much stuff, but not the heart to go with it."
Gene Mauch agreed with Robinson. "Every major league club probably has a kid in the minors with as ability as Nolan has, said the Philadelphia manager. "But what other kids don't have is Gary's make-up . . . heart . . . or whatever you want to call it."
Gary smiles shyly when these things are repeated to him. "I got some good coaching last season," he said, sipping the last of the milk. "And I did what the coach told me.
His visitor wondered: After a $40,000 bonus, how come Gary was up at nine each morning to work on a road construction crew? "It's good exercise and a lot of fun," he said with a grin. "And I'm working with a good bunch of guys.
"I want to get into terrific shape. I've been doing a lot of walking and running. Last year I pitched every fifth day. This year I'm hoping Dave will start me every fourth day. It could help the ball club, I think, if I got more starts. The more starts you get, the more chances you get to win. And it would help me get a better record if I could get, say, l0 extra starts this season."
It was now near six o'clock, the sky darkening outside, and time to leave. The visitor had a last question: "Looking back on last year, were there any big moments that you remember?
He thought for a moment, staring at the ceiling. "Oh, that game against the Giants," he said. "The one in which McCovey homered and they look me out with the score tied, 3-3. I'll always remember that one because I struck out 15 batters. I struck out Mays four times and that had to be a thrill. I had watched him play for so long, when I was as kid, watching him from the stands, then to stand that close to him, to pitch to him and to strike him out four times. That was something.
"But the biggest game, I guess, was the 1-0 victory over the Cardinals on July 4th. The Cardinals went on to become world champions so you have to remember something like that."
He paused a moment, working out in his mind how to say something else. "I know this sounds a little corny," he said, "but it was true for me. Just pulling on a big league uniform, putting it on next to professionals, that was a thrill.
People said to me last spring, 'Aren't you nervous, only 18 years old?' I said what good does it do to be nervous? That doesn't help. They give you that ball and you got to go out there and do the job yourself. No one can do the job for you. That's the way it is in baseball."
The way it will be for Gary Lynn Nolan, one suspect, is straight up (Devaney 18-19, 47-48).
Story Taken From the Whitestone Baseball Annual No 8.
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