A collision in short right field with the bases loaded and two out in the ninth inning of a 4-4 game in Pittsburgh Friday night gave the Houston Astros’ newest executive a glimpse of the circus he had joined only hours earlier.

But like any kid who wants to run away and join the circus, Reid Ryan is ready to accept whatever he encounters in his new job, especially because what happens on the field won’t be his direct responsibility. The Astros’ dreadful daily performance, however, will make Ryan’s job more difficult.

Ryan, son of Nolan, is the Astros’ new president of business operations, although not everyone reported it that way. MLB.com, for example, ran this headline Thursday before Ryan’s appointment was announced:

Source: Reid Ryan to be named president of Astros

This was the headline after Friday’s news conference announcing his appointment:

Reid Ryan introduced as Astros president

Making matters worse, MLB.com identified Ryan in a picture caption as Houston’s “new president of baseball operations.”

However, MLB.com was not alone in exaggerating Ryan’s title. ESPN.com joined in before:

Reid Ryan to take over Astros

and after:

Reid Ryan takes over the Astros

Ryan is not taking over the Astros, either as their president or anything else. The headline on the news release announcing his appointment makes that clear in 18-point type:

HOUSTON ASTROS NAME REID RYAN PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS OPERATIONS

In the interest of honesty, however, the release quotes the owner, Jim Crane, in much smaller type, as saying, “We are thrilled to have Reid as President of the Houston Astros,” Maybe Ryan should ask for a raise.

There is a major difference between president and president of business operations. And before anyone says I’m quibbling, ask Reid’s father about titles.

Earlier this year, the co-owners of the Texas Rangers altered the titles and status of their top front-office executives, stripping Nolan Ryan of his title as president and leaving him as chief executive officer.

They struck the “president” part of Ryan’s responsibility because they promoted Jon Daniels from general manager to president of baseball operations and Rick George from chief operating officer to president of business operations.

In the Astros’ situation, George Postolos had been president and CEO for 18 months, from November 2011 when Jim Crane and his group bought the team until last week when he resigned.

When Postolos announced his resignation, I thought that was perfect timing and a perfect opportunity for Nolan. Although Ryan had agreed to remain with the Rangers after the owners diminished his position, he was not happy with the development.

Ryan was as much a hero and a legend in Houston as he was in Arlington. He pitched for the Astros for nine years, pitching the fifth of his record seven no-hitters for them; he served as a special adviser to the club for four years after he retired as a player, and he grew up in the Houston area.

Recruiting the 66-year-old Ryan, however, might have been awkward for Crane, who lost out to the Ryan group for the purchase of the Rangers. But Crane obviously had a different idea. He had his eye on a member of the Ryan family but one of the younger generation.

He knew Reid Ryan because Reid was CEO of the Corpus Christi Class AA minor league affiliate of the Astros.

“Jim had made some comments in the paper about buying the affiliate,” Ryan said on the telephone Saturday. “People were worried that he might want to move the team. The people in Corpus Christi have been great. I called him to find out his plans. He said I have an idea.”

The idea ended Ryan’s minor league career. Besides his position with Corpus Christi, he was also CEO of the Rangers’ AAA team in Round Rock, Tex., demonstrating his business talent in both places.

Last season Round Rock led the Pacific Coast League in attendance and Corpus Christi had the second highest attendance in the Texas League.

Additionally, Ryan was CEO and president of Ryan-Sanders Baseball, which owns the two minor league teams. (The Astros are in the process of buying Corpus Christi.)

He has also been on the board of trustees of minor league baseball, the executive committee of the Pacific Coast League and a minor league Internet rights committee. Like his father, he has also been involved in business ventures, including banking.

His younger brother, Reese, who has been chief financial officer of the two teams and the Ryan-Sanders group, will replace Reid in those ventures as well as the event they initiated in March, the two exhibition games the Rangers and the Padres played at the Alamodome in San Antonio

The brothers were involved in staging two exhibition games the last weekend of spring training in San Antonio. The two games between Texas and San Diego, the first baseball games played in the Alamodome, drew a total of 75,000 fans.

Reid Ryan, who has spent his entire life living and breathing baseball, including playing in college and briefly in the minors, leaped at the chance to join the Astros.

“The opportunities don’t come along too often,” he said, “and when one does you have to take it.”

Even if it’s with a team as bad as the Astros, who should lose more than 100 games for the third successive season and whose attendance threatens to fall for the seventh straight season. The burden of improvement falls to Ryan and general manager Jeff Luhnow.

“It really comes down to the players,” Ryan said. “My focus will be on helping Jeff to do whatever he can do in getting players. It will be his call but I’ll do what I can to help. Jeff and I have a huge rapport. It’s not going to happen overnight. This team is on track to have another 100-loss season, but we have good players in the minor leagues.”

With the Astros now in the American League and in the same division, Reid faces direct competition with his father, whose Rangers have the A.L.’s best record.

His father, Ryan said, “was excited for me. He knows how hard it is to get these types of jobs.”

And even though they are rivals, Reid added, “I know whatever I need from a mentoring standpoint I’ll use him as a resource.”

BASEBALL’S FATHERS AND SONS

When initial reports, cited above, said Reid Ryan would be named the Astros’ president, I began wondering if Major League Baseball had ever had a father and son serving as the top executives of two teams at the same time.

None came to my mind, and Commissioner Bud Selig said he couldn’t think of anyone in his nearly 50 years in and around baseball.

There have been fathers and sons who have been owners or CEOs/presidents but not at the same time:

• Larry, Lee and Andy MacPhail
• Bill DeWitt, Bill DeWitt Jr. and Bill DeWitt III
• Clark and Calvin Griffith
• Bill Veeck Sr. and Bill Veeck Jr.
• Bob and Ruly Carpenter
• Warren and Bill Giles
• Walter and Peter O’Malley
• Larry and Paul Dolan

I asked the Hall of Fame for help in finding an example that fits. Several people from the library, the research department and the curatorial staff conducted the research, and this, in part, was the response I received:

“The position of President is bandied about loosely in MLB, with no real standard applied by all 30 teams. Some teams do not even have such a position. This inconsistency makes it very hard to answer your question. Also, if you look back in the early days of the game, many teams only had 5-6 people in the front office, total. So this type of jump probably happened at some point, but the record keeping just does not make it possible to confirm any data in answer to your questions.

“Baseball is noted for its nepotism…so there is a very good chance that something happened in a similar fashion in the past.

“The story angle might not be that there is any ‘first’ here, but that this ‘inside the family’ hiring is a tradition that goes back to baseball’s earliest days.”

Nevertheless, it’s possible that the Ryans are the first father and son to hold such high positions with different clubs at the same time. It’s also possible that Reid Ryan is the first person to go directly from the minors to the majors with no previous major league experience for such a high-ranking front-office position.

It’s like Al Kaline and Robin Yount playing in the majors with no minor league experience, though Ryan has worked in the minors for 16 years.

“I’m a little bit of a unique case,” the younger Ryan said.

INTRIGUE OF 1-0

If I haven’t said it before, I like 1-0 games. I find them fascinating. I especially find two things about this season’s 15 1-0 games fascinating.

Before Saturday night, there had been three complete 1-0 games, and Justin Masterson of Cleveland had pitched two of them. He threw a 4-hitter against the Yankees last Monday and preceded that by scattering 9 hits against the White Sox April 12.

But the most intriguing 1-0 game came Saturday night when Brandon McCarthy and the Diamondbacks beat the Marlins. Gerardo Parra, Arizona’s leadoff hitter, swung at Tom Koehler’s first pitch of the game, and drove it over the right field wall.

Then, in the Marlins’ half of the first, Derek Dietrich tried to score from second base on Chris Coghlan’s two-out hit to right field, and Parra threw him out.

McCarthy allowed only one hit the rest of the game for a 3-hitter, gaining his first victory since a line drive hit him in the head last Sept. 5 and fractured his skull.

Elias Sports Bureau said it was the first game since Sept. 14, 1993, that a first-pitch home run (that one by Carlos Garcia of Pittsburgh) won a 1-0 game.

Elias also reports that last season pitchers threw seven 1-0 complete games, and Felix Hernandez of Seattle pitched four of them.

REPLAY STUDY EXPANDS TO TIME AVAILABLE

Major league club owners were updated last week on the study to determine if the use of television replays should be expanded.

The only replay reviews permitted now involve home runs – fair or foul, over a fence or not. A committee of Joe Torre, Tony La Russa and John Schuerholz has been studying possible expansion on other plays, though not on balls and strikes.

Commissioner Bud Selig praised the committee for its study.

“They’ve been hard at work,” he said after the owners’ meeting last week. “There’s been a lot of work done. But I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot of work to be done,” adding, “The more issues they raise, the more complex it becomes.”

If you have followed the commissioner’s remarks on the Oakland Athletics’ request to move to San Jose, you’ll understand that the replay committee will be studying the issue well past the desired target date of the 2014 season. The San Jose study committee is still at work in its fifth year.

I have two questions about expanded replay. The umpires made two bad calls in recent weeks. One involved a home run that they ruled a double even after watching replays. If they can’t get home runs right with replays, what makes anyone think they’ll get tag plays right?

Then there was the umpires’ total ignorance of a rule governing pitching. How would replays fix that?

Baseball has been played for more than 100 years, and players and teams have survived umpires’ mistakes. Players don’t get do-overs when they make mistakes. Players are human; umpires are human. Humans make mistakes.

In most instances we don’t get a chance to correct our mistakes instantly. Why should umpires be any different? Let them make their mistakes, and we’ll have plenty to talk about after they’ve made them.