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Monday, July 9, 2001
Portland pitcher strikes perfection
Little Leaguer, 12, gives up only 9 hits all season
By Richard Tijerina
Caller-Times

George Tuley/Caller-Times

Nathan Rios, 12, who will enter junior high this fall, pitched a perfect game in May for the Portland Little League Cardinals.

   PORTLAND - Nathan Rios is a boy of summer, one of thousands in South Texas who plays Little League baseball. He is much like any other 12-year-old. He loves his mother. His best friend may be his Sony PlayStation, and he loves piecing together 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles.
   But, on the baseball field, Nathan is a man among boys.
   And, earlier this season, he was perfect.
   Nathan, pitching for the Portland Little League Cardinals, dominated a team of 12- and 13-year-old Mets in May, achieving one of the rarest of all baseball gems by pitching a perfect game, allowing no hits, no walks and no batters on base. To top it off, he struck out all 18 batters he faced.
   Last month, 12-year-old Robert Knight from Michigan made national headlines when he pitched a perfect game, striking out all 18 batters in a six-inning game.
   Nathan, who will enter Gregory-Portland Junior High this fall, struck out all 18 batters he faced - a full month before Robert did it.
   "I've been umpiring for 10 years, coaching for seven, and I've never seen a perfect game," said Albert Hernandez, who coached Nathan's team, the Cardinals, that night.
   "He's just a big old kid at heart. He's just an overgrown boy," Hernandez said. "He messes around like the rest of the boys. He wanted me to get him timed (on his pitching speed), but I don't have a radar."
   Experienced kid
   At 12 years old, Nathan already stands 5-foot-6, towering over his teammates. He weighs 184 pounds. He has tremendous size, formidable thighs, and a pitching arm that flirts with no-hitters the way others might toy with shutouts. He can hit towering home runs over the left field fence. And he already has biceps.
   Nathan, who says his favorite meal to eat is the No. 2 Whatameal (double meat cheeseburger) at Whataburger, wears a size 13 shoe and has a 32-inch waist. Teammates call him "Nate Dog," "Ice Man" or "Hot Rod."
   "He's just about a man among boys out here, at this level," said Pat Caldwell, the coach of the Gregory-Portland All-Stars. "It's been that way for as long as I've watched him play. Three years ago, he was the kid everyone watched out for."
   Nathan, who led his G-P All-Stars in the District 29 all-star tournament in Rockport last weekend, is a multi-sport athlete, playing baseball, football, track and field and soccer. He's thinking about taking up boxing as well.
   But it's baseball and football that he loves best.
   "He watches college baseball, the pros, plays it on Nintendo. He eats it, dreams it," said his grandmother, Estella Gonzales, who helped raise Nathan. "One night, he said, 'Sammy Sosa' while he was dreaming. I don't know if he was dreaming that he was talking to him or what."
   Audible pop

George Tuley/Caller-Times

Standing 5-foot-6 and weighing 184 pounds, Nathan towers over his Gregory-Portland All-Stars teammates, Derek Hagy (left) and J.T. Caldwell.

   Nathan's Portland bedroom is an athletic shrine. A Sammy Sosa poster and a Mark McGwire poster don one wall. His PlayStation is right next to his bed, armed with his Madden 2000 football game. A tall bookshelf is in the corner, complete with the yellowed home run ball he hit two years ago in an All-Star game, a grand slam baseball in a display box and a ball that he pitched a no-hitter with last season.
   Nathan is no stranger to no-hitters. Two weeks after blanking the Mets for his perfect game, he tossed another no-hit game, flirting again with perfection - only missing a second consecutive perfect game with a fifth-inning walk that came on a full count.
   "I threw it right on the corner, but I guess the ump blinked when it got to the plate," he said. "I thought it was a strike."
   Nathan has generated on-the-field attention around the Portland area for years, Hernandez and Caldwell said. When he pitches hard, the ball zips toward home plate so hard that an audible pop can be heard around Jacoway Field. "Wow," his grandmother says, breathlessly, as she watches practice.
   One of his fastballs can push the catcher back in his stance.
   One of the catchers, Kade Kainer, has learned to stuff a kitchen sponge into his catcher's mitt so that his hand won't bruise in a game.
   'Let's take care of today'
   Nathan was 9-0 as a pitcher this season. He hit with a .688 average, threw three no-hitters and struck out 116 batters in 45 innings. He allowed only nine hits all year.
   Things all came to a peak on May 2, when Nathan pitched his perfect game. Hernandez said he often limited Nathan to three innings in order to save him for the next game. That night was different.
   "He was leading, 2-0, and my manager asked me what I wanted to do," Hernandez said. "He's a pastor. I said, 'Pastor, Scripture says that tomorrow will take care of itself. Let's take care of today.' He said, 'That's good. I'm glad we're on the same page.' So we left him in."
   In the fourth inning, Nathan had full counts on two Mets batters before striking out both. Entering the sixth inning, Hernandez said, people knew a no-hitter was going, but a perfect game?
   "He went back out to pitch in the sixth and it didn't click until my daughter said he's going for his no-hitter," Hernandez said. "I turned around and said, 'How many strikeouts does he have?' She said 15. I turned to my coach and asked do you realize what's going on here? He hasn't walked a batter, hasn't allowed a runner on base. He's throwing a perfect game.'
   But there was more. Aside from one foul ball off to the right side of the field, no other Met had even touched the baseball.
   9 of 10
   In the final inning, he threw 10 pitches. Nine were strikes. Hernandez still has the scorecard - and an autographed photocopy is on Nathan's wall - showing all of the "K"s on the Mets lineup, signifying strikeouts. Eighteen-for-18. Perfection.
   The national Little League organization does not keep official statistics on perfect games. Still, "that's a once-in-a-lifetime thing for a Little Leaguer," said director of media relations Lance Van Auken.
   But you won't find Nathan's perfect game ball among the other baseball mementos in his room. After the game, when Hernandez handed the ball to him, Nathan instead gave it away. Not to his mother, or to his grandmother, but to his Cardinals catcher, Raymond Cortez, whose left hand was bruised and sore.
   "He caught a good game," said Nathan, whose G-P all-star team is continuing tournament action this month. "Without his confidence in me, I probably wouldn't have done it."


Contact Sports Editor Richard Tijerina at 886-3745 or tijerinar@caller.com

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