Much has been made of Tuesday evening’s rescue of the 33 Chilean Miners who had been trapped some 2,000 feet underground for 68 days. Doubtless, one cannot help but admire the fortitude of someone who has endured, with no warning or preparation, more than two months of subterranean isolation without contact with family and friends, a decent meal, a decent place to sleep, or sunlight,  not to mention that such deprivation includes being crammed into a small dank compartment with 32 other smelly, cranky guys who are probably all on the verge of psychotic breakdown as visions of sizzling beefsteak and the bouncing, cell phone bearing breasts of Larissa Riquelme dance through their heads.

Most people could not fathom such an ordeal. On a literal level, I know I can’t.  I’m sure I would have been crying myself to sleep every one of those 68 nights, missing my little lady in our warm little bed, roasted chicken, a decent cup of coffee, and the start of the Texas Longhorns football season- well, considering the Longhorn’s year so far, I think a Chilean mine is the superior option.  

I found it quite the coincidence that just an hour or so before the first Chilean miner surfaced in that nifty little under space capsule, a much larger group of humanity was emerging from a similar, though metaphorical, deprivation and darkness of some 50 years. It was a large group, numbering in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?, Nah!), of which I am a well-worn and lifelong member –Texas Rangers baseball fans.

The Texas Rangers began as the Washington Senators in 1961. In 1972, they moved to Arlington, Texas and into a soulless aluminum box of Stadium on a desolate wind-blown prairie next to Six Flags over Texas (back when it was an actual historical theme park and not the corporate cartoon that it is today), and not far from what was then the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike (now known as I-30 or Tom Landry Highway, whichever you prefer). It was like Anaheim without the Mouse or the Gene Autry cowboy glamour or the Southern California glow, though on a clear day, from the infield seats, you could make out the Dallas skyline on the horizon and hear a merciless television theme song in your head. 

The Stadium was christened, simply and imaginatively, Arlington Stadium, or Aluminum Stadium by the locals and those like my eight-year-old self who dared frequent the place to watch a team that would lose more than 100 games in their first two years of existence. I remember going to bat nights at old Arlington Stadium. Basically, if you were old enough to walk, they’d give you bat – a full size, fully-functioning baseball bat with the Texas Rangers logo on it - and you were free to bang it with all your might against the aluminum seats. I think the stadium on those nights was as close to a Hiroshima simulation as one could get and manage to survive.  

The Ranger’s first Manager, the slugging legend Ted Williams, hated the city, the stadium, the team ownership, the local media, and everything else he saw and heard, and hightailed it out of North Texas after a single season. I don’t blame him. The whole set up would appear quite distasteful to any civilized person. First of all, being surrounded by acres of highly conductive metal during a typical Texas summer doesn’t really appeal to us hicks, either. Let’s not forget the hazard presented during those pesky North Texas spring storms that bring little things like green skies, softball size hail, thunder, and, metal’s best friend, lightning. 

Despite the crap stadium and inhospitable heat, the 70’s and early 80’s weren’t all terrible - just mostly -  years for the Rangers. They were mainly mediocre, and there was even a second place tease or two in there. I followed the team religiously, managing to work around my 9pm bedtime, catching almost every game on 820 WBAP-AM (Duba-yah Bay Aye Pay, Foat Wuth-Daylahs) with the assistance of a small transistor radio and a mono earphone, listening away as I was tucked in my bed, no parental types the wiser. As hopeless as the Rangers could so often be, it beat listening to the bleating cattle milling around our acreage. My wannabe-rancher parents owned a whopping 8 head of cattle. They made enough noise for hundreds.

The Rangers had some memorable players throughout that time period: Pitcher Fergie Jenkins, outfielder and home run slugger Jeff Burroughs, first baseman Mike Hargrove- a player I remember mostly for his interminable batting ritual of stepping outside the box between almost every pitch, wedging his bat between the ground and his jock strap, and tugging at his gloves for no good reason whatsoever aside from maybe being OCD- aside from that, I think he was a good player and won rookie of the year and stuff; plump spitball pitcher Gaylord Perry, Third Baseman Toby Harrah, Golden Glove Catcher Jim Sundberg; slugger Richie Zisk; yet never won their division. 

Spitballer Gaylord Perry

There were memorable games, too, some lasting until midnight, something quite challenging for a little baseball brat. I can’t tell you how many 9-volt batteries I drained by falling asleep while a West Coast game (darn A’s and Angels!) was still in progress. There’s one game I’ll never forget on a visceral level. It seemed to go on forever. I cannot exactly remember if it was 8 runs or an 18 run comeback in the 9^th in Kansas City. Whatever it was, it blew my little mind. That Rangers half of the 9^th must have taken an hour. I don’t think I slept at all that night, thinking about all those poor Royals fans who left early, thinking their team had won.

The Rangers’ losing and teasing trend continued throughout the early nineties. Even with legend and future co-owner Nolan Ryan in their pitching rotation, the Rangers could not get over the hump and actually make the playoffs. That would not happen until the mid and late nineties, as they won the American League West in 1996, 1998, and 1999. But the season did not last much longer during those winning years. In their three playoff runs, the Rangers faced the mighty New York Yankees all three times and went a combined 1-9, ouch! After ’99 they would only return to the playoffs this year. 

The Rangers were perennial losers. The fortunes of the franchise could be summed up in one image – a fly ball bouncing off the head of outfielder Jose “Juiced” Conseco (my nephew and I always called him Jose Con Queso) and over the fence for a home run.