OK, I admit it.  I’m not one of those super fans who can run off the stats of every player on the team, and cite without hesitation which pitchers boast the best ERA.  Heck, I can’t even name each of the starters playing in the current World Series lineup.  Still, I’m a fan. 

Living a thousand miles away, I rarely get to attend a game.  The local paper rarely gives regular season Rangers games more than a small paragraph detailing who pitched and who reached home plate.  I’ll read that little paragraph every day, however, and follow my team’s division standings closely.  I silently cheer every time my team wins, and let out an often audible groan if they lose.  I’m a fan.

It hasn’t always been easy to be a Texas Rangers fan.  The team’s beginnings were inauspicious.  The Dallas-Fort Worth area – the “Metroplex” – had attempted to gain a major league baseball franchise throughout the second half of the 20^th century.  Efforts appeared to be making headway in the mid-1960’s, but sadly, the Metroplex lost out to San Diego and Montreal as those cities gained new National League franchises.  It would not be until the next decade that a major league team would begin playing in North Texas.  In 1971, it was announced that the hapless Washington Senators would move to Arlington, half way between Dallas and Fort Worth, for the 1972 season.  The Senators would shed their inside-the-beltway” moniker, and take a much more appropriate name for a Texas team, “the Rangers”. I was in middle school at the time, and I was elated! 

The Rangers did not get off to a very good start.  First off, their stadium was little more than a prefabricated hodgepodge of aluminum risers.  Originally built for a minor league team, its seating capacity was quickly increased from 10,000 to 35,000.  Even so, those first few seasons it looked little better than a large high school stadium, utterly unworthy of the great players who would call this baseball park home.  Frankly, it was a little embarrassing.

Arlington Stadium before its expansion to host the Texas Rangers 

  Arlington Stadium in the mid-1980's

There were early omens of difficulties to come for the new Texas team.  The last game that the Senators played in 1971 before making the move to Arlington had to be forfeited, when thousands of fans flooded the playing field during the bottom of the ninth inning with just two outs.  The opening game of the 1972 season, the first season in the team’s new Texas home, was postponed due to a players’ strike.  When the season got underway a week late, the Rangers lost to the California Angels 1-0 in their inaugural home opener.

Those early decades were rough.  There was a revolving door of managers.  The first was the great Ted Williams, but he only lasted one season.  Next came Whitey Herzog's two year stint.  After him, the Metroplex was entertained and embarrassed by the antics of Billy Martin for a couple of years before he moved on to the Yankees.  The turnover at the helm continued.  In their first 20 years, the Rangers had 14 different managers.

The Rangers weren’t the worst team in baseball, not by a long shot.  They were just good enough that fans could get their hopes up, only to be disappointed  when the inevitable post-All Star Game slump would arrive in late July or August.  It would be a quarter century before the team would win a pennant.  Indeed, the Rangers of the late 1990’s were one of the best teams in baseball.  I was thrilled, so much so that in October, 1996, while vacationing in Edinburgh, Scotland, I even called a friend in the middle of the night to get the score of the team’s first playoff game.  You may guess the outcome of that one.  In order to progress in the playoffs, the Rangers had to first get by the hated New York Yankees.  That ensemble of great players like Don Mattingly, Dwight Gooden, and a young Derek Jeter were just too much for the upstart Rangers.  In three years, they only beat the Yankees once in post-season play, and never won a home playoff game during that decade.  That Rangers team slowly faded, while the Yankees continued their winning ways.  It was hard on a fan like me.

Now all those disappointing years are a thing of the past.  The old Arlington Stadium, once correctly described as small but not intimate, is no more.  The Rangers now play in one of the best stadiums in the nation.  I may hate its name, “Rangers Ballpark in Arlington”, but it’s a wonderful place to watch the game.  More importantly, the team is unquestionably among the elite, the first American League team to reach consecutive World Series’ in ten years.  I don’t know if the Rangers will ultimately come out on top.  I only know this:  they are a great team with a world championship in their grasp.  They have paid their dues.  Go Rangers!

Rangers Ballpark in Arlington