AN ANNOYING BUZZ

Buzzie Bavasi watches three games a day off his satellite dish. Out of baseball since 1984 after a half-century in it, he wants to be no closer than his screen. He attends only high school games near his home in La Jolla, Calif., if he goes at all.

This way, he still can enjoy baseball.

"No one ever asks me for a raise," he said, chuckling.

Bavasi owned a part of the San Diego Padres, one of the three teams for which he worked. The rest of his time in the major leagues, the money only passed through him, from people like California Angels owner Gene Autry to Nolan Ryan. The passage rarely was smooth, particularly in the latter case. Bavasi jealously guarded his boss' wallet. He did his job well, as he and others saw it.

He remembers now, 40 years later, what his best players made. He ticked off salaries as if they were the ages of his four sons. The 1955 Dodgers, Brooklyn's only World Series winner, had a payroll of $545,000, an average of $21,000.

"And $21,000 was a lot of money back then," Bavasi said. "I didn' t know anybody else making $21,000."

By the time he got to the Angels for the 1978 season, Bavasi was aghast at the money spent on players and the organization. He called the Angels a "country club" under general manager Harry Dalton, who left within a month of Bavasi's arrival as executive vice president. Intending to stay only a year, Bavasi spent seven with California.

And that extended stay may be why Nolan Ryan is not an Angel today.

Ryan said he and Bavasi "were not compatible." Bavasi made several comments to reporters that angered Ryan in 1978 and 1979, though the most famous came after Ryan left the club for the Houston Astros. Bavasi was the first of several critics to describe Ryan as a .500 pitcher, a brand of mediocrity that Bavasi still holds, though not as brazenly.

Bavasi was the reason Ryan decided to become a free agent and sign with the Astros after the 1979 season. Until Bavasi arrived, Ryan liked California. He considered moving his family from Alvin, where they annually returned in the off-season. Ryan loved Autry, a generous and affable owner. He liked and respected Dalton, who had acquired him from the Mets.

He couldn't stand Bavasi.

"I wouldn't have come back," Ryan said, "as long as he was the general manager."

The relationship soured early, during the 1978 season. Ryan went 10-13, his worst record since a 10-14 mark in 1971, his last season with the Mets.

He led the league in strikeouts for the sixth time with 260. But his earned run average was 3.71, up almost a run from the year before. The Angels still were not giving him much support, but it was better than ever. In his 13 losses, they scored 40 runs. From 1972-77, the Angels averaged 1.7 runs in his losses.

Ryan, coming off a terrific 1977 season in which opponents voted him AL Pitcher of the Year in a poll by The Sporting News, picked it up again in 1978. He gave up no runs in four of his first six starts, though he was only 2-1.

His record got worse quickly. He lost six of his next seven decisions. His luck was no better. He went on the disabled list from June 14 through July 5 with a pulled left hamstring, injured in a race. He won once in seven starts when he came back. He went back on the disabled list Aug. 20 with a rib separation and did not return until Sept. 6.

There were problems other than injury, too. Lyman Bostock, an outfielder with a .318 career average signed by the Angels before the season, was shot and killed in Gary, Ind., on Sept. 23.

"His death devastated our ballclub and left us all in shock," Ryan related in his 1988 autobiography. "What happened to Lyman was kind of the final blow in a year that had begun with high hopes for the Angels and ended with us finishing in second place, five games behind Kansas City."

Based on the 1978 season, Bavasi formed a quick opinion of Ryan, the club's best player for most of the 1970s. To Bavasi, he was no more than the Angels' fourth-winningest pitcher in their best season.

A new club attitude was apparent. The 1978 Angels press guide boasted of Ryan's accomplishments "far beyond his contemporaries" and his prospects of future greatness. The 1979 press guide included, for the first time, a biography on Autry and Bavasi, credited with bold deals that brought the club its success. The information on Ryan was not nearly as kind as it had been just the year before.

"While lacking a consistency which has limited his overall success," began the first lines of his 1979 bio, "nonetheless, for one game or one pitch, there's no pitcher who's more exciting to watch than Nolan Ryan."

Ryan had gone in one season from one of the game's best to an inconsistent, if exciting, sideshow.

Ryan said he did not know if Bavasi had anything to do with the press guide changes. But he could well imagine it.

"Buzzie controlled and meddled in everything over there,' Ryan said, "from the public relations department to how they ran the clubhouse."

The pervasive operating style did not appeal to Ryan.

"I think time passed him by," he said.

Bavasi's time in baseball was marked by brash deals and tough negotiations. Don Zimmer - involved in what Bavasi called his favorite deal, Zimmer for reliever Ron Perranoski, who became a Dodger standout in the 1960s - said free agency ruined baseball for Bavasi.

"Buzzie had fun negotiating with players before agents came along," said Zimmer, who told the Los Angeles Times everyone he knew respected Bavasi's ability. "It was like he made a game of it. But once all those agents came along, it took the fun out of the game for him."

Ryan never had an agent before the 1978 season. He negotiated his own three-year deal that paid him $300,000 annually through 1979. Because of his deteriorating relationship with Bavasi, he decided he likely would pursue the free-agent market after the contract expired. To help him in that anticipated search, he hired Dick Moss as his agent.

Moss got along with Bavasi no better than Ryan did. A former Angels official said Moss was the reason for the ultimate fall-out between Bavasi and Ryan. Moss, without Ryan's consent, presented a list of figures indicating what it would take to sign Ryan after the 1979 season. The incentives, Bavasi said, were so numerous and attainable that, in 1980, Ryan easily would have made $1 million, a figure no one else in baseball made.

"If we gave Nolan that kind of money," Bavasi said more than a dozen years later, using Ryan's 10 victories in 1978 as a reference point, "what about the guy who won 14 games?"

The bottom line for Bavasi always was victories. When Ryan signed with Houston after a 16-14 record in 1979, Bavasi said they would only have to come up with two 8-7 pitchers. "If nothing else," he wrote in his 1987 autobiography, Off the Record, "the mathematics bear that out."

Bavasi couches the criticism now in qualified praise. He said it was a mistake to let Ryan go. He said, with Ryan, the Angels "would have won a World Series" either in 1982 or 1986, when they failed in the American League playoffs. But he also noted that Ryan was 26- 27 in the club's first back-to-back winning seasons, Bavasi's first two with the Angels. He called Ryan one of the game's "strongest" pitchers, at one point mentioning Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Then he quietly, deftly, withdrew Ryan from their company.

"He was a better pitcher after he left us, really," Bavasi said.

Ryan didn't want to leave. He and Ruth were tired of taking their oldest child, Reid, from his school in Alvin to another in Anaheim at midterm.

"Up to 1979," Ryan said, "I anticipated finishing my career in California. I think I would have. We were going to have to make some decision about where to live full-time."

He thought a moment, smiling.

"Buzzie made that one for me."