THUNDER BAY, Ontario -- Something bigger goes missing when Naomi Ryan isn’t around.
There’s a fortitude to the way Ryan conducts herself that spurs collective accountability within the Miller School baseball team. When she’s there, everyone is better -- from attitude to effort to the onfield product. When she isn’t, the club loses more than a first baseman.
For all his time in baseball, Billy Wagner can’t explain it. But he knows the marks of a leader when he sees them.
“We as a team really miss her when she's gone,” said Wagner, who has coached at the Charlottesville, Va., high school since 2013 after retiring as one of the most decorated closers in Major League history. “Because our guys, for whatever reason, play different when she's around. … She doesn't say a lot, but how she goes about her business has something to do with it.”
It sounds ethereal until you see it for yourself.
From the stands at Port Arthur Stadium, laughing with her teammates in USA Baseball gear during a Women’s Baseball World Cup game between Japan and Chinese Taipei, Ryan looks like the typical 17-year-old. Then her manager calls her name from a couple of rows back, and Ryan has aged 10 years by the time she turns around.
That’s what Wagner saw in the switch-hitting first baseman/left-handed pitcher when she came to him asking for an opportunity. One good word to describe that quiet force? Ambition.
“I want to play at the highest level I can,” Ryan said during the WBWC finals. “Whether that’s college or pro.”
She has found herself a major ally, though what led her to him was a painful closed door.
A native of Richmond, Va., Ryan originally planned to join the baseball team at Benedictine, a prep school near her home where her brother, Gregory Ryan Jr., played during his high school years. But Naomi was told girls weren’t allowed to join the team. So she and her father, Gregory Sr., made the hour-long trek northwest to Charlottesville to meet with an undersized righty-turned-lefty who knows something about defying the odds.
“I also had a coach that was willing to give me the opportunity to compete when it didn’t look like I was going to be the obvious Major League Baseball player,” said Wagner.
All he promised Ryan was an opportunity; all he committed to was no special treatment. Whatever Ryan accomplished among the boys at the Miller School had to come on her own merit. Oh, and one more thing: For good or bad, Wagner would always be honest.
“One of the things that sticks out to me is, when she came to me asking to come to Miller and play, she said, ‘I want to be the first woman to play in the big leagues,’” Wagner recalled. “And I'm like, ‘Well, I'm not going to be the guy to tell you no, but I'm not going to be the guy to say that's going to be easy.’”
Ryan took it with the same quiet resolve she does most things. Then she went to work.
It took no time to realize that Naomi, the athlete, was every coach’s dream. The fundamentals were sound beyond her years, and she was willing to put in the work each day.
Hand in hand with that came the baseball IQ. If Wagner calls for a bunt, Ryan nods and goes with it. If he puts on a hit and run, she recognizes the strategy behind it. She’s not trying to hit home runs in every at-bat, because she understands that’s not her game.
If only all the kids were this receptive …
“She is really just a solid baseball player,” said Wagner. “She's probably the easiest person I have on the team to coach. … She understands the game in a way that most young male adults do not understand, because they see the game in a different light.”
Part of that is a product of adversity, renewed appreciation for standing on firm ground after getting the rug pulled from under you. Most of it, though, is simply who she is. That’s how Wagner came to admire Naomi, the person.
“I know that there's coaches that have been on my staff and I know there's players on my staff that say that I'm biased,” said Wagner. “And yeah, I am. I probably am biased, because they don't have to fight the same battle she's going to have to fight.”
He has seen a few hair-raising examples of it.
Just a couple of weeks before Ryan left for the final round of the WBWC as one of the youngest members on Team USA, she took the mound for a game in Georgia. At the plate was “a big guy” who ended up hitting “a big home run off of her.” As the tough guy rounded the bases, he turned to face the mound:
“Go back to the softball field!” he yelled.
Ryan walked it off and went back to pitching. When stuff like that happens, she draws from the biggest lesson she has taken from Wagner.
“Honestly, just keep doing what you love,” said Ryan. “If you love baseball, keep going at it. You're going to have a lot of people disagreeing with what you're doing, or saying no, but just listen to the people who are in your corner.”
Wagner speaks from experience, and he speaks from the heart.
“The road, being through this and understanding how she's going to be viewed, how things are, I want to prepare her,” said Wagner. “Because I do, in ways, feel like she is that daughter.”
Those words mean something to Naomi’s family.
The Ryans are very much involved in Naomi’s pursuit of feats that have never been accomplished. Her mother, Cornelia Ryan, couldn’t make it to Thunder Bay to watch her daughter compete in the WBWC -- one of the few opportunities Naomi has had to play with women only -- but her brother and father were around, and they make sure to FaceTime Cornelia after games to fill her in on her latest at-bats or her highlight-reel plays at first base.
Having Wagner in their corner has brought renewed belief for this family.
“It takes a lot of pressure off of me,” said Gregory Sr. “When you’re playing for a future Hall of Famer, he knows the game well. And he’s definitely on her side. Where he goes, he talks about Naomi, whether it’s on television or [otherwise]. So it’s a good feeling. Especially [coming from] a person who’s in this position to say, ‘Yeah, she’s good enough to do it.’”
Wagner has four children of his own, including Kason Wagner, who also plays at the Miller School. Billy Wagner might be as invested in Naomi’s future as he would be with one of his own, but that also means he will hold her to similar standards.
“Yeah, he’s hard on her at times,” Gregory Sr. said, allowing himself a wry smile. “But I think I’m still much harder on her.”
Neither is as hard on Naomi as she is on herself. But just as she’s her own biggest critic, she’s also her own biggest confidence builder.
If it comes from within, no one can take it away.
“If I have a bad game, I always wonder, like, ‘Oh, am I meant to do this? Or maybe I should just play softball,’” said Ryan. “But then I remember why I love this game, why I started it. And that brings me back.”
Maybe that’s the source of her effect on her Miller School teammates, the reason why she was named one of the team captains and why everyone is better when she’s around: pure and simple love of the game.
“She is that young lady that our guys rally around,” said Wagner. “They see what she has to do.”