One Strike Away
The life of a Texas Ranger fan: Raw and uncensored.
One strike away…
I hear you. “Get over it, already.” But I can’t.
Let me ask you something: that night a few years ago, when your lottery ticket was one number off…Have you forgotten? I’m betting you still bring it up after all these years, to the guys at the bar or around the water cooler. “One number off,” you still whisper to yourself. Are we on the same page now?
So my team isn’t the Yankees, Celtics, or Packers. It’s the Texas Rangers, established in 1972, thank you very much. We’ve got just as much history as the other guys, just sadder and more pathetic.
We have our own Hall of Fame with legendary names like Toby Harrah, Buddy Bell, and Rusty Greer. We fought and defended ourselves with pride in Cleveland during Ten Cent Beer Night. We had Jose Canseco…So the story of uphill climbs to greatness are meant to go. We stick with our boys. We wear their colors. We follow them to far away lands like Kansas City and Chicago. We sit in their stands surrounded by the enemy and endure the snickers as we glare out at the numerous championship flags happily popping in the breeze. We grit our teeth, hold back the nausea, and wait for it. It usually happens around the 4th, and it always goes down the same. He leans over, takes a big slug of Bud, and with foam dripping from his upper lip, does it:
“Man. Can’t believe you guys were one strike away!”
Here’s the deal. I’m 46 years old, and I’m tired.
I’ve been wearing a cap with a T on it since I was 8. I experienced the Don Zimmer era (not really an era.) I was there for powder-blue uniforms and Minyard bat nights. My second home was the thread-bare third-rate wind-tunnel once known as Turnpike Stadium. At 17, I climbed the 20' tall chain-net covering the south entrance one moonlit night just so I could sit in the centerfield bleachers and say I once had the whole place to myself. Twice, TWICE, I snuck into the new Ballpark when it was under construction (once posing as a reporter. The second, a construction worker) just so I could have the pleasure of saying, “I saw it first.”
One…strike…away.
My beloved golden retriever was named Ranger. He got sick the day after Game 5 of the 2010 World Series and died the following week (Feel me yet?)
When my first child was born, the first colors he saw was the red and blue his papa was wearing as he knelt down like Pudge waiting on the heater from Nolan. Fourteen years later, my wife is still pissed.
And on Thursday, October 27, 2011, at approximately 11 pm Central Standard time, I woke both of my small tykes up and sat them in my lap so that they, too, could say they witnessed history…What happened next I don’t like to talk about. Let’s just say my children carry around a few emotional-scars and leave it at that.
We were one freaking strike away.
We Texas Ranger fans don’t have the history some of you do. But our 45 year roller-coaster ride has been no less bumpy, no less thrilling, and no less nauseating at times. So the reason I still harp on this, being One Strike Away, is because I , and a few others, saw back in our two-year run of glory that our window of opportunity was not the same as yours, your Cardinals and your Yankees and your Red Sox. We knew this wasn’t our winter-heroes, the Dallas Cowboys. Dynasty was not at all a word we were throwing around, for we knew better.
Those who have suffered, who are used to losing, used to being lifted up into the air only to be dropped onto their heads, don’t expect good things to last. We recognize a shooting star when we see one. The window would close, and soon. Once it did, we might not ever get it open again. Rational or irrational thinking perhaps. Over-dramatization, maybe. But this is how we felt. We had to get it done, quickly, like NOW.
Six years later…
Hey! We are getting a new stadium! With a roof, and air conditioning!
One…strike…away.
Adrian Beltre, one of the best things that ever happened to this organization got his 3,000th hit in our colors. What a moment!
One…strike…away.
And what a cool deal that our orange neighbors to the south are now World Champions. Just makes you feel warm all over.
Yep. Say it with me. We were ONE…STRIKE…AWAY!!!
Those who have suffered, who are used to losing, used to being lifted into the air and then dropped onto their heads, don’t expect good things to last.
I’m not bitter, and I’m not stuck in the past (well, maybe a little.) I simply join in with the other voices who’s throats are sore from screaming about how incredibly, impossibly, inexplicably close our team was six and seven years ago. I’m ready to yell something new.
Forbes lists the Texas Rangers as the 11th most valuable franchise in 2017 out of 30 teams, outranking some of the most storied clubs in baseball history. That’s fantastic, but can someone please tell me when this organization is going to pry open the window again and do more than stand on the toilet and look out? Take the pry-bar, throw it through the glass, and get your 45 year old, $1.55 billion ass through and out onto the street where it belongs.
A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote: “The game is designed to break your heart,” and it does. It’s part of the deal, baseball and me, and you. And one day, I’m sure, when you and I are walking around with long gray beards and a couple of teeth left, still wearing our caps with a T on it, our boys will finally do it. And we’ll be able to look back at the roller-coaster ride we all took together, under the dome in the nice air conditioning, and smile.
The former Commissioner went on to write: “It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion.”
I’ve got a new dog, and my kids are nearly in high school. I’m ready for a new reality.
