Ryan Leaves The Hospital

April 23, 2000 / 10:38 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Baseball great Nolan Ryan is progressing ahead of schedule following his double heart bypass operation, and doctors said he should leave the hospital within a week and make a full recovery.

"He is doing very well," Thomas McMinn, a cardiologist at the Heart Hospital of Austin, said Tuesday. "He is walking the halls and getting stronger."

Ryan walked into a hospital in suburban Round Rock on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pains. He was moved to the Austin hospital, where he was rushed into surgery after diagnosis showed a near-total blockage in a main artery to his heart.

Dr. Mark Felger performed the surgery, taking a vein from below Ryan's breastbone and a vein from below his left knee to replace the damaged left coronary artery.

Ryan and his wife, Ruth, were in the Austin suburb of Round Rock to watch the Round Rock Express, a minor league baseball team owned by Ryan, his son, Reid Ryan, and Houston businessman Don Sanders.

Ryan and his wife headed for the hospital after he experienced shortness of breath, tingling in his arms and chest pains while walking around Dell Diamond, the club's new $25 million stadium.

Doctors said Ryan had severe blockage in his left coronary artery, which supplies 75 percent of the blood to the heart. The blockage ranged from 50 percent to 90 percent because of spasms in the artery.

Complete blockages of other arteries are survivable, doctors said. But had Ryan not headed to the hospital immediately on Sunday, he might not have had a second chance, they said.

"You can have complete blockages of an artery, have a heart attack and still survive it," McMinn said. "But not many people survive a complete blockage where he had it because it simply supplies too much blood to the rest of the heart."

Doctors said Ryan has "the heart of a 30-year-old" and attributed his problems to hereditary, not his lifestyle.

"It's pretty hard to pick your parents," said Dr. Stephen Garland, another cardiologist at Heart Hospital.

Ryan's grandfather died of a heart attack in his 50s. His mother suffered a stroke in her 50s before dying 20 years later. His brother also had a heart attack in his 50s.

Ryan has a history of high cholesterol, but other arteries in his heart looked perfect, Felger said.

"They look like his fastball down the middle," Felger told The Dallas Morning News. "Smooth."

Reid Ryan said his father had continued to eat a high-protein diet just as he did as a baseball player and was adamant about exercise, mostly riding a stationary bicycle, walking with his wife and using weights.

Ryan has undergone a physical and stress testing each year since retiring from baseball seven years ago, his son said.

But Garland said such tests often don't reveal artery blockage.

"Many of us are walking around with 35 percent blockage in an artery nd don't even know it," Garland said.

Ryan was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in January 1999. He holds or shares 48 major league, American League or National League records.

During a record 27 seasons in the majors, blistering fastballs from his right arm made him baseball's career leader in strikeouts with 5,714 and no-hitters with seven. He retired in 1993 with the Texas Rangers.