CLOSE CALL AT HOME

Ruth Ryan was in her front yard near Anaheim, Calif., chatting with Marilyn Carew. Their husbands, Nolan and Rod, were in Boston. The two women were used to the absences and distances, of having to handle problems, alone. They managed, most days.

May 9, 1979, was not one of those days.

Ruth watched from her yard as her oldest child, 7-year-old Reid, ran across the street to show off his new baseball jersey. A couple of older boys threatened to take his treasure. Reid, frightened, turned to run home.

The car hit him just as he stepped off the curb.

All Reid remembers of the incident is waking up screaming, "Don' t let me die!" The frantic first few minutes after seeing a car hit her son seem no clearer to Ruth now, more than 14 years later. The doctors told her Reid had suffered a broken left femur, or thighbone. He appeared to be all right otherwise.

Ruth considered what to do next. Should she call her husband and let him know? Most wives would, she knew. But her husband was a baseball player, a man of two allegiances: his family and his team, the California Angels. Most times, she would not force him to make a choice.

She called.

"The operator at Fenway Park said she wouldn't go get him because he was in the middle of a ballgame," Rutll.

Ruth calmly told Nolan, who was not pitching that night, of Reid's condition. She concluded with a request.

She wanted to know if he would come home.

"I'm leaving right now," Nolan told her.

Over the next few weeks, surgeries proved Reid was not all right, that he would have to have a kidney and spleen removed. It was, as Ruth called it, "a terrible time." She and Nolan spent most of the next three months spelling each other at the hospital. The stress adversely affected Ryan's performance in 1979, the best season in the Angels' history as they won the AL West.

But the time also was one of growth, Nolan said, both in his family and away from the Angels, an organization he thought he would play in until he retired.

The deteriorating relationship with Angels executive vice president Buzzie Bavasi, who balked at contract demands by Ryan's agent, Dick Moss, and the stress brought on by Reid's accident changed Nolan's thinking about finishing his career in California.

"I was ready for a change," he said.

He left the Angels after the 1979 season, signing as a free agent with the Houston Astros. He was baseball's first $1 million-a-year player. Bavasi and others questioned whether he was worth the money, particularly based on his 1978 and '79 seasons.

A 9-3 start and selection as a starter for the 1979 All-Star Game turned into a mundane 16-14 finish. He barely was .500 on a team that won the West before losing to Baltimore in four games in the playoffs.

The playoffs were a significant step for Ryan and the Angels. Ryan had been in a World Series with the Mets but never considered himself a vital part of the team. He was the best pitcher on the Angels in 1979, despite his poor finish. But all he could say of the playoff appearance was that it wasn't a surprise, the team having finished second the year before. "Satisfying," was as emotional as he would become.

The drain of Reid's injury and the attention it required made the season secondary.

"As a parent," Nolan said, recalling the particulars of May 9, 1979, "the last thing you want is to get a phone call like that."

The weeks after the phone call were worse. Reid would undergo two surgeries to save one of his kidneys. Neither was successful. The Ryans then had to go through the agony of deciding, as the doctors suggested, to have the damaged kidney removed.

Reid could live and function normally with only one kidney. But he would forever be in a more precarious, life-threatening position, should the remaining kidney become diseased or injured.

And he was only 7.

"We all went through the agony of him being in such pain," Nolan said.

His parents hid nothing from him, Reid said. They told him what the doctors told them. To help out at home, Nolan didn't go on road trips until the day before he was to pitch. On the days he was home, he either went to the hospital or stayed with the Ryans' other two children, 3-year-old Reese and 2-year-old Wendy. He generally went to the hospital in the morning when the team was on the road. During homestands, Nolan would relieve Ruth at the hospital from 11 a.m. until he had to go to the park, at 4 p.m. Ruth would stay at the hospital on those days until Reid went to sleep.

Reid was in a body cast and in traction for most of his hospital stay, which ended Aug. 1, a week short of three months since he entered. He spent another month in bed at home.

He has not had any health problems because of the accident or surgeries. Doctors told him he could not play any contact sports, for fear of injuring his remaining kidney.

"That accident really changed my life," Reid said. "Even though I was a little kid, I realized I could go just like that. So, every day, I try to wake up with a smile on my face."

He pitches for TCU and is playing in Kansas' Jayhawk League, one of the top NCAA-affiliated summer leagues.

Ruth went to Kansas last week to see Reid play, as is her habit. She also went to Alaska when Reid pitched in that summer league the last two years.

"I'm the one with the positive reinforcement," Ruth said, explaining the difference in parenting techniques between her and Nolan. "I grew up with a lot of praise and support. Nolan didn't. But I'm not sure how much it means when I say anything to them.

"I've told Nolan, 'If you praise them, it means so much more.' And it's the same if he corrects them. I can say the same thing, and it's, 'Aw, that's just Mom.'"

Nolan said the attitude is only natural, considering he has spent so much time away from his children over the years.

"But, if the kids have a problem," he said, "the person they go to is their mother."

Nolan is, in many ways, like his father, Ruth said. He is reserved, reticent, never effusive. He is a commanding presence in his household, though.

He has the respect of his children, Reid said, as Nolan respected his father.

"When he speaks, they listen," Ruth said of her husband. "But he's much more fun to be with than his father was. He always has tried to be involved with them, even when they were babies. He may be on the road a lot but, on a day-to-day basis, he wants to know everything they're doing."

Nolan believes he became closer to his family as a result of Reid' s accident, simply because of the increased time spent with them. He has no pretenses about fatherhood. He enjoys his children more the older they get, he said, because he prefers to treat them no differently than his friends.

Nolan, honored last week by the Texas Neurofibromatosis Foundation as one of Dallas' best dads, never has tried to fit a mold, he said. Neither has he tried to fulfill something that might have been lost in communication between himself and his father, who died in 1970.

"I just be myself," Nolan said, with a half-shrug. "I treat 'em with respect. I'm very comfortable around my kids, and we spend a lot of time together now.

"I think you have to be interested in what their thoughts are on things. We always ask everybody's opinion before we make a move of some kind."

They were just a bit too young to have opinions solicited about a move in 1979.

Ryan decided early that season he would leave the club. He based it almost entirely on his relationship with Bavasi. Moss gave Bavasi a list of contract demands that indicated he wanted $1 million a year. Bavasi had no intention of paying the amount and said so in the newspapers. He called the million-dollar figure a demand, further widening the rift between him and Ryan.

Moss and Nolan contend the number was a negotiating point. Ryan was hoping to make $600,000 on the free-agent market. He was shocked when Moss told him the New York Yankees' George Steinbrenner would pay $1 million, though Ryan wouldn't go back to New York, for any money.

Ryan went through a free-agent draft, a requirement in the early days of free agency. He could negotiate only with clubs that selected him. One of the 12 to draft him was Houston. New owner John McMullen, eager to make some headlines, wanted to acquire Ryan, no matter the cost. Ryan signed on Nov. 19.

After more than a dozen years in baseball, and after one of the most trying years of his life, Ryan was going home.