Essays.1972-Rangers – Society for American Baseball Research

Introduction: The Team That Couldn’t Hit: 1972 Texas Rangers

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 05:03:41 +0000

Just how bad were the early Texas Rangers teams? Put it this way: When reporter Mike Shropshire wrote a book about covering the Rangers from 1973 to ’75, he called it Seasons In Hell, and when that book was published, two decades later, the Rangers still hadn’t made the playoffs. Counting the ’60s, the decade that they began as the Washington Senators, the Rangers did not go to the playoffs for the first 35 years of their existence. They threatened, finishing second six times (but never within five games of the division winners). The one time they were in first, the season ended with a strike, and they still had only a 52-62 record.

So why write a book about the 1972 Texas Rangers, perhaps the worst team in club history? Well, it’s because they’re the start of that history. It seems that you can’t swing a bat in the team store at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington without hitting something with 1972 written on it. For a team that has been around a relatively short time, the Rangers certainly like to promote the history of the club, and it all began with this team. Many Rangers fans wear T-shirts with 1972 on them, or have key rings, or pennants, or some other memorabilia. These guys are, for good or bad, legendary. And this book is the story of why.

Perhaps one of the biggest influences on this book is one of the men who have been in the broadcast booth for so many years, Tom Grieve. Grieve was a Washington Senator who came over to Texas, was the longest-serving player from that original team, then became the general manager, before moving into the broadcast booth. Since then he regularly tells stories about the 1972 team, or about the early years, making it yet another point of interest for that first team.

THE 1972 TEXAS RANGERS

It took the vision of one man to get a major-league baseball team in North Texas. Tom Vandergriff, mayor of Arlington, a small town midway between the big cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, had that vision. Hoping to build economic opportunities in his city, he persuaded people to support his plan. It took a lot of Texas guts to pull this off, but by pitting the two big rival cities against each other, he managed to get a team into the little town in the middle.

It took a long time, though, a lot longer than he expected. He spent the 1950s and ’60s trying to lure a team to move, or get an expansion team. He built Turnpike Stadium, a ballpark for the minor-league team that could quickly be converted to major-league status. He almost got Charlie Finley to bring his Kansas City A’s to Texas, but Charlie eventually decided on the West Coast.

Then Vandergriff found his man. Or, maybe, Bob Short found his mark. Short was a veteran of moving sports teams, having taken the NBA’s Lakers from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. Now he’d bought the Washington Senators – the expansion team, not the original, which itself had moved to Minnesota a decade before. Was it Short’s plan all along? Buy a team, run it down, move it, profit? Who knows? He certainly never admitted to something like that. But he did it – twice.

Short complained about everything in Washington. The fans didn’t show up. It was because of the horrible ballpark, or the neighborhood around it. He had a terrible ballpark deal, and couldn’t make any money because of it. His radio and television deals tied his hands. About the only thing he had going for him was the manager, Hall of Famer Ted Williams. Until Vandergriff showed up.

Secret negotiations ensued in the middle of 1971. The Texas people were willing to give Short anything he wanted if he moved the team. They had a ballpark ready. They had broadcast deals ready. And the fans, who came out to see a minor-league team would surely flock to see a major-league one too. All Short had to do was agree to move the team.

And he did. It took some finagling, a few lawsuits, and a lot of complaining from real senators. There was an air of financial shenanigans, too. Baseball wouldn’t let the Senators leave Washington without proving Short was losing money, which was easy, since he cre- ated the books. They wanted him to find local owners to buy the team instead of moving it. He found some, but they couldn’t provide enough guarantees for his liking. Notably, he wanted them to cover all his losses for the last several years – which were largely paper losses anyway.

So baseball voted, and Short was allowed to go. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was sitting there waiting for him. All he had to do was suffer some verbal slings and arrows, along with the indignity of seeing the final game in Washington abandoned when fans invaded the field, and he could cash in. He did, by the way: the city of Arlington paid him upfront for 10 years of broadcasting fees. Not only did that $7.5 million pay off his debts, but it ensured a handsome profit, given that later investigations showed he’d put down almost no money to buy the team in the first place. And he certainly wasn’t going to be around for 10 years to see how much selling the radio and TV rights would hurt the team.

The Senators moved to Arlington for the 1972 season. Rebranding called them the Texas Rangers, after the legendary state law-enforcement group. They embraced the area, using Texas symbols in all their marketing, doing everything but wearing cowboy boots and hats on the field. They did what they could to bring immediate success, but they couldn’t fix one thing: the players. The team was a roster of has-beens and never-weres, with the occasional rough diamond that was either not yet polished or was quickly traded away at any sign of life.

Bad luck hit the team even before it played its first game. The first-ever players strike in the spring of 1972 delayed Opening Day, and all the plans the team had to bring in the crowds for their first game. After a week of the season was lost, instead of the first game being at home, the Rangers opened in California, and didn’t get home until a few days later. But when they did, the pageantry was there, albeit to a much smaller crowd than hoped.

That first-ever Texas Rangers game? You wouldn’t believe it if you read it in a novel. They lost, but they did it impressively. With the Rangers and Angels tied, 0-0, in the bottom of the ninth, Rangers reliever Paul Lindblad threw a bases-loaded walk-off wild pitch – perhaps symbolic of all the bad luck that would follow the team for decades.

When the Rangers came home for their first North Texas series, they swept the Angels in four games. Imagine the excitement in DFW for the first-place Texas Rangers. But they lost the following day and fell to fourth, and reality set in. By early June they hit last place and kept falling. Pretty much everyone quit on the team during the dog days of August, just showing up for the paychecks.

In late August the Rangers started a string in which they lost five, won one, lost four, won one, then lost five again. 2-14, if you’re trying to add it up. Next they won two out of three, so they were up to 4-15. The last of those three was a one-hitter by Bill Gogolewski, who apparently used up all the luck from the baseball gods, because the very next day they started the infamous 15-game losing streak. By the end of the streak they’d completed a 4-30 run, bad enough to make any fan cry. The game to end the losing streak took another Herculean pitching effort: Dick Bosman threw a three-hit shutout to beat the White Sox, 1-0.

Toward the end of the streak the media began to report the rumor that Williams was quitting at the end of the season. The Greatest Hitter That Ever Lived had been driven crazy by this team. With a combined .217 average, they were The Team That Couldn’t Hit, and there was nothing he could do about it. He would rather go fishing than manage them for another year.

Good things did happen during the season. Several game stories in this book tell of some of the better days the team had. In the June amateur draft the Rangers got Jim Sundberg and Mike Hargrove, who would each go on to long careers in the major leagues. Sunny is still around the team, having worked in the front office and in the media for the Rangers. Bobby Jones was around, too, although he was still in the minors. He’d been to Vietnam, where he’d earned a Bronze Star, and came back to play and coach for the Rangers, and spend more than two decades managing in the farm system. He retired in 2016, having spent 45 of his 50 years in baseball in the Rangers organization.

If you want to find a win for Bob Short, take a look at the attendance figures. He brashly predicted a million fans would come out, but he was wildly wrong. In the early part of the season, writers in Washington were quick to point out that compared with the prior season, Rangers fans weren’t showing up as much as Senators fans had. But by the end, Short had the last laugh. Barely. Although they had four fewer home games, the Rangers had 662,974 fans through the turnstiles, 7,818 more than the Senators did the previous year. And Short proved right in the long term. There were just 25,000 more fans in 1973, but in 1974 the Rangers hit almost 1.2 million. The most the expansion Senators ever had was 918,000, while the original Senators passed a million just once. Since 1974 the Rangers have hit at least a million every season, except for the strike year of 1981, when they had 850,000 in just 56 home games. By the 1990s they were regularly hitting 2 million and passed 3 million a couple of times in the 2010s.

The on-field effort helped with attendance, of course. Short sold the team to Brad Corbett in 1974, just a few months after the fifth anniversary of his buying it. (This was not a coincidence: It was the most favorable tax window to sell, and may have been his plan all along.) Corbett owned the team until 1980. Neither of them had money to put into the team (and neither of them wanted to). They spent the decade trading good players for bad, almost always with some cash coming back to them, which was used just to fund operations. They even lied about that – when shortstop Jim Mason was sold to the Yankees at the end of 1973, Short told local media that he got $250,000. The Yankees said they paid $100,000, and the media in New York thought even that was too much.

And that’s largely why the Rangers of the 1970s (and the Senators of the 1960s) were so bad. Owners operating on shoestring budgets, trying to stay afloat. The 1972 Rangers were the start of it in Texas, but they were a symptom of the malaise that was in the organization. The team had several good young players, but they were either traded away or rushed to the big leagues – David Clyde, anyone? – for financial purposes, and not developed properly. Mason and Grieve are good examples of that, too. In both cases Short wanted to put them on the major-league team, but Williams said they needed much more development in the minors.

It wasn’t until Eddie Chiles bought the team from Corbett – effectively a forced sale, because Chiles had loaned Corbett money to keep the team afloat, and he couldn’t afford to repay it – that the Rangers began showing some professionalism. Perhaps it was the escape from the wild times of the ’70s, too. By the time George W. Bush bought the team in 1989, they were on a solid financial foundation. And then they could push on to develop teams that would be competitive in the next decade. Again partly thanks to Grieve, who spent 1984-94 as the general manager.

So, if you remember the Rangers of the 1970s, you know how bad things can be. Hopefully you stuck around to see them turn into a winning team. Of course, they still don’t have a ring, 45 years later. Two World Series appearances, and twice they were one strike away from winning it all. But the curse of the Rangers continues.

DID YOU KNOW?

Some fun facts about the 1972 Texas Rangers:

They spent time in first place, and it wasn’t just on Opening Day. A week into the season they won and jumped to first. The following day they lost and fell to fourth. They never got above third place again all season.

Imagine finishing 20 1/2 games back. No, not behind the league leaders. The 1972 Rangers finished that far behind the next-to-last team, the Angels, who, at 18 games behind division champs Oakland, were closer to first than to last.

Surprisingly, the Rangers were pivotal in a division race. The Detroit Tigers were 10-2 against the Rangers, while the Boston Red Sox were 8-4. The Tigers won the American League East by half a game over the Red Sox. Just one more loss by the Tigers, or one more win by the Red Sox, against the Rangers, and baseball history could have been completely different.

They had a 15-game losing streak, still the worst in franchise history (through 2017). That streak was part of a 4-30 run in August and September, which got them to 99 losses with three games to go. They managed to win the first two but got their 100th loss on the last day.

The team batting average was .217, the fourth lowest since the start of the twentieth century. How galling was that to manager Ted Williams, the greatest hitter of all time? The only teams that were worse? The Yankees at .214, in the Year of the Pitcher, 1968, and two Deadball Era teams, the 1908 Brooklyn Dodgers at .213, and the 1910 Chicago White Sox at .211.

Only one pitcher reached 10 wins, Rich Hand. He also led the team with 14 losses. Naturally he was traded the following May. The best pitcher may have been Mike Paul, who was 8-9 with a 2.17 ERA in 20 starts and 29 relief appearances. They traded him too, the following August.

The “best” hitters were Toby Harrah and Larry Biittner at .259 (Harrah was ahead by a few decimal points). Or, if you want to use the OPS+ stat (On-base Plus Slugging, adjusted to ballpark, with 100 being league average), it was Don Mincher, at 133. Only two others, Frank Howard and Ted Ford, were above league average in that stat.

Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is the currently fashionable stat to show how good a player is. Replacement level is zero, which means you could pick someone up from the minor leagues who should do that job just as well. The Rangers had 11 hitters and 8 pitchers at or below zero. In other words, 19 of the 38 players the Rangers used in 1972, exactly half of them, were below replacement level. The Rangers also had three hitters and three pitchers over 2 WAR. For context, a WAR over 5 puts you at All-Star level, while a WAR over 2 could be a starting player in the major leagues. Mike Paul led the team with 3.4 WAR, while Elliott Maddox was the best hitter at 2.5 WAR. Despite all those terrible players, it was the only major-league season for just one of them. Pity poor Steve Lawson, who pitched well with a 2.81 ERA in 16 innings in his debut season. Arm trouble quickly led to the end of his career, but he at least could say that he played in the big leagues.

The ballpark was a converted minor-league park, with thousands of seats quickly added when the Rangers arrived. It was so hot in the summer that fans called it a frying pan for the two decades it somehow remained in use. When they replaced it, in 1994, they still weren’t smart enough to put a roof on the new park.

WHAT’S IN THE BOOK?

All this history and more is covered in this book. The 1972 Texas Rangers were a culmination of a couple of decades of trying to get a major-league team. Dallas-Fort Worth has a long history with baseball, going back to the 1800s. Minor-league teams played in both cities for many years, indeed right up until the Rangers arrived. Articles in this book tell you that history, about the effort to bring a team to North Texas, and the story of Tom Vandergriff, the man now known as “the father of the Rangers.”

The franchise began as the expansion Washington Senators, and we cover their story, which is often forgotten since it was so brief. We’ll tell you about Bob Short, the wheeler-dealer who ran the team on a shoestring, and looked at Texas as a way to make a quick profit. You already know everything there is to know about manager Ted Williams, right? We’ll tell you the story of Ted and his coaches, and the guys in the front office who ran the team, often despite Short’s interference.

And there are the players. Biographies of everyone who played on the 1972 Rangers, whether it was their only major-league experience or if they had long careers. None longer than Tom Grieve, of course, who went on to spend five decades with the franchise, as player, general manager, and broadcaster, and earned the nickname “Mr. Ranger.”

We also have several game stories from 1972. The first-ever game, which wasn’t supposed to be. The first home game, cowboy boots and all. The time that Nolan Ryan struck out 14 Rangers, decades before he became a Rangers legend. And more.

Then there are all the fascinating extras we include. Stories of the guys who broadcast the games (including a Hall of Fame pitcher) in the days when the radio broadcasters took turns in the TV booth too. A newspaper beat reporter who went on to become one of the best-known writers in the Dallas media market. The story of how the team was put together, how the season unfolded, and the long suffering of Rangers fans before the team finally put a winning product on the field.

There’s a lot of history here. Not all of it was good, but they were the first. Next time you’re in the ballpark, look around for a 1972 logo, and think back to the people who started it, all those years ago.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people worked together to produce this book. Every article was written by a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), all of whom volunteered their time. My original idea for the book was enthusiastically supported by C. Paul Rogers, chair of the Banks-Bragan Dallas-Ft. Worth chapter of SABR (who also gave me the book’s title), and other chapter members. SABR members everywhere pitched in, providing help and advice or, more directly, writing articles for the book. The story of the 1972 Texas Rangers presented here is due to their interest in recording and preserving baseball history. You can read biographies of all the contributors at the back of the book. I thank each and every one for their time and patience as this book moved through the process from conception to publication.

Of course, there were also contacts with the players in the book. Many of them gave their time freely either to me or to writers throughout the book, and I acknowledge the importance of getting the book written with their first-person knowledge and experience.

Thanks to my wife, Marian, and son, Joshua, for their enthusiastic support during the long gestation of the book. Many times I read odd stories about the team and players, and they listened to all of them with at least polite understanding. I’m glad to have them with me, and happy they enjoy watching the Rangers both on television and at the ballpark as much as I do.

I thank Carl Riechers, the book’s fact-checker, and Len Levin, the copy editor. They went through every article with a fine-toothed comb and found many things that I had missed. I would read each article two or three times before they even saw it, and they’d still catch things. Carl’s ability to fact-check is amazing, making sure that someone hit .215, not .216, somewhere in the distant past. I’d get my own articles back from him and wonder how I managed to write some of the things I wrote, and glad he was there to fix it. As copy editor Len’s job is to make sure everything follows SABR’s Style Guide, which he must have memorized by heart, and also to ensure that everything reads properly. Often Len would subtly change a sentence I’d written and make it much clearer. Thank you both so much, Carl and Len. You definitely made this book better.

Finally, my deepest thanks go to my co-editor, Bill Nowlin, SABR director and coordinator of BioProject books. Bill invested a lot of time and effort in guiding me to produce this book, and I am grateful for his help. It took longer than we both expected from start to finish, but Bill was there all the way, and pushed it over the finish line. Maybe a baseball metaphor is better: I got the book to third base (with a lot of help), but it was Bill who drove in the winning run. Bill, thank you so much for all your work and support.

STEVE WEST vividly remembers the first time he stepped into the seating bowl at The Ballpark in Arlington, and saw the vast expanse of green grass spread out in front of him. Along with his wife and son, he has been a season ticket holder for many years. He is halfway to his goal of collecting a baseball card of each of the more than 1,000 players who have been Texas Rangers.

Read more: Find all essays from The Team That Couldn’t Hit in the SABR Research Collection online
BioProject: Find biographies of players from the 1972 Texas Rangers at the SABR BioProject
Games Project: Find articles on the 1972 Texas Rangers at the SABR Games Project
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Prologue: The Washington Senators: 1961-71

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 04:58:50 +0000

“I’d love to be the man going into Washington. I’ve always felt that city is one of the top two or three franchises in the nation.” – Frank Lane, general manager, Cleveland Indians1

October 26, 1960, started a new era of Washington Senators baseball. It began auspiciously enough. Senators’ president Calvin Griffith was relocating his team to Minnesota. The Senators had been an original franchise in the American League since its inception in 1901. But for years the son of Clark Griffith, a former Senators pitcher and the team’s owner since 1920, had been wanting to move his club. Washington won its last pennant in 1933. Except for second-place finishes in 1943 and 1945, the Senators were a second-division club in the junior circuit. Often they were battling it out with Philadelphia or St. Louis for last place. From 1955 to 1959, they finished in the cellar. When Charles Dryden penned the phrase “Washington – first in war, first in peace, last in the American League” in 1909, it was meant to be a humorous observation. But unfortunately for Washington fans, it became a reality most seasons. “I regret leaving Washington,” said Griffith, “but I just couldn’t turn down the Minneapolis deal. I think we’ll draw 1.3 million our first year there and we’ll average more per head than we did in Washington.”2

As part of the deal to assuage the Nats fans, an expansion team was granted to the nation’s capital beginning with the 1961 season. Both the American and National Leagues were expanding to 10 teams. The American League opened for business in Los Angeles and Washington. The senior circuit put down stakes in New York and Houston. Many fans had grown weary of Griffith, and were not terribly sorry to see him leave. They were getting a new franchise, a fresh start, and that was exciting. Not to mention that a new stadium would be christened in time for the 1962 season.

However, the short turnaround time for the expansion franchises would be a burden. Most knowledgeable baseball fans expected a couple of years of futility before progress was made. Elwood R. “Pete” Quesada was named the owner of the new franchise on November 17. Quesada was an administrator with the Federal Aviation Agency (as of 1967 the Federal Aviation Administration). Before that, he had a decorated career in military aviation. Quesada immediately made overtures to Cleveland general manager Frank Lane to come to Washington. Although Lane was intrigued by the idea, he knew a bad proposition when he saw one, and stayed put. Eventually Ed Doherty was named the GM and Mickey Vernon was hired to be the manager. Vernon was an icon in Washington, one of the few stars the franchise had in the 1940s and ’50s. However, over his 20 years as a major-league player, Vernon ranked third all-time in games played (2,409) without a playoff appearance. It was no fault of his own, as he owned a .286 lifetime batting average.

The expansion draft was held in Boston in AL President Joe Cronin’s office. A flip of the coin for the four categories (pitching, catching, infield, and outfield) determined whether the Senators or Angels would select first. The Angels won three of the four flips; the Senators were able to get only their first pick of outfielders. Each of the existing eight AL clubs was required to make a total of 15 players available, making 120 players eligible to be drafted. As in many expansion drafts in professional sports, the names were a jumble of have-nots, also-rans, and never-were ballplayers.

The highlight of the 1961 season may have been Opening Day. Although the Nats dropped a 4-3 decision to the White Sox, President John F. Kennedy was on hand to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. The paid attendance for the last home opener at Griffith Stadium was 26,275. That total was surpassed only twice during the season, and both times the Yankees were the visitor. Led by Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, the M&M boys’ pursuit of Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record was a boon to teams needing a boost in ticket sales.

Dick Donovan led the league with a 2.40 ERA. Gene Woodling was the only player to bat over .300 (.313), and catcher Gene Green also enjoyed a good season, batting .280, hitting 18 home runs, and driving in 62 runs. The club enjoyed a winning month in May (17-12), but not much else. The Senators finished tied with Kansas City for last place in the AL. The Senators had a 61-100 record, 47½ games behind New York.

The Senators looked to improve their offense, acquiring outfielder Jimmy Piersall from Cleveland for Donovan and Green. After batting .322 for the Tribe in 1961, Piersall slumped to .244 in 1962. Donovan was named The Sporting News American League Pitcher of the Year.

The 1962 season was a carbon copy of the previous year. Not one pitcher posted a winning record and the Nats finished in last place with a 60-101 record, 35½ games out of first place. After the season, Quesada sold the team to James H. Lemon, an investment banker in Washington. Lemon hired George Selkirk to replace Doherty as the general manager. Selkirk was probably best known for taking the place of Babe Ruth in 1934, but he carved out a good career in his own right. In his nine years with the Bombers, the Yanks won six pennants.

Forty games into the 1963 season, Vernon was let go as the Senators’ skipper. Piersall was traded to the New York Mets for Gil Hodges, with the understanding that Hodges would take over the reins of the club. His playing days were in the rear-view mirror. It was a curious move in that Hodges had never managed a baseball team, at any level. “He likes to work with young players, and he has the ability to teach them the things that made him a great hitter and a great defensive player,” said Mets manager Casey Stengel.3

The Senators finished in last again in 1963, but in 1964 they crawled out of the basement into ninth place. However, they still lost 100 games for the fourth straight season. One of the highlights in the 1964 season came when right fielder Jim King hit for the cycle on May 26. He was the only player of the “new” Senators to accomplish the feat.

After the 1964 season Selkirk made a deal that gave a face to the Senators franchise. In a six-player swap with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Frank Howard was bringing his big bat east. Howard had been the 1960 Rookie of the Year. Although like many power hitters he had a penchant for striking out, Howard could also hit for average.

The Senators posted their best post-Griffith record, 70-92, in 1965 and inched up in the standings to eighth place. But for the Washington fans, the real kick in the teeth came when the Minnesota Twins won the pennant. To make it worse, their core players (Earl Battey, Zoilo Versalles, Harmon Killebrew, Don Mincher, Bob Allison, Jim Kaat, and Camilo Pascual) were all on the Washington roster in 1960. A hard pill to swallow for Nats fans, to be sure.

The Senators went 71-88 in 1966, again finishing in eighth place. Sonny Siebert fired a no-hitter against Washington on August 10 at Cleveland.

The next four seasons could be termed the Frank Howard years. He was nicknamed the Washington Monument for his 6-foot-7 frame. Howard averaged 43 home runs and 108 RBIs from 1967 through 1970. His best season was 1970, when he smacked 46 round-trippers, drove in 126 runs, and drew 132 walks. All three categories led the American League.

Despite Howard’s offensive fireworks, changes were being made in the Capital City. Hodges did about as much as he could with talent he was given. He was traded back to the Mets for pitcher Bill Denehy and $100,000 on November 27, 1967. Jim Lemon (no relation to the Washington owner) took over the reins of the club. A former player for the Senators, Lemon had a solid career. He had one year of managerial experience, with York (Pennsylvania) of the Eastern League in 1964. Lemon was on the Twins coaching staff before joining the Senators. The Nats sank to the bottom of the American League standings in 1968.

Owner Lemon sold his interest in the club to Bob Short in the fall of 1968. Short, a trucking magnate from Minneapolis, had owned the Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA. He moved them to Los Angeles in 1957. He then sold the franchise to Jack Kent Cooke in 1965, making a profit of $5.2 million. Short outbid comedian Bob Hope for the majority rights to the Senators, and kept Lemon on as chairman of the board.

Would the Senators face the same fate as the Lakers? Short said all the right things when the announcement of his ownership was made. But two days later he remarked, “I am not committed to keep the team in Washington if D.C. Stadium is not made safe for the fans.”4 Selkirk was removed from his general-manager position, and Doherty was brought back into the fold, although his new responsibilities were not clearly defined. Short was his own general manager.

Jim Lemon the manager was also shown the door. Short tried to woo Kansas City manager Bob Kennedy to succeed Lemon. Kennedy wasn’t interested. Short then persuaded Ted Williams to take the post. Williams signed on for a sweetheart deal to pilot the Senators. Teddy Ballgame was given a five-year pact calling for $65,000 annually. Included was a $15,000-a-year apartment in Washington and an unlimited expense account. It was surely enough for the Splendid Splinter to abandon his tackle box and reel.

In 1969 both leagues expanded by two more teams and each went to a two-division format. This created a round of playoffs before the World Series. No longer was the team with the best regular-season record guaranteed a spot in the fall classic. Not that the Senators needed to be concerned with postseason play. However, under Williams, they finished in fourth place in the American League East Division in 1969 with a record of 86-76. Howard (48 HR, 111 RBIs) and first baseman Mike Epstein (30 HR, 85 RBIs) carried the offense, while pitcher Dick Bosman led the league with a 2.19 ERA and was 14-5. Williams was named American League Manager of the Year in 1969.

Meanwhile Hodges won a world championship with the Mets, who upended the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

One of the more entertaining nights for Senators fans was the All-Star Game, which was held on July 23, 1969, at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. (Renamed from D.C. Stadium, it was commonly called RFK Stadium.) Although the National League won the contest, 9-3, Howard hit a second-inning home run to give the home crowd something to cheer about. The Senators topped the 900,000 mark in attendance for the season. There was no better advertising than a competitive team on the field.

Short saw no reason to have a general manager. He had no experience and it showed. He passed on offers to obtain Graig Nettles, instead bringing in Denny McLain and Curt Flood. Short really had no clue what he was doing. Ironically, if Bob Hope had been allowed to purchase the team they might have been less of a joke.

The Senators slumped to their old ways in 1970 and 1971. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who as a youth worked at Griffith Stadium, felt that it was important to keep a team in the nation’s capital. American League President Joe Cronin, himself a former Senator and a great one at that, felt likewise. Kuhn made last-ditch efforts to find a buyer for the flailing franchise.

Short was asking for $12 million for the franchise, or he would not renew the lease at RFK Stadium and move the team. Short set his sights on the Southwest. He received an offer to move his franchise to Arlington, Texas, a city between Dallas and Fort Worth. Part of the deal was a 10-year broadcasting contract that paid $7.5 million in advance. American League owners also realized that it was prudent to have a team presence in that burgeoning area of the country. The owners voted 10-2 in favor of Short relocating the team to Texas. On September 21, 1971, the news became final.

The Senators played their last game on September 30, 1971. A banner that read, “Goodbye Boob Short” hung in the ballpark. Another reading “Bob Short Fan Club” was draped over a completely empty section. Fans raced onto the field in the seventh and ninth innings, causing a forfeit to the New York Yankees. Howard stepped to the plate in the sixth inning with the bases empty and hit a home run off lefty Mike Kekich. The fans went berserk, clamoring for Howard to take a curtain call. “Next time up I told (Yankee catcher Thurman) Munson to thank Mike for the gift,” said Howard. “All I know is, he gave me a pitch I could hit.”5

JOSEPH WANCHO lives in Westlake, Ohio, and is a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan. He has been a SABR member since 2005 and serves as the chair of SABR’s Minor Leagues Research Committee. He was the editor of the book Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) and authored So You Think You’re a Cleveland Indians Fan? (Sports Publishing, 2018). In 2019, SABR will publish his book on the 1995 Cleveland Indians, The Sleeping Giant Awakes.

Notes

1 Burton Hawkins, “New Era for Baseball,” Washington Evening Star, October 27, 1960: A-15.

2 Burton Hawkins, “Baseball Gets New Start Here as Griffs Move,” Washington Evening Star, October, 27, 1960: A-15.

3 “Gil Has Ability to Become Successful Manager – Casey,” The Sporting News, June 1, 1963: 9.

4 “Short Changes Tune on Move,” Washington Evening Star, December 5, 1968: B-8.

5 Dick Heller, “Kekich’s Pitch to Howard: One for the Road Maybe?”, Washington Evening Star, October 1, 1971: E-2.

Major League Baseball Comes to Arlington

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 04:49:33 +0000

The on-the-field history of the Texas Rangers began on April 15, 1972, but efforts to bring major-league baseball to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex started more than a decade earlier. In 1953, after 50 years without expansion or relocations in either the American League or the National League, the Braves’ move from Boston to Milwaukee was the first of many changes for both leagues in the next few years. Existing teams, especially those struggling in their current market, would look to new markets to improve their financial situation. Perhaps the most surprising moves were made in 1958, with the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn for Los Angeles, and the New York Giants changing their home to San Francisco, the two clubs becoming the first on the West Coast.

At the same time, both the American and National Leagues were considering adding teams. By the fall of 1960, both leagues had formed expansion committees to explore potential locations for new teams, as many as four in each league, along with the issues in adding so many new teams. The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth came together to make a proposal to both leagues. The Bi-County Park Commission, which consisted of some of the most influential people in north Texas, had assembled a comprehensive plan for a new stadium to be built in Arlington, a small town halfway between the two cities near the turnpike that connected them. They already had approval to sell bonds to raise $9.5 million for the first domed stadium for baseball. The stadium would guarantee indoor playing conditions at 75 degrees, relieving concerns over the oppressive heat of a Texas summer. The dome would also mean no threat of rainouts that would force schedule changes. Since most teams in the league would have to travel a long distance to get to Texas, and with no other teams in the area, eliminating the possibility of having to travel back for makeup games was considered a necessity by the committee. Despite a well-organized committee with financial backing and community support from one of the largest cities without a major-league team, both leagues opted for other cities. The American League added the Los Angeles Angels and replaced the Washington Senators team that was moving to Minneapolis in 1961, and the National League added teams in New York and Houston in 1962.

Tom Vandergriff, the mayor of Arlington and the chairman of the Bi-County Park Commission, continued his efforts to bring major-league baseball to north Texas. He proposed the area to club owners who were struggling and wanting to move their teams. Charley Finley was eager to move the A’s out of Kansas City, but at a meeting of the American League on September 18, 1962, it was evident that a move was not going to be approved.

Determined to demonstrate support of baseball in Arlington, Mayor Vandergriff initiated construction of Turnpike Stadium in September 1964. The ballpark became the home field for the Texas League’s Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs in 1965. Originally, it seated 10,000 fans, large by minor-league standards, but was designed to be easily expanded to 50,000 seats in hopes of becoming home to a major-league team. Attendance at the Spurs games was very good, but Arlington was still unable to land a major-league team.

The next serious opportunity came in 1968. Both leagues were considering adding two teams, and the Kansas City A’s were now adamant about moving. Dallas-Fort Worth made a bid for a National League team but lost out to Montreal and San Diego. Roy Hofheinz, the owner of the Houston Astros, resisted a north Texas team because of the television contracts the Astros had throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Vandergriff argued that an in-state rivalry would benefit Hofheinz, but it was not to be. The American League had finally approved the A’s moving to Oakland, but legal threats forced them to grant Kansas City a new expansion team to replace the A’s. The league chose Seattle over Dallas-Fort Worth for its second expansion team, although the Pilots would play in Seattle for only one year before moving to Milwaukee.

With further expansion not expected for several years, the only hope Vandergriff had of bringing a major-league team to Arlington was to get approval for an existing club to relocate. To that end, he continued to build relationships with owners. He garnered support from California Angels owner Gene Autry, and the owner of the Washington Senators, Bob Short. Short and the Senators were having financial difficulties, which some say were of his own doing so that he could move the team to Texas. During the 1971 season, Short petitioned the American League to be able to move the team to Arlington. He had tried to negotiate a lower lease on RFK Stadium, but even with the threat of moving the team to Arlington if a new deal could not be reached, the D.C. Armory Board would not alter the lease. Short also offered to sell the team to anyone willing to pay $12 million to keep the team in Washington. On September 21, 1971, the league convened a meeting in Boston to discuss the relocation request. Vandergriff led a contingent from Dallas-Fort Worth. While he was presenting, a messenger knocked on the door and gave them a note signed by President Nixon which read, “I implore you. Repeat: I implore you: Do not move the nation’s national pastime from the nation’s capital.”1 Following Vandergriff’s presentation, the league excused the Texas delegation so the owners could vote. After a lengthy debate, the move was approved despite dissenting votes from the owners of the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox.2

News of the move was met with a flood of emotions in Washington. The nation’s capital couldn’t fathom how they could be losing their team to “a dinky, nowhere town between Dallas and Fort Worth with all the big-league stature of an anthill.”3 Players who enjoyed playing and living in Washington were disappointed to be moving, too. Many of the fans were very angry with Short and it was in full display in the final game of the season when the Senators hosted the Yankees. Fans hung banners all over the ballpark expressing their feelings about Short. The game ended when several hundred fans stormed the field with two outs in the top of the ninth inning. They literally stole the bases, pulled up grass, put dirt in their pockets, and grabbed anything else they could. The Senators were leading the game, but were forced to forfeit, ending a dismal season and closing the book on baseball in Washington, D.C., for 33 years.

That fall, Turnpike Stadium was expanded to a capacity over 35,000 and renamed Arlington Stadium. The team was named the Texas Rangers. It had taken 13 years of persistence, especially by Mayor Vandergriff, but Dallas-Fort Worth finally had the baseball team they coveted.

GREG CHANDLER is a database developer and project development consultant for Solomon Associates in Dallas, Texas. He was born into a family that loved baseball, especially the Texas Rangers, and has continued that tradition with his wife and two children. Many of their summer vacations are planned around visiting ballparks around the country. Greg is active in his church and has been on several short-term mission trips. He also enjoys hiking and snorkeling. This writing is his first contribution to a SABR publication.

Sources

In addition to the sources in the notes, the author also consulted:

Daniel, Dan. “Finley Backs Off – Fails to Seek A.L. Approval for Shift,” The Sporting News, September 29, 1962.

Daniel, Dan. “Let’s Speed Up Expansion Plan,” The Sporting News, September 21, 1960.

Gillespie, Ray. “Dallas-Fort Worth Join Hands in Major Bid,” The Sporting News, September 21, 1960.

thisgreatgame.com.

baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Expansion_of_1961.

texas.rangers.mlb.com/tex/history/timeline.jsp.

Notes

1 Aaron Mathews, shutdowninning.com/boy-mayor-first-hero/.

2 “American League Owners Approve Washington Shift,” Ludington (Michigan) Daily News, September 21, 1971.

3 Timothy Dwyer, “The Season Washington Was Out,” Washington Post, August 31, 2004.

Players who Homered at Arlington Stadium as Both Minor and Major Leaguers

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 04:45:51 +0000

In 1965, in an effort to attract a big-league team, Arlington, Texas, built a ballpark known as Turnpike Stadium. The original facility did not have the seating capacity of a big-league park, but it was built to facilitate enlargement once the big leagues came to town. For seven years the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs played at Turnpike Stadium in the Double-A Texas League. In 1972, when the Washington Senators chose to move to Texas, the Dallas area was ready, expanding the ballpark and renaming it Arlington Stadium.

Not many players accomplished the feat of hitting home runs in Arlington Stadium as both minor leaguers and major leaguers. First, the Texas Rangers, as the Senators were renamed, were in the American League, and as late as 1968, the only Texas League team affiliated with an American League team was the El Paso Sun Kings, Double-A affiliate of the California Angels. Second, the percentage of Double-A players who make it to the majors is not particularly high. Lastly, relatively few homers were hit by anyone at Arlington Stadium during the minor-league years.

However, the Dallas-Fort Worth team switched its affiliation from the Chicago Cubs to the Baltimore Orioles in 1969, and the parent team had a fairly good season. What was in the pipeline?

During the first three years of major-league play in Arlington, only two Rangers with Texas League connections had homered, while 11 former Texas League players had homered as visitors.

Although the enclosure of the ballpark and the addition of an upper deck would increase home-run productivity when the Senators moved in and became the Rangers, home runs were not flying out of the park during the minor-league days. During the first few games, it appeared that the ballpark was hitter-friendly with seven homers in the first six games. Then things turned around and for the whole 1965 season, only 29 homers were hit at Turnpike Stadium by an assortment of players, none of whom would replicate the feat as major leaguers.

Home runs at Turnpike Stadium were far harder to come by for anyone in 1966, as 21 homers, all told, were hit at Turnpike Stadium. One El Paso player, a first-round draft pick of the Angels, spent three seasons at El Paso, improving each year. So it was no great surprise that Jim Spencer had homered on June 8, 1966, in a 1-0 El Paso win over Dallas. In 1967 he hit two more home runs in Arlington, and the Angels called him up to the major leagues in 1968. By 1972 Spencer was a regular major leaguer, but he had a down year, hitting just one home run all season. That homer came on April 24 at Arlington off Don Stanhouse in a 6-4 loss to the Rangers. Traded to the Rangers in 1973, he achieved the distinction of homering as both a visiting and home player at Arlington when he homered off Pat Dobson of the Yankees on August 19. Over the course of his major-league career he had 13 homers at Arlington.

Home-run numbers didn’t change much over the next two years. In 1967, the count was up to 31, which was to be the highest ever for a season at Turnpike Stadium, while in 1968 it was down to just 19, the lowest season total.

One of Spencer’s teammates on the 1967 team had a particularly good year playing third base. His name was Leo Rodriguez and he tagged 11 homers for the Sun Kings. Were any home runs hit during the 14 games at Arlington? Nope. Of course, Leo Rodriguez went on to become Aurelio Rodriguez and accomplished the feat of homering at the same ballpark in the minors and majors at Seattle’s Sick’s Stadium.

But most of the big hitters in 1967 were with National League farm teams, and sluggers like Amarillo’s Nate Colbert, who had a league-leading 28 homers (two at Arlington) would not return to Arlington as major leaguers.

One future National League star homered at Turnpike Stadium on July 20 and July 22, 1967, as a member of the Amarillo Sonics, the farm club of the Houston Astros. Bob Watson played with Houston until 1979, clubbing 139 homers. He was traded to the Boston Red Sox that June, and visited Arlington Stadium shortly thereafter. On July 27, 1979, Watson homered off Steve Comer in a lopsided Rangers win over the Red Sox. After the 1979 season, he became a free agent and signed with the Yankees. His second and last major-league homer at Arlington Stadium came on April 11, 1980, off Ferguson Jenkins. He concluded his playing career with Atlanta in 1984 with the distinction of having homered in two ballparks (San Diego and Arlington) in the minors and majors.

Albuquerque was linked with the Dodgers organization for many years. The Albuquerque Dodgers of 1965-71 included some great names, but most of those players spent their careers in the National League. The Albuquerque team leader in homers in 1968 had been signed by the Dodgers in 1964 and worked his way up through the organization, landing in Albuquerque in 1967. On June 25, 1968, Bill Sudakis slammed his ninth homer of the season, at Arlington Stadium, in a 4-3 win over the Spurs. Sudakis made it to the big club at the end of the 1968 season and stayed in Dodger Blue through 1971, when knee injuries resulted in his being waived out of the organization. In 1972 he was with the Mets, who traded him to Texas prior to the 1973 season. In his one season with the Rangers, mostly as a DH, he had 15 homers (his best as a major leaguer). The first of six 1973 Arlington Stadium homers came on May 14 off Jim Kaat of the Twins in a 7-6 Rangers win.

Occasionally, one comes across a player who seems to be a sure thing. One such player was in the Baltimore Orioles farm system in 1969. At first, however, my research into Don Baylor’s homers at Arlington came up empty. Homer after homer was hit on the road. But persevere I did. I went through issue after issue of the San Antonio Light, as they had the box scores for all Texas League games. Much was going on in July 1969, but on the evening of July 11, 1969, in a 7-6 win over Amarillo, Don Baylor stroked his sixth homer of the year, and first at Arlington Stadium. It was to be his only homer at Arlington that season. His other 10 homers were hit on the road. Indeed, as I was to discover, the combined homer count at Turnpike Stadium in 1969 was only 21.

Baylor had 338 career major-league homers, including 18 at Arlington Stadium. His total was the third highest (behind Reggie Jackson and George Brett) for a visiting player at Arlington. His first Arlington blast came on June 10, 1972, off Casey Cox, as the Orioles defeated the Rangers 5-2.

I stumbled onto the story of a player who had 280 minor-league homers, including a league-leading 43 at Tacoma in 1971. The prior year, 1970, he had hit a league-leading 29 with San Antonio in the Texas League. And the year before that, 1969, you guessed it, he led the league with 24 with Shreveport. In 1969, his 22nd homer came at Arlington on July 30 in a 9-3 win over the Spurs. In 1970 he was fighting for the home-run title as San Antonio played a four-game series at Arlington in late August. In the space of four games, he had four homers, his 28th of the season coming on August 26 in an 8-2 win over the Spurs in the final game of the series. He accounted for four of the 29 homers hit at Arlington Stadium in the 1970 season. Adrian Garrett played minor-league ball for 16 consecutive seasons for 14 different teams. In six seasons, he had 20 or more homers. After his major-league career was over, he went to Japan and hit 102 homers over the course of three seasons. He also played winter ball in the Dominican Republic, leading the Dominican League with 9 homers one season. All told, he had more than 400 professional home runs.

Garrett’s major-league career was relatively unsung, though, as he played in just 163 games over eight seasons, for four different teams, with just 11 home runs. His 1975 season with the Angels was the “best” of his major-league career; he batted .262 with six homers. On consecutive days, August 2-3, 1975, he homered at Arlington Stadium. He victimized Bill Hands and Steve Hargan, respectively.

The Albuquerque team leader in homers in 1970 had been drafted by the Dodgers in the eighth round in 1968, and Albuquerque was the third stop on his ladder to the big leagues. On May 14, 1970, Joe Ferguson homered for the Albuquerque Dodgers at Arlington Stadium in a 7-4 Dodgers win. He was the only Albuquerque player to homer in the Spurs’ home park all season. Most of his years were in the National League with the Dodgers, but when he was released in 1981, he signed with the California Angels. In parts of three seasons with the Angels, he had four homers, and on September 23, 1982, he hit his last major-league homer. It came at Arlington Stadium off Mike Mason. It was his only major-league homer at Arlington.

On Saturday August 8, 1970, the Amarillo Giants, the farm club of the San Francisco Giants, had defeated the Spurs at Arlington on the strength of two homers. The homer that put them in front was slugged by a man who was to go on to a 16-year major-league career during which he slugged 442 homers and was named to three All-Star teams. Dave Kingman’s first stop in Organized Baseball was Amarillo, where he slugged 15 homers in 60 games. Kingman spent most of his career in the National League with the Giants, Mets, and Cubs, but in 1977, he was a man of many uniforms. He started the season with the Mets and was traded to the Padres in June. The Padres placed him on waivers on September 6, and he was claimed by the California Angels. Not long after he had unpacked and got used to his new surroundings, the Angels traveled to Arlington Stadium and, on September 13, 1977, he homered off Gaylord Perry and Bobby Cuellar as the Angels came from behind to score eight runs in the seventh inning (two on a homer by Kingman) and win 12-7. Two days later, Kingman was traded back to New York, this time to the Yankees, where he proceeded to homer in his first three games with the Bombers. Kingman wrapped up his career with a three-year stint at Oakland. In each of those last three years with Oakland, concluding in 1986, he had at least 30 homers. During his years with Oakland, he homered at Arlington another four times, bringing his career total at the Rangers’ ballpark to six.

For the entire 1971 season, the hometown Spurs had 8 homers at home. It was so rare an occurrence for a Spur to homer there that when Steve Turigliatto got his first homer of the season on August 15, he was so disoriented that he stumbled while running the bases, broke his elbow, and was out for the season. Turigliatto never played another game in Organized Baseball.

Visiting teams did not do particularly well, either, slugging out just 18 homers. San Antonio, the Cubs affiliate, visited Arlington Stadium for 19 games that season. Their center fielder was best known for his speed, stealing 47 bases in 1971, but he banged out 10 homers that season, including one at Arlington Stadium on June 22 in a losing cause. At the end of the 1972 season, Billy North was traded to Oakland, where he stole 229 bases over the next five seasons. On June 26, 1973, North led off the third inning with a homer off Jim Merritt for his only Arlington Stadium major-league homer. The homer broke a 1-1 tie, and the A’s went on to defeat the Rangers, 6-2.

Of course, when you are researching a topic, you invariably stumble across something else, and in 1971 the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs were, indeed, part of history. They were playing the Albuquerque Dodgers in Albuquerque on August 4. On that night, Tom Walker, their starting pitcher, went 15 innings and pitched what at the time was the longest no-hitter in baseball history. The final score was 1-0.

And on September 21, 1971, it was announced that the Senators were coming to Texas. Arlington Stadium had hosted its last minor-league ballgame. Over the course of seven seasons, spectators at Turnpike Stadium had witnessed just 176 homers. During the 1972 major-league season, 74 homers were hit at the expanded Arlington Stadium, and over the years, eight players who homered there as minor leaguers homered there as major leaguers.

ALAN COHEN has been a SABR member since 2011, serves as Vice President-Treasurer of the Connecticut Smoky Joe Wood Chapter, and is the datacaster (stringer) for the Hartford Yard Goats, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. He has written more than 40 biographies for SABR’s bio-project, more than 30 games for SABR’s games project, and has contributed stories to The National Pastime and the Baseball Research Journal. He has expanded his BRJ article on the Hearst Sandlot Classic (1946- 1965), an annual youth All-Star game which launched the careers of 88 major-league players. He has four children and six grandchildren and resides in West Hartford, Connecticut with his wife Frances, a cat (Morty) and a dog (Sam).

Sources

In preparing this article, the author used Baseball-Reference.com, the Dallas Morning News, and the San Antonio Light.

Dallas-Fort Worth Baseball Media in 1972

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 04:40:55 +0000

The media market in North Texas was changing in 1972, just as the rest of the country was. With the advent of television, newspapers had felt the pinch as advertising dollars shifted to the new medium. Now, a couple of decades after the arrival of television, newspapers were beginning to fold or merge with others. Instead of multiple outlets, cities were left with just one or two papers to give fans the latest news on their team.

The Markets

In 1972 Dallas and Fort Worth were still very distinct cities, far more so than they are today. The ongoing feud between the two towns was summarized by Amon Carter, owner of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, who once said, “Fort Worth is where the West begins, and Dallas is where the East peters out.”1 Relations between the two cities were thawing, though. After decades of bickering, the federal government had finally forced Dallas and Fort Worth into partnership on a new airport. Naturally they had argued about location, so the future Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was under construction midway between the two cities, just north of Arlington.

In media, the two markets – Dallas and Fort Worth – were defined separately by the Federal Communications Commission, although things were changing. The Arbitron ratings company issued separate radio ratings for the two cities until 1973, when they were combined. Radio had figured out that a single market, with central antennas, was much better for ratings and thus how much they could charge advertisers. Television was slowly moving the same way. In the 1950s the town of Cedar Hill had become established as an antenna center for the Dallas-Fort Worth market. South of Arlington and situated on one of the highest points in the Metroplex,2 it was ideally located for broadcasting into both cities. KRLD-TV and WFAA-TV combined to build a 1,500-foot antenna, so their signals could be received over a wide area. A signal broadcast from the downtown area of each city could be received over a much smaller footprint. Over time, numerous other television and radio stations built antennas in the same area, which inevitably led to the markets combining.

The Newspapers

Newspapers, however, were much more parochial, focused on their home areas, which they still do. In 1972 the newspaper market leaders were the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, with several other papers taking up smaller but still important roles. Those papers were owned by conglomerates that also owned television and radio stations.

Alfred Belo, owner of the Galveston Daily News, had sent his employee, George Dealey, to Dallas to start the Dallas Morning News in 1885. Dealey ran the business, eventually becoming owner in 1926 of the parent Belo Corporation. The company expanded into radio with WFAA in 1922, and in 1950 started WFAA-TV as the Dallas ABC affiliate. In the 1960s the company bought several suburban newspapers, and thus owned a significant portion of the Dallas media market.

Their major newspaper competitor in Dallas was the Dallas Times Herald, founded in 1888. It had also expanded into other media, buying radio station KRLD in 1926 and television station KRLD-TV in 1949. In 1970 the Times-Mirror corporation, owner of the Los Angeles Times, bought the company, and attempted to compete more aggressively with the Morning News. At that time KRLD-TV was renamed KDFW.

In Fort Worth the Star-Telegram ruled, having been founded in 1909 by a merger between two struggling papers. Owner Amon Carter also moved the company into radio, founding WBAP in 1922, and in 1948 creating WBAP-TV as the first television station in the South. Their biggest newspaper competition was the Fort Worth Press, founded in 1921 as a Scripps-Howard newspaper, but it always struggled against its larger neighbor.

The Texas Rangers

The Rangers arrived in 1972 largely because of an unusual broadcasting deal. To get the Senators to move to Arlington, Mayor Tom Vandergriff agreed that the city would pay owner Bob Short enough money to pay off his debts in Washington. The city did this by buying the Rangers’ broadcasting rights for the first 10 years, at $750,000 per season. The $7.5 million paid up-front to Short ensured that the team would come to Texas, but also that the city would lose a lot of money.

Arlington set up a company to handle broadcasting, and in the first season ended up with a 30-station radio-broadcast network. KRLD in Dallas became the flagship station. It hired Bill Mercer, well-known to locals as the radio announcer for the Dallas Cowboys and the minor-league Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, and former pitcher Don Drysdale, who had spent the previous two seasons broadcasting in Montreal, as the two announcers.

KDFW got the limited television rights, showing just 24 games during the first season. Only five of them were home games, as Short believed that showing home games on television would reduce the attendance at the ballpark. Dick Risenhoover, a longtime broadcaster, was the lead announcer, with Drysdale and Mercer alternating innings in the television booth with him.

The second game played that season was intended as the first telecast of a Rangers game. Due to the players strike at the start of the season, the television people canceled the game coverage and planned other shows. By the time the strike was settled, two days earlier, it was too late to change their plans and show the game. Rangers fans thus missed the opportunity to see the first-ever win for the team, 5-1 over the California Angels.

The Rangers’ first season, 1972, was a terrible one on the field, and there were plenty of struggles off it, too. Arlington had committed to $750,000 a year in radio sales, but fell short, leaving taxpayers on the hook for the balance. In his book Play-by-Play, Mercer blamed a combination of inexperience and poor salesmanship. The inexperience was based on a group of people coming together at the last minute to try to build a major-league broadcast network. Although they all had radio experience, none of them had worked together before. In addition, Mercer claimed that the lead salesman was more interested in having fun on the radio expense account than in actually selling advertising.

These failures led to big changes in 1973. The radio network fell apart, with stations unhappy at the losses. From 30 stations in 1972, the network was down to 16 in 1973. Drysdale moved on, deciding at the end of the 1972 season to take a broadcast job with the Angels. This angered Short, who had expected Drysdale to stay, but Drysdale pointed out that he had a one-year contract and it had ended. Risenhoover moved into the radio booth alongside Mercer, and others came in over the years. Mayor Vandergriff even got involved, spending three years in the booth, paying his own way and not taking a salary, just so the network could try to break even. Broadcasting in North Texas seemed to be as much a cowboy operation as the Rangers were.

On the newspaper scene, each of the papers had its own writers covering the team. For the Dallas Morning News, the lead writer was Merle Heryford, who had covered the minor-league teams in Dallas for decades. He was backed by a young feature writer, Randy Galloway, who occasionally spelled Heryford as the beat writer. Galloway went on to write about the Rangers for years, eventually becoming the premier sportswriter in North Texas, and expanding into radio and television as well. David Fink and Harry Gage were the primary writers for the Dallas Times Herald in 1972.

Harold McKinney and Bob Lindley were the writers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, while Mike Shropshire and Tommy Love wrote for the Fort Worth Press (Shropshire moved to the Star-Telegram in 1973). Press writers later described how they, as an afternoon paper, had more time to write in-depth articles than the morning Star-Telegram did.

The Future

Ironically, given the animosity between the two cities, they combined in 1974 to buy the Rangers. A group led by Brad Corbett purchased the team from Short. The group contained equal numbers of investors from each side of the Metroplex, and included the son of the founder of the Star-Telegram, Amon Carter Jr., who had just sold his late father’s newspaper (he remained as publisher) and was looking for something to do with the money.

Ultimately, as in much of the country, the battles for media control in the Metroplex would end up in just a few hands. After years of struggling, the Dallas Times Herald ended up losing a circulation war against the Morning News. In 1991 Belo Corporation, owner of the Morning News, bought and closed the Times Herald, leaving the Morning News as the sole major newspaper in Dallas.

The Star-Telegram was bought by Capital Cities Communications, Inc., in 1974. The paper quickly won its citywide battle against the Press, which folded in 1975 after decades of unprofitability. The two major cities were eventually down to one major newspaper each, and both struggled through the long, slow decline of the newspaper industry.

In the meantime, the rise of cable and of sports broadcasting as a staple of programming led to a corresponding rise in television rights fees. In 2015 the Rangers signed a 20-year deal with Fox Sports Southwest for $1.6 billion, or $80 million a year. Essentially, they were receiving about a half-million dollars for every game they played. This was just for local cable rights, and didn’t include national rights fees, or anything from radio.

The Rangers were also being run by savvy financial people by that time. In 2016 the team was talking to the financial markets, looking to sell a billion-dollar bond against that huge rights deal. The aim was to hedge their bets, making sure the team would receive the $80 million a season regardless of what changes might happen over time with the television contract. Who knows what changes might happen in baseball broadcasting in 20 years?

Bob Short thought he’d done a great deal to get $7.5 million in rights fees from Arlington, and to sell the team at a profit. What would he think of the numbers being thrown around today?

Sources

Mercer, Bill. Play-by-Play: Tales from a Sports Broadcasting Insider (Latham, Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2007).

Shea, Stuart. Calling the Game: Baseball Broadcasting from 1920 to the Present (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2015).

Shropshire, Mike. Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog, and “The Worst Baseball Team in History” – the 1973-1975 Texas Rangers (New York: Diversion Books, 2014).

Notes

1 June Naylor, Insiders’ Guide to Dallas & Fort Worth (Guilford, Connecticut: Morris Book Publishing, 2010), 3.

2 The word “Metroplex,” a term that has both admirers and detractors, was coined by a local adman in the early 1970s. Denoting a metropolitan area that has more than one significant anchor city, it is a squashing-together of the words “metropolitan” and “complex.” Tim Rogers, Texas Monthly, February 2013.

Minor-League Baseball in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 04:36:46 +0000

Minor-league baseball in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is virtually synonymous with Texas League professional baseball in the region. The small parts not connected to the Texas League are the rise and fall of black baseball in the area and the brief sojourns of the Fort Worth and Dallas teams in other leagues. (The Metroplex is the local sobriquet for what the US government calls the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington Metropolitan Statistical Area.)

Black baseball came and went in a span of about 30 years. In 1916 Fort Worth’s Hiram McGar worked to form the Colored Texas League. He also managed the Fort Worth Black Panthers. Dallas had a team in the league. The Black Panthers played at McGar Park, just south of the old Panther Park in Fort Worth. The old Panther Park was located in the Northside of Fort Worth between the West Fork of the Trinity River and North Throckmorton Street near NW Seventh Street. It is not known how long the league lasted or how the Black Panthers fared in their efforts. In 1920 McGar was again involved in organizing a black league. The Dallas Black Giants and the Fort Worth Black Panthers were a part of the Texas Negro League. The league lasted to 1927. In 1929 another league was born. Again Dallas and Fort Worth belonged. At one game in Dallas, possibly at Riverside Park, some 8,000 fans turned out to watch the Black Giants and Black Panthers play. In the later incarnations of the black leagues, the Black Panthers played at Panther Park and LaGrave Field. That league died in 1932 during the Great Depression, and fans of black baseball saw only barnstorming traveling teams in the years. Two such barnstorming teams were the Fort Worth Black Cats and the Dallas Brown Bombers. The barnstormers played all over Texas and featured players who later played in the Negro National League and the Negro American League. With the arrival of Jackie Robinson and the integration of the major leagues in 1947, the death knell for black baseball sounded in Texas. Play continued into the 1950s as the major and minor leagues slowly integrated, but eventually black professional baseball died out.1

Cleburne, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Frisco have all hosted Texas League teams at some point in the league’s history and each has won at least one championship. Dallas was also very briefly a member of the Southern League in 1899. Both Dallas and Fort Worth played in the American Association in 1959. A team representing both cities played in the American Association in 1960-62 and the Pacific Coast League in 1963. In 1964 Dallas had an entry in the PCL and Fort Worth in the Texas League. From 1965 to 1971 Dallas-Fort Worth played in the Texas League.2

Under the minor-league playoff system, the league champion could be, and often was, a team that finished lower than first place in the regular season. The Texas League would sometimes split the season to create greater interest in the pennant races. At times the decision to split the season came during the season itself if one team was running away with the race. If the owners did split the season and one team won both halves, that team was declared the champion. If two teams each won a half, a playoff determined the champion. Texas League officials adopted the Shaughnessy playoff system in 1933. Under that system the first- and fourth-place teams were paired in one bracket and the second- and third-place teams in another. The winners of those brackets played for the league championship. That system has been replaced by divisions and half-seasons for playoff teams. The remainder of this chapter will concentrate on the years in which a Metroplex team emerged as the league champion. The years when Dallas, Fort Worth, Cleburne, or Frisco were not champions are included when other significant events require mention. Brief summaries of the nonwinning years in the American Association and Pacific Coast League are included to note the teams’ presence in those leagues.

The Dallas and Fort Worth franchises in the Texas League were among the original teams. Others were Galveston, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and New Orleans. The league had as few as four members and as many as eight throughout its existence. The history of the Dallas and Fort Worth teams is so intertwined that separating them into separate narratives harms the overall picture. Dallas and Fort Worth were archrivals long before baseball in the Texas League came to be. The baseball rivalry came to symbolize the rivalry between the two cities in other aspects of life and played no small part in making minor-league baseball successful in the area.

The Dallas Hams (55-29) won the first Texas League championship, in 1888. They played in Oak Cliff Park, across the Trinity River from downtown. The championship came outright as there was no playoff. Several of the original teams, including Fort Worth, folded during the season. Fort Worth had a record of 20-28 when it stopped play on June 25. The Panthers’ home was an unnamed park located near the Texas and Pacific Railroad reservation south of downtown and near the notorious Hell’s Half Acre.3

The Texas League did not operate in 1891, 1893, or 1894. The Fort Worth Panthers won their first league title in 1895. Although the Dallas Steers finished the overall regular season in first place and won the first half, Fort Worth won the second half and then a 13-game playoff series, seven games to six. Dallas (13-7) was in first place in 1898 when league magnates called off the season due to the Spanish-American War. Dallas’s brief venture in the Southern League resulted from the reduction of the Texas League to four teams in 1899. When Dallas’s bid to return to play was rejected by the league out of fear of increased travel costs, the Steers joined the Southern League only to see it fold shortly afterward.

When the Texas League re-formed in 1902, Dallas and Fort Worth returned the Dallas Griffins and the Fort Worth Panthers. Joe Gardner bought the Griffins in 1902. W.H. Ward owned the Panthers. The Dallas Giants took the 1903 pennant by defeating Waco in a 10-game playoff series. The title fell into dispute, however, because Corsicana had claimed Charlie Barrett, who played for Dallas in the series. Corsicana and Dallas were thus named co-champions.4

Fort Worth (71-31) had the best overall record in 1904. The Panthers were an amazing 40-10 in the second half, finishing 12 games ahead of the Dallas Giants. Taking on the Corsicana Oilers in a 19-game playoff series, the Panthers were able to win only eight of the games, and Corsicana was the league champion.5

Fort Worth repeated as champion in 1905 in a wild finish. The Panthers trailed the Temple Boll Weevils by four games with seven to play on August 29. Fort Worth won seven straight games, including four from Temple, to close out the year at 72-60, a half-game ahead of the Boll Weevils. There were no playoffs.6

Cleburne won its title in 1906, the only year the Railroaders were a Texas League team. In that year, the playoffs put the first-half winner against the second-half winner. Fort Worth’s Panthers (78-46) took the first half with a record of 42-20 and finished second in the second half with a mark of 36-26. Cleburne’s Railroaders (77-49) finished third in the first half at 38-24, but won the second half at 39-25. Fort Worth refused to play the Railroaders in the playoffs, handing the championship to the Cleburne nine. Future Hall of Famer Tris Speaker played for the Railroaders and hit .268. He also pitched, appearing in 11 games with a 2-7 record.7

Neither Dallas nor Fort Worth took a league championship until the Giants of Dallas (83-57) broke through with a narrow win in 1910, finishing one game ahead of the second-place Houston Buffaloes. The season came down to a doubleheader between Dallas and Fort Worth and a rare tripleheader (five innings each game) between Houston and Galveston. Dallas won both its games while Houston lost the first game, won the second, and was given the third game by forfeit when Galveston left the field fearing a riot. There were no playoffs.8

Dallas and Fort Worth’s greatest era in Texas League baseball began with the 1917 season. Joe Gardner, Dallas owner since 1902, sold the team in 1916 to a group of veteran players headed by Hamilton Patterson. W.K. Stripling and Paul LaGrave bought the Panthers with Stripling becoming president and LaGrave team secretary. (Team secretaries then were the equivalent of general managers of today.) The two teams won eight of nine league titles and six of seven Dixie Series titles in the years between 1917 and 1926. The Dallas Giants took the first of two consecutive titles with a 96-64 record in 1917. There were no playoffs in 1917. James “Snipe” Conley, a spitballing right-handed pitcher, was the key to the pennant as he won 25 games, including 19 straight victories and a no-hitter.9

In 1918, with the United States involved heavily in the World War, owners elected to stop play on July 7. Dallas, in first place with a 53-37 record, was named the champion team.10

Shreveport broke the DFW string with a championship in 1919. The Gassers ran away with the first half, recording a 44-21 mark. Fort Worth, showing the beginnings of the greatness that was to follow in the next six seasons, took the second half at 56-30. The Gassers dropped from first to fifth at 38-39 in the second half, but came alive to take the playoffs four games to two.11

In 1920 the Panthers (108-40) began their six-year domination of the Texas League. Managed by Jake Atz and having a combination of great pitching and hitting, they won no fewer than 96 games in each of the six seasons and twice won 109 in a season. Atz was a former major-league infielder who had signed as manager with Fort Worth in 1914, left in 1916, returned in 1917, and stayed until 1929. He was considered the greatest manager in the history of the Texas League. The Panthers took the 1920 first half by 8½ games and the second by 12 games. Joe Pate, who would pitch briefly in the majors in 1926 and 1927, and Paul Wachtel, who had pitched for Brooklyn in 1917, won 26 games each and had ERAs of 1.75 and 2.45 respectively. After the season, and in hopes of moving up from Class B to Class A, the Texas League challenged the Class A Southern Association to a playoff between the two league champions. That was the beginning of the Dixie Series. The Panthers defeated Little Rock, four games to two. The next year the National Association raised the Texas League to Class A.12

The rampage of the Panthers (107-51) through the Texas League continued in 1921 as they once again ran away with both halves of the season. The Memphis Chicks fell to the Panthers four games to two in the Dixie Series. Pate led the league with a 30-9 mark and a 2.68 ERA. Wachtel and Bill Whitaker each won 23 games. Augie Johns added 20 wins. Clarence Kraft led the league in hitting with a .352 average and hit 31 home runs.13

The 1922 season brought more of the same to the Panther fans. The beloved home team racked up another runaway first-place finish. After rolling through the first half with a remarkable 50-22 record, the Panthers (109-46) outdid themselves in the second half with a 59-24 mark, setting a league record for victories. Mobile’s Bears cast a bit of darkness over the campaign when they took the Dixie Series four games to two. Pate dropped from 30 wins to 24 and Wachtel had 26 and Johns 21. Kraft won the home-run title with 32 and had 131 runs batted in. He hit .339 but missed the Triple Crown.

In 1923 the Panthers (96-56) suffered a slower start. League executives decided the race was tight enough to not split the season as they had at times in the past. Nonetheless Fort Worth ran away from the other teams, benefiting from an August surge, and downed second-place San Antonio by 13½ games. The Panthers redeemed themselves for the 1922 loss in the Dixie Series by beating the New Orleans Pelicans four games to one. Kraft repeated as home-run champion with 32. Lil Stoner led the Panther staff with 27 wins while Pate continued his string of 20-win seasons with 23.14

Clarence “Big Boy” Kraft had a career season in 1924. The first sacker led the Panthers (109-41) to another Texas League title. He hit 55 home runs, drove in 196 runs and batted .349. His efforts again fell shy of a Triple Crown. He led the league in home runs and RBIs, but failed to catch Butch Weiss of Wichita Falls, who hit .377. Kraft retired from baseball after the season. His league record of 196 RBIs still stands. Fort Worth got out to a much better start than it had in 1923. The Panthers were nine games ahead of second-place Houston at the break with a 51-23 mark. They bested that in the second half with a 58-18 record. Pate once again won 30 games and Wachtel 22. In Dallas, Steer Park burned on July 19. The Steers played a game at Riverside Park, home of the black team, before finishing the season at the State Fair Ground racing facility. There an attendance record (16,484) was set when the Steers and Panthers played on August 3. The Panthers took the Dixie Series from Memphis in seven games.15

The final year of the Fort Worth Panthers’ streak began with the usual expectation that Fort Worth would again easily surpass the other teams. League officials anticipated a split based on that assumption. The situation nearly backfired, however, because they did not anticipate the improvement of the Dallas Steers in the second half. The Panthers charged to the first-half winner’s circle, leading second-place Houston by 7½ games. The Steers finished fifth in the first part of the season. Dallas came on hard after the break and Fort Worth fell to earth. When the half was over, the two teams were deadlocked at 49-26. A best-of-three playoff for the second-half title went to Fort Worth in a sweep. The Panthers then won the Dixie Series for the fifth time in six years, downing Atlanta in six games. Paul Wachtel again led the league in victories with 23 while Johns had the lowest ERA at 2.74. Johns and Pate also racked up 20 wins each. Ed Konetchy, a former major leaguer who replaced Kraft at first base for the Panthers, led the league in home runs with 41 and RBIs with 162.16

In 1926 Conley, now a player-manager, led the Steers (89-66) to the Texas League crown, ending the six-year title streak of the Panthers. Dallas finished first by 3½ games over San Antonio. Fort Worth finished third, 6½ games back of the Steers. The Steers downed the New Orleans Pelicans, four games to two, to claim the Dixie Series. Individual performances for the Steers included Charlie Miller leading the league with 30 home runs and 118 RBIs, and Slim Love winning the strikeout race for the third straight year with 216.17

In the winter of 1928-29 Paul LaGrave, the longtime team secretary of the Panthers, died in El Paso. W.K. Stripling honored him by renaming the Panthers home field LaGrave Field. The new field, which had opened in 1926, was a few blocks east of the old one at Seventh and Commerce Streets, had more seats and was closer to the levees on the Trinity River. It remained as the home of the Panthers/Cats until their demise after the 1964 season. It was destroyed a few years afterward. In 2002 a new LaGrave Field was built on the site of the original and was home to the independent Fort Worth Cats through the 2014 season.18

Dallas won its next championship in 1929 when the Steers (91-68) won the first half and defeated the Wichita Falls Spudders for the title. The Steers had a record of 47-33 in the first half, but fell to 44-36 in the second. The Spudders led the league with an overall record of 94-65, three games ahead of Dallas. Dallas took the playoffs three games to one. Birmingham’s Barons beat the Steers four games to two for the Dixie Series title.

W.K. Stripling sold controlling interest in the Panthers to a group headed by S.S. Lard and Ted Robinson in the early days of the 1929 season. Later in the year, with the Panthers languishing in the second division, longtime manager Jake Atz was fired and replaced by Frank Snyder. The death of LaGrave, the sale of the club by Stripling, and the firing of Atz brought to an end the triumvirate that had created the greatest single stretch of athletic success in Fort Worth history.19

Fort Worth returned to the championship ranks in 1930. Wichita Falls pulled away from the rest of the league by 8½ games to take the first half. Fort Worth, faced with a lengthy road stretch at the end of the year, won 13 of 18 road games to overtake Wichita Falls for the second-half title. The Panthers then took the playoffs in three games. Fort Worth beat Memphis four games to one in the Dixie Series. Dick McCabe and Dick Wentworth each won 20 games to lead the league in victories for Fort Worth. In an effort to lure more fans to games, Waco’s Navigators installed lights in Katy Park. The first night game resulted in a 13-0 drubbing of the Panthers. Other teams soon followed and night baseball was on its way to being the dominant way the game was played in the Texas League. Only Beaumont held out, largely at the behest of the Detroit Tigers, and did not install lights in Briggs Stadium until 1948.20

The 1937 season saw the Cats (85-74) return to the championship ranks. They finished the regular season in third place. The Cats eliminated Tulsa three games to two in the first round and knocked out Oklahoma City four games to two in the finals. The Cats defeated Little Rock in the Dixie Series, four games to one.21

The 1939 season saw a return of both Dallas (now the Rebels) and the Cats to the playoffs, and was the first time the four largest cities in Texas appeared in the playoffs. Houston won the regular season with a 97-63 record. Dallas and San Antonio tied for second at 89-72. Dallas won the coin flip for second place. Fort Worth finished in fourth place, two games behind Dallas and San Antonio. Fort Worth drove the Houston Buffaloes from further play with a three games to two win in the first round. Dallas did the same with San Antonio. That set up a Cats-Rebels final. Fort Worth won, four games to one. The Dixie Series trophy came to Fort Worth, which defeated Nashville in seven games.22

The Rebels (80-74) returned to the playoffs in 1941. They finished the season in fourth place. Houston’s Buffaloes were the runaway winner at 103-50. Dallas swept the favored Buffaloes in the first round of the playoffs, and then sent Tulsa home in the title round. Nashville swept the Rebels in the Dixie Series.23

The Cats and Rebels returned to the playoffs in 1946, the first year of play after a three-season suspension of play because of World War II. Dallas finished the regular season in second place with a 91-63 mark, 10 games behind the Cats (101-53). In a style reminiscent of their 1920s dominance, the Cats took an early lead and were never headed. Fort Worth disposed of Tulsa three games to one and Dallas eliminated San Antonio three games to two in the first rounds. Dallas erased the Cats four games to one in the finals. The Rebels then moved to the Dixie Series, where they kept their series winning streak alive with a four-game sweep of Atlanta. Prince Oana, a future Detroit Tigers pitcher, led the league with 24 victories for Dallas. Fort Worth’s Johnny Van Cuyk recorded 207 strikeouts and posted an ERA of 1.42. The Rebels’ Bob Moyer had 24 home runs and 102 RBIs. 24

In 1948 Kilgore oilman Richard Burnett bought the Dallas Rebels for $555,000 and later bought Rebel Field for $265,000. He renamed the team the Eagles, and Rebel Field after himself as Burnett Park. It was located at Colorado and Jefferson Streets in Dallas. Burnett enlarged the seating capacity to almost 11,000 and made it one of the better minor-league parks in the nation. As was the case with Fort Worth’s LaGrave Field, it lasted until Turnpike Stadium was built for the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs. Burnett Park, like its Fort Worth counterpart, was demolished about 1965. The site is now an empty field. On the west side of the Metroplex, the Brooklyn Dodgers offered backup catcher Bobby Bragan the opportunity to manage the Cats. He quickly accepted. He led the team to what would be its final Texas League title in his first year as a player-manager. The Cats finished the season in first place with a 92-61 mark, a game and a half ahead of Tulsa. Houston was third and Shreveport (76-77, .49673) and San Antonio (75-76, .49688) finished in a virtual tie for fourth, with Shreveport winning the final playoff spot by a whisker. Fort Worth, despite being injury-riddled, knocked out Shreveport in six games and then downed the hard-hitting Tulsa Oilers in the finals in six games. The Cats dropped the Dixie Series to Birmingham in five games. The 1948 win was the final championship recorded by the Cats.25

The most significant event of 1949 in Fort Worth was the flood that began on May 17. It was perhaps the worst of many that the city endured since it was established in 1873. Nine people died, more than 13,000 were left homeless, and damage exceeded $25 million. Among the flooded spots was LaGrave Field. The flood was the second disaster suffered by the Cats in a week. Two nights earlier, a fire broke out in the grandstand and more than 10,000 seats were destroyed. Damage from the fire was estimated at $3 million. The Cats were hosting San Antonio when the fire broke out. Notwithstanding the fire, the teams continued the series the next day. The right-field pavilion and bleachers down the third-base line had not been damaged. Portable seats, including some metal folding chairs, were set up down the first-base line. Some series in the rest of the season were moved to the other team’s site with the Cats acting as the home team. Others were played at the damaged LaGrave. The Cats also hosted the Texas League All-Star Game at LaGrave Field just two months after the fire and flood. The Cats (100-54) continued their defensive-minded mastery of the league. Tulsa again gained the second spot. Both clubs easily dispatched their opponents in the first round and Tulsa turned the tables on the Cats to win the league championship. Once again the finals went the full seven games with Tulsa winning the deciding game 4-1 in 11 innings.26

In the offseason after the 1949 campaign, the Dodgers rebuilt LaGrave Field. The new ballpark was much improved over the old one. It had a seating capacity of 13,005, better seats, more restrooms, fewer posts to obstruct the view of fans, better concessions and a press box that contained TV broadcasting space. The Cats (88-64), still under the leadership of Bragan, continued their playoff streak. They finished second to Beaumont, but were eliminated by Tulsa in the first round.27

Dallas owner Burnett signed Dave Hoskins, a veteran of the Negro National League, to pitch for the Eagles in 1952. Hoskins was the first black player to work for a Texas League team. He led the league in victories with 22 and pitched for the Cleveland Indians the next two seasons. Dallas (92-69) and Fort Worth (86-75) finished the 1952 campaign in first and second place respectively but fared poorly in the playoffs. The Cats lost to ultimate winner Shreveport while the Eagles were eliminated by Oklahoma City. Shreveport’s Sports then defeated the Indians to win the league title. The Sports dropped the Dixie Series to the Memphis Chicks, four games to two.28

In 1953 the prospects for a major-league franchise in Texas became a bit more likely when the Boston Braves left for Milwaukee. The next year, the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Orioles. Although neither of the moves struck new ground for baseball, they were indicative of the need for change in the location of the game. It was the first change in the major-league team structure in 50 years. Four years later, the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers left the East Coast for the West Coast, landing in San Francisco and Los Angeles respectively. (The move of the Dodgers affected the Cats directly. Seeking a farm club closer to their new West Coast base, the Dodgers traded their Fort Worth franchise to the Chicago Cubs for the Cubs’ farm team in Los Angeles.29)

The Dallas Eagles (88-66) won their final Texas League title in 1953. Tulsa was second at 83-71. Fort Worth was third at 82-72 with Oklahoma City fourth. Tulsa ended the Cats’ chances while Dallas gained revenge for the previous-season loss to Oklahoma City with a four games to three win. Dallas trailed the Indians, three games to none, before taking the final four. Dallas eased past Tulsa in five games and then won the Dixie Series over Nashville in six games.30

The Brooklyn Dodgers sent Maury Wills and Eddie Moore to the Cats in 1955 and the pair had the distinction of integrating Fort Worth professional baseball.31

Neither the Eagles nor the Cats won another Texas League title. The Cats finished fourth in 1954 but were taken out of the playoffs by the ultimate winner, Shreveport. Dallas was a first-place club in 1955, but lost to Houston in the first round. Dallas and Fort Worth were second and third respectively in 1956. Dallas won 102 games in 1957, the most ever by a Dallas team, but was beaten by Houston in the finals. Fort Worth’s final first-place finish came in 1958, but the Cats were erased from the playoffs by Corpus Christi.

Leaving the Texas League after the 1958 season, the Cats and Eagles moved up to the Triple-A American Association. They played separately in 1959 and combined as the Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers in 1960-1962. The American Association folded after the 1962 season, forcing the Rangers to find a new home. In 1963 they played in the Pacific Coast League. Fort Worth returned to the Texas League in 1964 while Dallas played separately as the Dallas Rangers in the Pacific Coast League. From 1965 to 1971, the two teams again combined – this time as the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs – and played in the Texas League. They were very popular with fans in the Metroplex, drawing well over 200,000 each season and occasionally reaching 300,000. Their attendance was routinely at or near three times the next highest total. The Spurs played in Turnpike Stadium, located along Interstate 30 in Arlington and near the present Globe Life Park that is home to the Texas Rangers. Turnpike Stadium was intended as a demonstration of the support the area would give to a major-league franchise. The Spurs were never more than an also-ran in their seven years of existence, but drew more fans than the winning teams. In 1972 the Washington Senators came to Texas and began play as the Texas Rangers, ending the tenure of minor-league baseball in the Metroplex for three decades.32

Frisco’s Roughriders came to that Dallas suburb from Shreveport in 2003 and won the only Texas League championship in their history the next year. The Roughriders came on strong to win the second half of the East Division race after Tulsa had taken the first. Round Rock won both halves in the West and so advanced to the championship. The Roughriders downed the Drillers in three games to move on against the Express. The Express fell to the Roughriders in five games.33

Minor-league baseball provided fans in the Metroplex with wonderful entertainment in the more than 110 years that it has been played in the area. The Fort Worth teams of 1920-1925 rank among the very best minor-league teams ever to step on a baseball field. The intense rivalry between Dallas and Fort Worth ensured outstanding attendance any time the teams met. Minor-league baseball also paved the way for Major League Baseball to put a team in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Without the outstanding attendance at the Turnpike Stadium for the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, the Texas Rangers might never have come to the Metroplex.

BRUCE BUMBALOUGH is a life-long Detroit Tiger fan. He attended his first Tiger game in 1952 with his mother and younger brother. His life’s work has been in public libraries where he is beginning his 42nd year as a librarian. He holds a master of Library Science degree from the University of Mississippi and a Bachelor of Science degree from the then Memphis State University. He has done additional graduate study in history at the University of North Texas.

Notes

1 Mark Presswood, “Black Professional Baseball in Texas,” Texas Almanac (texasalmanac.com/topics/history/black-professional-baseball-texas), accessed October 7, 2015.

2 Larry G. Bowman, “Dallas-Fort Worth Minor-League Baseball,” Handbook of Texas Online (tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/xod03), accessed October 9, 2015.

3 Wright, 7-13; John C. Holady and Mark Presswood, Baseball in Dallas (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Books, 2004), 115.

4 Larry G. Bowman, “Dallas-Fort Worth Minor-League Baseball”; Ruggles, 26, 84-86; O’Neal, Texas, 233.

5 Ruggles, 90-91.

6 Ruggles, 97-98.

7 William B. Ruggles, The History of the Texas League of Professional Baseball Clubs 1888-1951 (Texas League of Professional Baseball Clubs, 1951), 101-102, 202; Bill O’Neal, The Texas League 1888-1987: A Century of Baseball (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1988), 221-224; Marshall D. Wright, The Texas League in Baseball, 1888-1958 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2004), 92-97.

8 Ruggles, 114.

9 Ruggles, 125-128; Wright, 176-190; Snipe Conley Player Page, baseball-reference.com, accessed October 12, 2015; O’Neal, Texas, 53.

10 Wright, 184.

11 Ruggles, 129-130.

12 Wright, 198-199.

13 Ruggles, 130-131; Wright, 206-207.

14 Ruggles, 135; Wright, 223-224.

15 Ruggles, 136; Wright, 232-233.

16 Ruggles, 137-138; Wright, 240-241.

17 Wright, 249-256; Snipe Conley Player Page.

18 Bruce Bumbalough, “LaGrave Field,” SABR Bio-Project, Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org/node/37719), accessed October 15, 2015.

19 O’Neal, Texas, 233; Ruggles, 143-145; O’Neal, The Southern League: Baseball in Dixie, 1885-1994 (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1994), 307-308.

20 Ruggles, 145-147; Wright, 285.

21 Ruggles, 160-162.

22 Ruggles, 165-167.

23 Ruggles, 170-172.

24 Ruggles, 179-181; Wright, 395.

25 Ruggles, 184-186; Larry G. Bowman, “Burnett, Richard Wesley,” Handbook of Texas Online (tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbuws), accessed October 20, 2015; Wright, 417-418; Holaday and Presswood, 115.

26 Bumbalough, “LaGrave Field”; Ruggles, 188-189.

27 Presswood and Holaday, 95; Ruggles, 190-191.

28 Wright, 457; Dave Hoskins Player Page, baseball-reference.com, accessed October 21, 2015.

29 Fran Zimniuch, Baseball’s New Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2013), 3; Wright, 466; Presswood and Holaday, 76.

30 Wright, 466-467.

31 Presswood.

32 Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball Third Edition (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, 2007), 489, 493, 497, 501, 506, 511, 515.

33 Tom Kayser email to author, October 26, 2015.

Embracing the Future: The Transactions of the 1972 Texas Rangers

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 04:33:28 +0000

There are a number of reasons teams complete transactions in major-league baseball. While the goal is clearly to improve the team, the exact nature of that improvement varies considerably, based on the circumstances in which the team finds itself. A contending team will look for upgrades in the field or on the mound in the near term, while a rebuilding team will seek to cash in current assets for future value. A financially strapped team might attempt to unload high-salaried players, and a poorly attended team might try to make a splash to boost fan interest and (presumably) attendance. Interestingly, the 1972 Texas Rangers appeared to pursue several of these goals at the same time.

Ostensibly the Rangers were in the midst of a well-publicized youth movement with an eye toward future competitiveness. Owner Bob Short was also struggling financially, and could be expected to try to cut costs. On the other hand, the team wanted to create fan interest in the first season in Dallas, and manager Ted Williams’s competitive drive was an established fact.

Youth Movement

When the Washington Senators were surprisingly competitive in the 1969 season, they were led by a number of veterans. The average age of the team’s position players was 27.8, above the American League average of 27.3. Similarly, the Senators’ pitchers averaged 27.0 years old against an American League average of 27.1. By 1971, the Rangers ranked as the youngest team in the league in both categories. The transactions pursued by the team before and during the 1972 season, in aggregate, would make the team younger still.

Despite the youth movement, however, Ted Williams was not throwing in the towel on fielding a competing club as of the start of the 1972 season. Williams outlined his thinking in The Sporting News’s season preview: “We could be a little better than anyone thinks. I think we’ve plugged some defensive gaps, and our pitching should be stronger.”1 By the season’s midpoint, however, the skipper was ready to embrace the future more vigorously.

Cost Cutting

The move to Dallas from Washington was motivated by money, notably the inability of Bob Short to remain financially viable in the nation’s capital. While a full treatment of Short’s struggles is beyond the scope of this article, his money problems were anything but low key. Sports Illustrated described Short in 1971 as an “impoverished millionaire,”2 and he was in danger of failing to meet the team’s financial obligations. Short’s budget problems showed up in the transaction register. At the start of the 1972 season, the Rangers’ highest-paid player was Frank Howard at $120,000 for the year. Consistent with Sports Illustrated’s observation that Short had in previous years “economized by peddling off players in the middle income range,”3 the next highest-paid player was Don Mincher at $47,000. Both Howard and Mincher would be gone by season’s end, as well as the player with the fourth-highest salary (Ted Kubiak, $31,000).

Near-Term Improvements

The Rangers moved a number of depth pieces for small upgrades. The veterans acquired in these trades did not necessarily support the next great Rangers team, but did offer the potential for improved results in 1972. Their limited upside made any significant impact in the standings unlikely, however.

Make a Splash

In his tenure as owner of the Senators, Bob Short had made a good-faith effort to attract fans to RFK Stadium. In fact, Sports Illustrated noted in 1971 that “Short stages as many promotional extravaganzas as any other owner in baseball, including that formidable showman Charles O. Finley.”4 This desire to attract attention spilled over into transactions as well, as Short had pursued a number of personnel moves aimed at garnering attention for his struggling team while in Washington. Two of the more prominent were the hiring of Ted Williams as manager of the team before the 1969 season and a trade for former 30-game winner Denny McLain before the 1971 season. The Rangers’ 1972 acquisitions did not include any of these noteworthy moves, but the trade of McLain (see below) did undo the least successful of Short’s splashy transactions.

November 3, 1971
Traded Joe Grzenda to the St. Louis Cardinals. Received Ted Kubiak.
Type: Near Term Improvement

Thirty-four-year-old Joe Grzenda was a very good relief pitcher in 1971, appearing in 46 games with a record of 5-2 and an ERA of 1.92. This season stood as an outlier, however, as his ERA was 3.88 in 1969 and 5.00 in 1970. The 29-year-old Ted Kubiak was a good-fielding, mediocre-hitting infielder who appeared in 121 games in 1971, mostly as a starting second baseman, for the Brewers and the Cardinals. Kubiak had been responsible for 1.4 WAR, batting .232 with four homers. Williams was reportedly enamored of Kubiak’s potential as a starting second baseman, and oversaw a spring-training battle between him and youngster Len Randle.5

Results: In 2017, this trade would be considered a savvy move by the Rangers. The trade of a fluky good reliever for a starting position player is looked on as a sure win for the acquiring team. Grzenda, as could be expected, reverted to form. He had an ERA of 5.66 for the Cardinals in 30 games in 1972 and was finished as a major leaguer. Kubiak did not hit well enough to remain a starter at second base, though. He started about one-third of the Rangers’ first 66 games, hitting only .224, before being traded to Oakland. Overall, this trade was inconsequential for the Rangers.

December 2, 1971
Traded Paul Casanova to the Atlanta Braves. Received Hal King.
Type: Near Term Improvement

Paul Casanova was a 29-year-old career backup catcher who had spent his career to that point with the Senators. He was sub-replacement in 1971, hitting a mere .203 with five homers.

Hal King, a 27-year-old backup catcher with Atlanta, had similarly hit .207 in 1971 with five homers, albeit in fewer at-bats than Casanova. King did bat left-handed, however, and therefore would serve as a better platoon partner for incumbent catcher Dick Billings and newly acquired Ken Suarez than the righty-swinging Casanova.

Result: Manager Williams tried King as a starter against right-handed pitching in the early part of the season, but Hal had “hit” his way to a .125 batting average by May 20. Thereafter, his playing time was spotty until he was optioned to Triple-A Denver in July. He did not appear in another game for the Rangers, being packaged in a trade with the Reds after the season. His contributions to the Rangers amounted to 150 plate appearances, a .180 batting average, 4 home runs, and a .333 on-base percentage due to a strong ability to take a walk. Casanova appeared in 49 games for the Braves with a .206 average, and did not contribute above replacement level for the remaining years of his career. This trade proved inconsequential to the Rangers’ fortunes.

December 2, 1971
Traded Bernie Allen to the New York Yankees. Received Gary Jones and Terry Ley.
Traded Gary Jones, Terry Ley, Denny Riddleberger, and Del Unser to the Cleveland Indians. Received Roy Foster, Rich Hand, Mike Paul, and Ken Suarez.
Type: Youth Movement

After the aforementioned minor transactions, the Rangers pulled off a big deal with the Cleveland Indians. Per Ted Williams, the Rangers hoped to acquire “more versatility, more depth, and more pitching potential”6 and moved a number of veterans to the Indians in the quest to meet those needs.

Gary Jones and Terry Ley were young nonprospect pitchers for the Yankees who were destined to spend less than a day under Rangers control. Jones and Ley were acquired for the services of third baseman Bernie Allen and immediately flipped to the Indians as part of the larger trade. Therefore, from the Rangers’ perspective the trade consisted of Allen, Riddleberger, and Unser for Foster, Paul, Hand, and Suarez.

Del Unser was the key to the deal from the Indians’ perspective. The 27-year-old had been a four-year starter at center field for the Senators, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting in 1968, and batting .255/.325/.355 for 2.5 WAR in 1971. Denny Riddleberger, a 26-year-old left-handed reliever, had shown flashes of potential in 1971. Denny had appeared in 57 games for the Senators, striking out 7.2 batters per nine innings and registering a 3.23 ERA. Allen, a 32-year-old utility infielder, had had a pretty good season at the bat in 1971 while appearing in games at both second and third base. Bernie’s hitting was good for a 115 OPS+ as he had a .359 on-base percentage while playing passable defense.

22-year-old right-hander Rich Hand was the key figure in the trade from the Rangers’ perspective. The original trade had been held up for three days until the Indians agreed to include the former first-round pick in the 1969 June secondary draft. In 1971, Hand had gone 8-2 with a 1.88 ERA in Triple A before going 2-6 with a 5.79 ERA with the big club. In his 1970 rookie season he had shown strong potential though; Rich had allowed only 132 hits in 159⅔ innings with an ERA of 3.83.

Paul was a 26-year-old left-hander who had been a regular pitcher for the Tribe since 1968. In 1971, he had struggled to a 2-7 record with a 5.95 ERA and had similarly struggled to a 4.37 ERA in Triple A.

Foster, the other principal piece headed west in the trade, was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1970. He had followed up his stellar first season with an 18-homer effort in 1971, although his average had dropped to .245 and his defense was considered suspect. At the time of the trade, manager Williams was hoping for big things from his new outfielder. Williams stated that he always liked Foster’s potential and opined that “he may hit even better and more home runs in Texas.”7

Ken Suarez was a right-handed-hitting backup catcher. 28 years old, he had batted a mere .203/.310/.285 in 146 plate appearances in 1971.

Result: The trade initially worked out well for the Rangers from the pitching perspective, as both Hand and Paul had some success as starters for the 1972 Rangers. Hand proved to be the Rangers’ best starter in 1972, going 10-14 with a 3.32 ERA in 28 starts. Paul surprised, given his track record, by chipping in with 20 starts good for 8-9 and a 2.17 ERA. Neither, however, would prove to be a long-term solution. Paul reverted back to the journeyman hurler he had always been in 1973 (5-4, 4.95 ERA for the Rangers), and Hand was unable to build on his 1972 season. He went 6-6 with a 4.39 ERA in 1973 to finish up his major-league career.

Foster, in a bizarre twist, never appeared in a regular-season game for the Rangers. He was traded back to the Indians in April (see below). Suarez played for a couple of seasons for the Rangers without distinction.

Unser proved to be the most impactful player included in the trade. He played for 11 more seasons, including five as a major-league regular. He accounted for 11.5 WAR over the remainder of his career. Riddleberger went 1-3 with a 2.50 ERA for the Tribe in 1972 and then exited the major leagues for good. Bernie Allen hit .227 in part-time duty for the Yankees in 1972, then finished his major-league career in 1973 as a sub-replacement player in limited action.

In the final analysis, the Rangers gave up a peak-year center fielder, a valuable commodity, in their quest for depth, versatility, and pitching potential. They received in return a brief glimpse of that potential but nothing else of significance.

Before 1972 Season
Lew Beasley received from the Baltimore Orioles in an unknown transaction.
Type: Youth Movement

Beasley was a 22-year-old outfielder in the Orioles system. A second-round pick in 1967, he had a strong season in Class A in 1971, hitting .303/.347/.392 with 24 steals. It is not recorded what the Rangers gave up to acquire him.

Result: Today, the fact that Beasley was 22 years old in Class A would cast doubt on the predictive power of his strong season at the bat. Those doubts proved to be well founded.

March 4, 1972
Traded Denny McLain to the Oakland Athletics. Received Jim Panther and Don Stanhouse.
Type: Youth Movement

As previously mentioned, owner Bob Short had acquired the enigmatic McLain prior to the 1971 season in an attempt to attract attention for his struggling club. His payoff had been a 10-22 season with a 4.28 ERA, a season-long dispute between McLain and Williams over the structure of the Senators’ pitching rotation, and a pitcher who was thought to be a disruptive influence on the Rangers’ younger players.

On the advice of Rangers Triple-A manager Del Wilber, the Rangers pursued Don Stanhouse and Jim Panther. Wilber was particularly high on Stanhouse’s potential, stating, “If you can get Stanhouse even up for McLain, make the deal.”8 Stanhouse was a first-round draft pick in the 1969 draft and had gone 7-4 with a 3.74 ERA at AAA in 1971. He was considered the outstanding pitching prospect in an Oakland A’s system that had recently produced Catfish Hunter and Vida Blue.

Jim Panther, 26, had gone 10-10 with a 3.63 ERA for Triple-A Iowa in 1971. He was too old to be considered a strong prospect, but offered the versatility to pitch as both a starter and reliever.

Result: Enticing the normally astute Charlie Finley to give up his number-one pitching prospect for the washed-up McLain was a coup for the Rangers. Stanhouse came out of the gate strong in1972, fanning 12 batters in his first 12⅔ innings with the Rangers after striking out the side against the Chicago White Sox in his major-league debut. However, he hurt his elbow and was forced on to the disabled list. His overall 1972 season consisted of 16 starts with a 2-9 record and a 3.78 ERA. Panther made a limited contribution to the Rangers, going 5-9 with a 4.13 ERA in 58 games before being moved to Atlanta in a postseason trade. The McLain-Stanhouse trade, much like the trades described above, did not prove to be a needle-mover for the Rangers franchise.

March 7, 1972
Released Tim Cullen.
Type: Cost Cutting

Tim Cullen was a 30-year-old middle infielder who had appeared in 125 games for the Senators in 1971, batting a mere .191 and fielding just well enough to account for .6 WAR. He was obviously not a part of the Rangers’ future and in the absence of a likely trade market, he was released. He was signed by Oakland and appeared in 72 games in 1972 to finish out his career.

April 3, 1972
Traded Roy Foster and Tommy McCraw to the Cleveland Indians. Received Ted Ford.
Type: Youth Movement

After his acquisition in the blockbuster deal with the Indians, Roy Foster had hit .302 in spring training. Despite this, Ted Williams was not a fan. “I just couldn’t stand his moping around all the time,” said Williams. “That’s not my kind of player.”9

30-year old Tommy McCraw was a nine-year veteran who had been acquired by the Senators before the 1971 season. He had played 122 games for them, batting .213/.291/.382 in 234 plate appearances. It was clear to him during 1972 spring training that he was not in Ted Williams’s plans. McCraw commented, “Heck, he only gave me four at-bats all spring training. How could I prove anything to him?”10

The Rangers were excited by the potential of the 24-year-old Ted Ford. “I personally made this trade, I think it’s a damn good one,” said Ted Williams.11 said Ted Williams. “I think we got the best end of it in age on the one hand and enthusiasm on the other.” Ford had been a first-round pick in 1966, and had torn up Triple-A pitching to the tune of a .326 average with good power in 1970 and a .330 average, .404 on-base percentage, and .500 slugging percentage in 1971. He had struggled upon his callup to the Indians in 1971, though; he hit .194 with no power in 206 plate appearances.

Result: Ford had the best year of his career for the Rangers in 1972. After hitting a three-run homer in his first game on April 28, he went on to hit 14 homers, knock in 50 runs, and bat .235. His career faded quickly after that, as he hit only .225 in 40 at-bats in 1973 and exited the majors for good after that season. McCraw came out of the gate strongly for the Indians. The Tribe surprisingly surged into first place in May, prompting Cleveland manager Ken Aspromonte to say, “I don’t know where we’d be today if it weren’t for Tom McCraw. He has been a tremendous addition.”12 The discerning fan would be skeptical that a 31-year-old with a previous high of 2.6 WAR in any of his previous seasons, and that all the way back in 1967 as a 26-year-old, would suddenly flash MVP potential, and would be proved correct. McCraw finished 1972 with a .258 average and accounted for 2.0 WAR, not bad but certainly not the linchpin of a playoff team. He went on to play three more seasons as a decent hitting (on-base percentage ranged from .336 to .343), poor fielding part-time player before leaving the majors after the 1975 season. Foster was used primarily as a pinch-hitter for the Indians, and his poor performance confirmed Williams’s estimate of his potential. The 1972 season was his last in the majors.

This trade proved to be another that had limited short-term and no long-term impact for the Rangers.

May 8, 1972
Signed Tom Robson as a free agent.
Type: Youth Movement

Tom Robson was a 25-year-old outfielder who had hit 16 homers and delivered a .274/.347/.445 slash line in Double A in 1971 in the Reds system. The Rangers signed him after he was released by the Reds in April. His major-league career totaled 54 undistinguished plate appearances in the 1974 and 1975 seasons.

May 30, 1972
Traded Norm McRae to the Detroit Tigers. Received Dalton Jones.
Type: Near Term Improvement

Norm McRae, a 23-year-old who had been a throw-in in the 1971 acquisition of Denny McLain, went 6-13 with a 4.89 ERA for Triple-A Denver in 1971. He was not viewed as a prospect of note.

Dalton Jones was a 27-year-old utility infielder for the Tigers. He had appeared in 83 games for them in 1971, batting .254.

Result: McRae failed to return to the major leagues (he had played briefly with Detroit in 1969 and 1970), while Jones served his utility role in undistinguished fashion for the Rangers in 1972 and never again appeared in a major-league game.

July 20, 1972
Traded Ted Kubiak and Don Mincher to the Oakland Athletics. Received a player to be named later, Vic Harris and Marty Martinez. The Oakland Athletics sent Steve Lawson (July 26, 1972) to the Texas Rangers to complete the trade.
Type: Youth Movement

It had been about eight months since the Rangers’ last big trade. With the team mired in last place in the American League West at the All-Star break, owner Bob Short finally was able to persuade Ted Williams to embrace the youth movement full force. Per Short, “We think we are now putting a young, aggressive, and attractive team out there, one that with experience can be a contender in future years.”13 Veterans Ted Kubiak and Don Mincher were not the last to exit the Rangers’ stable over the following few weeks.

Kubiak had been acquired from St. Louis as a potential starting second baseman in November of 1971. He had received regular playing time for the Rangers, but with a .550 OPS was clearly not someone to continue playing with a full-fledged youth movement underway.

Don Mincher, who was 34 years old, had been the Senators’ leading hitter in 1971 after coming over in a trade with Oakland. In 100 games for the Senators, he had hit 10 home runs, knocked in 45 runs, and hit .291. He was still effective in 1972, although this was due more to a high on-base percentage driven by walks than by his customary home-run power. He had hit only six homers in 243 plate appearances at the time of the trade, and was batting at a .236 clip.

Steve Lawson was a 21-year-old left-hander working at Oakland’s Triple-A farm club at the time of the trade. A third-round pick in the 1969 draft, he had excelled at Class A in 1971, going 7-2 with a 3.07 ERA while striking out nearly a batter an inning. He jumped from Class A to Triple A for the 1972 season, and was struggling against the tougher competition (7-9, 4.57 ERA in 20 starts). However, Denver manager Del Wilber was very high on Lawson’s potential. Per Bob Short: Wilber “advised us to take Lawson head up for both Kubiak and Mincher. That’s how much he thinks of this kid.”14

Vic Harris, the A’s first-round draft pick in 1970, had stolen 39 bases while batting.291/.392/.419 at Class A in 1971. The A’s had moved him through Double A and Triple A in 1972 and he was still performing well, batting a combined .293/.355/.419 with 18 steals and 7 triples. He seemed to offer a nice package of speed and batting eye as a middle infielder.

Marty Martinez was a 30-year-old utility player who was hitting .125 for the A’s at the time of the trade. His last regular playing time had been 150 at-bats with the Astros in 1970. He was the epitome of a throw-in.

Result: Steve Lawson appeared in 13 games in relief for the Rangers in 1972. While his ERA was a solid 2.81, he walked 10 batters in only 16 innings. Despite Del Wilber’s assertion that he “has all the equipment,” he would struggle with control in Triple A in 1973 and was destined not to appear in another major-league game.

Vic Harris debuted for the Rangers in 1972 as well. He batted only .140 in 61 games. In 1973, he became the Rangers’ starting center fielder and appeared in 152 games. He batted .249 with eight home runs, but struggled in the field and on the basepaths (he stole 13 bases against 12 times caught stealing). The Rangers traded him after the 1973 season, and although he played through 1978 he had the unusual distinction of never finishing a season with a positive WAR.

Martinez played in 26 games for the Rangers in 1972 without distinction to finish off his playing career.

Mincher served as a pinch-hitter for the A’s for the balance of the 1972 season. He appeared in the A’s World Series victory over the Reds, getting a hit in his only at-bat, before hanging up his spikes for good. Kubiak continued to play his utility-infielder role for the A’s and Padres through 1976, but had negligible impact on his teams’ fortunes.

This was yet another Rangers youth bet that did not pay off. Given the negligible cost, however, nothing was really lost or gained.

August 31, 1972
Sold Frank Howard to the Detroit Tigers.
Type: Cost Cutting

Frank Howard was a star for the Senators in 1971, slugging 26 home runs to lead the team and delivering a 145 OPS+ and 2.7 WAR. He fell from those lofty heights in 1972, being reduced to a .244 average with nine homers on August 30. He had still managed a 116 OPS+ in the reduced offensive environment of the time, but with his high salary was a luxury the rebuilding Rangers no longer thought necessary. He played for the Tigers through the 1973 season, but his days as a major contributor were over.

August 31, 1972
Traded Casey Cox to the New York Yankees. Received Jim Roland.
Type: Near Term Improvement?

Casey Cox, 30, had been with the Senators since his major-league debut in 1966. He had enjoyed several solid years with the team, but since the end of the 1969 season had toiled as a below-replacement-level spot starter and reliever. Through August 30, he was 3-5 with a 4.41 ERA in 1972.

Jim Roland had been pitching in the majors since debuting as a 19-year-old in 1962. He was still an effective reliever through the 1971 season, but his performance had fallen off noticeably in 1972. With the A’s and Yankees, he had sported an ERA around 5.00 in limited innings.

Result: Neither Cox nor Roland pitched effectively for his new team in 1972. Cox threw one inning for the Yankees in 1973 and then exited the major leagues for good, while Roland never appeared in another game in the majors after 1972. This trade was completely irrelevant for both clubs.

September 7, 1972
Purchased Rich Hinton from the New York Yankees.
Type: Youth Movement

Rich Hinton had the unusual distinction of being drafted five different times before finally signing with the White Sox in 1969. At the time of his purchase from the Yankees, he was 25 years old and had yet to distinguish himself in either the minors or in his brief major-league callups.

Result: Hinton got into five games for the Rangers in September 1972, but those would be the only games he played for them. The Rangers traded him to the Indians before the 1973 season. He pitched in the majors through 1979, but exceeded replacement level only in 1978. Hinton was another young pitcher lottery ticket that failed to pay out.

Overall Summary

The Rangers made a number of transactions before and during the 1972 season, most in pursuit of young cost-controlled talent. The team placed a particular emphasis on the accumulation of pitchers with strong potential, while also adding outfielder Ted Ford and infielder Vic Harris to their youthful roster.

Unfortunately, the net effect of all that player movement was negligible. Most of the acquisitions made the strongest contributions they would make to the Rangers in the 54-win 1972 season. Rich Hand (10-14, 3.32 ERA in 1972), Mike Paul (8-9, 2.17 ERA), Don Stanhouse (2-9, 3.78 ERA), and Steve Lawson (0-0, 2.81) all either washed out or moved on without contributing any more significantly. Similarly, outfielder Ted Ford generated 2.3 WAR with 14 homers in 1972 before turning into a pumpkin while infielder Vic Harris never delivered on his potential.

On the other hand, of the players the Rangers gave up in trade, only Del Unser achieved any significant post-Texas success. Unser’s 11.5 post-trade WAR was the most accumulated by a significant margin by any player included in the transactions described above.

Although the Rangers’ bets on youth did not pay off, in my opinion the attempt was still worthwhile. Retaining Del Unser would not have made the team competitive in the near-term anyway. Perhaps they shouldn’t have listened to Del Wilber’s advice on pitching prospects, though, as none of his recommendations (Stanhouse, Lawson, Panther) panned out.

Postscript

The Rangers 1972 talent drive was not a complete wash. In the 1972 June entry draft, the Rangers selected third baseman Roy Howell (10.9 career WAR), catcher Jim Sundberg (40.5 career WAR), and first baseman Mike Hargrove (30.3 career WAR). It would take a while, but better days were indeed on the way in Arlington.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER has been a baseball fan since receiving his first pack of baseball cards in 1974. An engineer by profession, Bill recently began writing about baseball in addition to avidly reading about and watching the game. He has a particular interest in the strategic aspects of team building and roster construction.

Notes

1 Merle Heryford, “Rangers’ Youth Fails to Shatter Ted’s Optimism,” The Sporting News, April 8, 1972: 11.

2 Ron Fimrite, “Bad Case of the Short Shorts,” Sports Illustrated, August 9, 1971.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5Merle Heryford, “Rangers’ Youth.”

6 Merle Heryford, “Rangers Size Up Foster as Home-Run Threat,” The Sporting News, December 18, 1971: 47.

7 Ibid.

8 Randy Galloway, “Youth Drive? “Bunk!’ Says McClain,” The Sporting News, March 18, 1972: 52.

9 Randy Galloway, “Rangers Prefer Their Ford over a Rolls Royce,” The Sporting News, June 24, 1972: 20.

10 Russell Schneider, “Injuns Shudder: Where Would They Be if Not for McCraw,” The Sporting News, June 3, 1972: 9.

11 Randy Galloway, “Rangers Prefer.”

12 Russell Schneider, “Injuns Shudder.”

13 Randy Galloway, “Ranger Roster a Cross-Word Puzzle,” The Sporting News, August 12, 1972: 24.

14 Ibid.

The Rangers’ First Two Dozen Years: Bad Management, Worse Baseball

Jacob Pomrenke — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 04:29:24 +0000

The dominant characteristics of the Texas Rangers’ early history were inept management, pitiful baseball, and terrible attendance. The team proved incapable of coming up with a workable plan and sticking with it. This premise was stated well by a presumably neutral observer, veteran Chicago sports columnist Bernie Lincicome: “Texas has been a franchise governed by impulse, impatience and poor judgment.”1

Frankly, though, it didn’t take a lot of baseball acumen to figure that out – you just had to watch what was going on.

The team’s first year in Texas was 1972, after owner Bob Short and Arlington, Texas, Mayor Tom Vandergriff persuaded the other American League owners to let the franchise relocate from Washington, where the team had been terrible for years. As early as 1909, writer Charles Dryden had coined a legendary phrase: “Washington – first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.”2

The franchise’s final season in Washington, 1971, featured yet more poor performance from the Senators, punctuated by rioting in the final game by fans angry that Short was moving the team.3

That first season after the move from D.C., the Texas Rangers lost 100 games, finishing – where else? – last in the American League West Division, 38½ games out of first place. The best player was a journeyman pitcher, Mike Paul. Hall of Famer Ted Williams completed his fourth year as manager of the team, and wearily decided that it would be his last.

A few names on that first Texas team might be familiar to Rangers baseball fans: slugger Frank Howard, slugger-to-be Jeff Burroughs, infielder Toby Harrah, and rookie Tom Grieve. Burroughs would soon earn the American League MVP Award and Grieve would become the team’s general manager after his playing days were over. Grieve and Harrah are members of the Rangers Hall of Fame.4

The rest of that team was players who were hoping to make it, or trying to hang on. It was a sad, futile season that drew fewer than 700,000 Texas baseball fans, which put owner Short in a near-desperate financial situation. He had bought the team hoping to duplicate the windfall he had reaped when he bought the NBA Minneapolis Lakers for $500,000, moved them to Los Angeles and sold them five years later for $5 million.5

But without good attendance, then the primary source of revenue, Short had two problems: funding operating losses from his own pocket, and attracting eager buyers. Naturally, he spent considerable time calculating how to pull fans to Arlington Stadium. And since he had anointed himself general manager, Short’s chores also included hiring a new manager and acquiring better players.

For a manager, Short chose the New York Mets farm director, Dorrel Norman Elvert “Whitey” Herzog, who had no previous managing experience. Herzog asked Short for time to build the Rangers for long-term, not immediate, success, and Short agreed. To his lasting regret, Herzog believed him.

The Rangers, by virtue of their terrible regular-season record, would have the first pick in the coming player draft, but Short had no intention of waiting until then to beef up the roster. Between the July trading deadline and the end of the year, he traded away nine players and sold two others (one of them Frank Howard), getting a like number in return.

But the only big name the Rangers acquired in all that commotion was former batting champion Rico Carty from the Braves. For Texas, he hit a miserable .232 and was gone after just 86 games – a harbinger of things to come. This high-volume roster churn in search of big-name stars who would draw fans would dominate the Rangers’ approach for most of the decade.6

To boost attendance while the team wasn’t winning, Short resorted to giveaways and other promotions. During the 1973 season, he bought thousands of cheap giveaways and used them to stage numerous promotions. There were Cap Nights, T-shirt Nights, Calendar Nights, Rangers Keychain Nights, a Panty Hose Night, even a Hot Pants Night, for which the entrants outnumbered the paying fans.7

The most successful promotion, in terms of fan acceptance, had to be scrapped almost immediately: Bat Night. Any youngster who attended a game would be given a Little-League-sized bat, which, of course, the kids enjoyed bashing against the old stadium’s metal seats and barriers all game long. The racket was a huge distraction. Quickly, the Rangers wised up and gave the kids coupons they could redeem for bats after the game.8

But the biggest promotion of the new season was centered on a player the Rangers acquired in the draft. Two separate agendas were in play. General manager Joe Burke and manager Whitey Herzog were looking for a player to build a franchise around. Short was looking for someone to fill the seats.

With high-school left-hander David Clyde, they could have had both if they’d handled it right. Clyde was the best pitching prospect most scouts had seen that year. He had two plus pitches – a buzzing fastball and a hammer curve. The Rangers chose him ahead of Dave Winfield and Robin Yount. He agreed to terms before he graduated and made his first major-league appearance six days after his senior prom, wearing jersey number 32 in honor of Sandy Koufax.9

Herzog had wanted to send Clyde to the minors for seasoning, of course, but Short wanted him on the mound in Arlington Stadium, promising it was only for a few games.

June 27, 1973, was Clyde’s debut and Short’s biggest, best promotion yet. It was almost a circus. The pregame celebration featured Clyde’s family, three hula-dancers, a papier-mâché giraffe on wheels, a character in a half-bird, half-fish costume and two live lion cubs. It was a standing-room-only sellout. Clyde walked the first two batters, then struck out the side – and the Rangers won. After the game, Short said, “According to my calculations, on gate receipts alone, in two starts I will have earned back Clyde’s entire … signing bonus.”10

The next night, fewer than 4,000 fans came to the park, so Short told Herzog the youngster would be with the Rangers for the rest of the year. It was shortsighted and, predictably, detrimental to Clyde’s development. He lasted less than five years in the majors.

Looking back on it, Grieve said, “It was the dumbest thing you could ever do to a high-school pitcher. In my opinion, it ruined his career. Bob Short did it because he needed the money. So David served a purpose for Bob Short, at the expense of what I firmly believe would have been a nice 12- to 15-year big-league career.”11

The Clyde extravaganza wasn’t the final splash of the season. In September Short made more headlines when he fired Herzog to replace him with the mercurial Billy Martin, who himself had just been fired by the Detroit Tigers. Here again, Short was looking toward the box office.12

At the news conference announcing the hiring of Martin, Short said, “If my mother were managing the Rangers and I had the opportunity to hire Billy Martin, I’d fire my mother.”13

It was Short’s last major decision with the team. Just before the new season began, he sold out to a local group led by Fort Worth millionaire Brad Corbett, who had parlayed a small-business loan into a multimillion-dollar plastic-pipe business.

As the 1974 season began, it didn’t take long for the brash Corbett and the equally brash manager Martin to collide. Martin, like Whitey Herzog before him, demanded that young Clyde be allowed some time in the minor leagues, and Corbett, like Short, refused – so Martin simply refused to play the youngster. This further stunted Clyde’s development, physically as well as emotionally.

But even without Clyde, positive things were happening on the field. Jeff Burroughs had a career year in his second big-league season, batting .301 with 25 home runs and a league-leading 118 RBIs, to win the 1974 American League Most Valuable Player Award. Another breakthrough player was Mike Hargrove, the Rangers’ first native Texan. He made the jump from Class A ball to hit .353 and earn the AL Rookie of the Year Award. He was joined by rookie catcher Jim Sundberg, who went to the All-Star Game. Veteran right-hander Ferguson Jenkins, acquired from the Cubs, won 25 games, was named Comeback Player of the Year and finished second in the Cy Young Award voting. And young right-hander Jim Bibby tossed the team’s first no-hitter.

The Rangers finished the season 84-76, second in the AL West, and drew 1,193,902 fans, fourth in the league. Thanks to a quality manager in Martin and some on-field talent, the team had become relevant for Dallas-Fort Worth sports fans.

Corbett, like Short, preferred the instant gratification of showy transactions over the hard work of player development. For example, his deal for Jenkins had cost the team future four-time batting champion Bill Madlock. In 1974, through trade, sale, or release, the Rangers got rid of 25 players and acquired 17 others.

Corbett put it to the floorboard in 1975, with offseason deals that landed aging outfielder Willie Davis and left-hander Clyde Wright, a 20-game loser the prior year, at the cost of top pitching prospects Pete Broberg and Don Stanhouse, plus slick-fielding shortstop Pete Mackanin. Then, shortly after the season began, Corbett sent pitchers Jim Bibby, Jackie Brown, and Rick Waits, plus $100,000 to Cleveland for 36-year-old spitballer Gaylord Perry.

It wasn’t enough. In July, with the Rangers at 44-51 and Martin constantly sniping at Corbett’s personnel decisions, Corbett fired the manager. To succeed Martin, he named third-base coach Frank Lucchesi, whose only prior managerial experience had been leading the 1970-72 Phillies to a dismal 166-233 record. The Rangers finished that season 79-83, third in the division.

And 1976 was even worse. Pitchers Jenkins, Wright, and Bill Hands were sent packing. Perry was a year older and no one else picked up the slack. At the deadline, Corbett sent youngsters Mike Cubbage, Jim Gideon, Bill Singer, and Roy Smalley along with $250,000 to the Minnesota Twins for pitchers Bert Blyleven, who finished the year at 9-11, and Danny Thompson.

The team never found first gear and finished 76-86, tied with the Angels for fourth place in the AL West. The team had some players – rising fan favorites Harrah, Grieve, and Sundberg, who won his first Gold Glove. But Burroughs’ production fell as the league’s pitchers caught up with him.

As the 1977 season approached, Corbett signed two big-name free agents, former A’s shortstop Bert Campaneris and former Braves right-hander Doyle Alexander. He also shuffled Burroughs off to Atlanta for five players, only one of whom, pitcher Adrian Devine, made a positive contribution.

But the season’s highlight came in spring training when fiery infielder Lenny Randle violently assaulted his manager. Rookie Bump Wills – son of Maury – had supplanted Randle at second base. Randle, unhappy over the demotion, asked Lucchesi for a few words, then suddenly knocked the skipper to the ground and punched him until teammates intervened. Lucchesi was hospitalized for a week. Randle was fined, suspended, charged with assault, and quickly shipped off to the Mets for, in effect, nothing in return.

If that weren’t enough, the Rangers also went through four managers in six days. As the team languished, Corbett fired Lucchesi, chose coach Connie Ryan as interim manager until he hired Eddie Stanky – who quit after one game! Finally, Billy Hunter joined the team from Earl Weaver’s Baltimore staff.

Some good things did happen that year. Harrah and Wills had back-to-back inside-the-park home runs on consecutive pitches in Yankee Stadium; the team turned its first triple play and got a no-hitter from Blyleven. Under Hunter, the Rangers rallied to win 21 of their last 31 games for a 94-68 record, the team’s highest win total ever, but not good enough to catch the red-hot Kansas City Royals.

For the 1978 season, Corbett signed free agent Richie Zisk, who had belted 30 homers and knocked in 101 runs for the White Sox. Corbett also traded away Clyde, Perry, and slugger Willie Horton for no substantial return.

Then, at the winter meetings, Corbett went into orbit, orchestrating a four-team deal that sent five players packing, including Blyleven and Grieve – the last original Ranger – for outfielder Al Oliver from the Pirates and lefty Jon Matlack from the Mets, plus some spare parts. Then in May, he traded for Bobby Bonds.

Despite the constant roster churn, the Rangers did enjoy a rare, brief sort of stability during the 1978 season – there were no changes in ownership, the front office, the manager, or the coaching staff – and finished tied for second in the division. Sundberg earned another Gold Glove and another All-Star Game berth. Matlack had his best year as a Ranger: 15-13, 2.27 ERA in 270 innings.

But, as always, you couldn’t have a 1970s Rangers season without some significant controversy, this time courtesy of the newly acquired and ever-erratic pitcher Dock Ellis. After a fight broke out on a team charter, manager Hunter imposed a no-alcohol rule. Ellis, a controversial sort, said he would bring his own booze. He characterized Hunter as a tyrant, telling reporters, “He may be a Hitler but he ain’t makin’ no lampshade out of me.”14

After the season, Hunter and the front office wanted Ellis gone, but Corbett believed Ellis was amusing and good for publicity – so he fired Hunter instead.

Another new season, 1979, saw another new manager – this time, it was tough-as-nails Pat Corrales, who had been a catcher for nine years in the National League. This was his first managing job and he took the team to a third-place finish, at 83-79. Buddy Bell, acquired from Cleveland, became one of the team’s steadiest, best players for the next six years. Bell earned a Gold Glove and finished among the top 10 vote-getters for the MVP. Corbett, continuing his habit of shopping for big names, also added closer Jim Kern and three big-name former New York Yankees: Oscar Gamble, Mickey Rivers, and Sparky Lyle.

One move turned out to be more significant than it seemed at the time – original Ranger Tom Grieve retired as a player, joined the Rangers front office, and began getting ready for the next season’s duties as the color commentator for the team’s TV broadcasts.

Interim

One thing should be noted at this point: The 1970-1979 decade was the very last time that major-league baseball was openly tolerant of what were euphemistically called “characters” – perpetrators of the goofy, nutty behavior that had been so typical of players, managers, and owners alike. The reason is simple: money. In 1970 the average player salary was about $29,000, and total TV revenue was about $176 million. By 1982, the average player salary had grown to $245,000, and TV revenue exceeded $250 million.15 Baseball started to slowly squeeze out those who treated the game as a game. It was a serious, money-making business.

During the 1980 season, the Rangers continued a pattern that had been established before the franchise even moved to Texas: One good year under a new manager, then a quick slide back to mediocrity, or even worse. After finishing four games over .500 for Corrales the previous season, the Rangers fell to 76-85, finishing fourth. That was finally enough for Corbett, as he and his partners sold the team to Fort Worth oil millionaire Eddie Chiles.

Fun, flamboyant American League umpire Ron Luciano provided the perfect commentary on Corbett’s turbulent ownership tenure: “Brad thinks his ballplayers are like his plastic pipes – they need to be flushed all the time.”16

Among the season’s on-field highlights, home-grown right-hander Danny Darwin – nicknamed the Bonham Bullet for his fastball and his North Texas hometown – posted a 13-4 won-lost record with a 2.63 ERA in his first full season. Meanwhile, veteran Jenkins became the fourth pitcher to win 100 games in each league.

The 1981 season saw the beginning of the conflicted relationship between the flint-hard new owner Chiles and his chosen new manager, Don Zimmer, a baseball lifer. Zim spent more than 60 years in pro baseball, from 1949 until his death in 2014. He claimed he never took a paycheck outside of pro ball except for some Social Security payments.

Chiles, born in Itasca, Texas, clawed his way to the top of the oil business. He started his business, the Western Company, in 1939 with two trucks and three employees. He grew it to become one of the wealthiest men in Texas. At one point, he ran a series of radio commercials with the tagline, “If you don’t have an oil well, GIT ONE! You’ll love doing business with Western.”

Chiles was determined to run the Rangers the way he ran his business – which meant concrete, “attainable” goals with frequent individual reviews. Zimmer thought that was ridiculous and threw Chiles’ written instructions in the trash.

The 1981 season was interrupted by a players’ strike. At the time, Zim’s Rangers were just 1½ games out of first place. But the strike lasted 50 days and when the season resumed, the team never regained its momentum. It finished 57-48, five games back of eventual division champion Oakland.

General manager Eddie Robinson decided that what the Rangers needed for 1982 was an athletic outfielder who could hit, prompting him to make one of the worst trades in the team’s history. He sent two promising young pitchers, Ron Darling and Walt Terrell, to the Mets for Lee Mazzilli. Darling had been the team’s number-1 draft pick, and Terrell was their number-1 pitching prospect at the time. Mazzilli? He hated Texas from the minute he arrived. When Zimmer tried to put him in left field, Mazzilli said, “Left field is an idiot’s position.”17

Mazzilli pouted all year and was hitting .241 when the team finally shipped him to the Yankees for aging shortstop Bucky Dent. Meanwhile, over the next six seasons, Darling and Terrell combined to win 146 games for their new teams.

When the Rangers came home from a four-city July road trip that featured 10 losses, Chiles told Zimmer he was fired, but asked him not to tell anyone and would he please stay on until Wednesday? Even worse, Chiles chose Doug Rader to manage the team, which turned out to be one of the worst personnel decisions in the history of the franchise. Rader proved to be a complete failure as a manager, and the man who was runner-up in the interviews was Jim Leyland, who later won pennants in both leagues and a World Series.

The 1982 team finished 64-98, second worst in the division. There were two on-the-field bright spots: Outfielder Larry Parrish hit three grand slams, with 19 RBIs, in one week, and rookie outfielder Dave Hostetler – nicknamed “The Hoss” – bashed 10 home runs in June, 22 in his first 76 games that season. Unfortunately for Hostetler, that’s when big-league pitchers found the holes in his swing, and he was off the team by 1984.

Rader’s first full year as manager, 1983, saw the team leap to 11 games over .500 in the early going, then – as Rader began to assert his “personality” – struggle to finish in third place, at 77-85. Rader became a disaster with players, fans, and the media. Several years later, Rader admitted he had done a “terrible” job. He actually instigated feuds with his most experienced players, with the beat writers, even the fans. Rader later admitted he was a terror, that no one wanted to play for him, and he didn’t blame them.18

In 1984 the team finished 69-92, last in the division and 14½ games out of first. Even worse, Rader ran off longtime fan favorite Sundberg, citing a lack of toughness. Sundberg went to Milwaukee for Brewers catcher Ned Yost. At the time, Rader said, “We made the deal because Ned Yost is a better catcher than Jim Sundberg. Period.”19

Here are the facts:

Sundberg won six consecutive Gold Glove Awards. He consistently led AL catchers in fielding percentage, putouts and assists. He was Rookie of the Year and made three All-Star teams. He averaged 126 games a year in 12 seasons. His caught-stealing rate was 41 percent. His bWAR with the Rangers was 34.7.20

Ned Yost lasted one season with Texas. He caught 78 games. His caught-stealing rate was 17 percent. His bWAR with the Rangers was -2.4.21

On the positive side of the ledger, third baseman Bell earned another All-Star Game appearance, his sixth consecutive Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger Award. Tom Grieve was named farm director.

In 1985 Grieve took over as general manager and chose his pal Bobby Valentine to replace Rader. The team finished 62-99, last again, but Valentine had more polish than Rader, was better with the fans and media, and was committed to working with Grieve to build some success.

On the field, rookie outfielder Oddibe McDowell became the first Ranger to hit for the cycle. Smooth, powerful right-hander Jose Guzman made his major-league debut. He would post four double-digit winning seasons for Texas before shoulder problems ended his career.

The next season under Valentine, 1986, saw the Rangers challenge for the division title, finishing second at 85-75. Valentine finished second in the Manager of the Year Award voting. Two rookies, outfielders Pete Incaviglia and Ruben Sierra, added their muscle to that of veterans Parrish and first baseman Pete O’Brien to form the Rangers’ power parade. Incaviglia had made a big impression during spring training when he hit a line drive through – not over, but through – the left-field fence. Looking at the hole in the fence, Valentine said, “That’s one-inch plywood. Awesome.”22

Ageless wonder Charlie Hough – holder of the team career records in wins and strikeouts – was a 17-game winner for those Rangers, while 22-year-old rookie Bobby Witt went 11-9. And on the business front, the Rangers turned an operating profit for the first time.23

The next season, 1987, was not quite as much fun, even from the beginning. The Rangers opened the season 1-10, including nine straight losses. McDowell, at the team’s “Welcome Home” banquet and fan fest in late April, cut his hand trying to butter a dinner roll. Closer Greg Harris, who had demanded a 100 percent raise based on his 20 saves the year earlier, missed three weeks in August and September with a strained elbow, sustained when he flicked sunflower seeds at a friend in the stands one afternoon.24

The big-four bats continued to thump – Parrish had 32 home runs, Sierra 30, Incavigilia 27, and O’Brien 23. The Rangers outscored every other American League West team, but still fell back into the cellar, at 75-87. Pitching coach Tom House recommended subliminal tape recordings to free up a pitcher’s subconscious so he could find the strike zone, and having pitchers warm up by throwing footballs to each other. Asked if the football drill was helping his pitching motion, the veteran Hough replied, “No, but we lead the league in third-down conversions.”25

On the business side, owner Chiles bought Arlington Stadium from the City of Arlington.

The team continued to struggle in 1988. Slugger Parrish needed knee surgery before the season started, his bat never recovered, and he was gone before the All-Star break.

Closer Harris was gone after the sunflower-seed stunt. Budding starter Edwin Correa tried to come back from a sore shoulder but could not pitch through the pain – he would eventually have career-ending surgery.

The team had eight straight wins in May, but then lost 19 of 31 games. The Rangers’ only bright spot the second half of the year was fireballer Bobby Witt, who had been demoted in May for his inability to throw strikes. He came back up in July, having added a forkball to his repertoire, and rattled off nine straight complete games.

Nonetheless, the team finished two games out of the cellar, at 70-91. It was the worst record of Valentine’s tenure to date, but Chiles gave him a two-year extension.

Looking ahead to 1989, GM Grieve decided standing pat was not working, so he went on a buying spree. The team traded six players, including closer Mitch Williams, to the Chicago Cubs for three players – primarily young first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, who had hit .307 the previous year. Also, the Rangers sent three players, including starters McDowell and O’Brien, to Cleveland for second baseman Julio Franco, a career .295 hitter at the time. Then, Grieve made a trade he later regretted – three players, including future superstar Sammy Sosa, went to the White Sox for DH Harold Baines, who never found his stride with Texas.

In December the team made local headlines with the signing of free-agent pitcher Nolan Ryan, who was immediately installed as the staff ace, and fans’ expectations rose tremendously. Joining Ryan were newcomers Kenny Rogers and Kevin Brown. The Rangers’ busy offseason was noticed around the league, with Oakland GM Sandy Alderson saying, “The most important byproduct of all that change is the change in their image. And self-image.”26

Ryan won 16 games and led the American League with 301 strikeouts, including career strikeout number 5,000. New closer Jeff Russell led the league in saves and posted a 1.98 ERA. Sierra led the league in triples, RBIs, slugging percentage, and total bases, was named to his first All-Star team and captured the Silver Slugger Award.

This season also marked the major-league debut of 19-year-old outfielder Juan Gonzalez. He would play 13 years with Texas, win the AL Most Valuable Player Award twice, play in three All-Star Games and win the Silver Slugger Award six times. As of 2016 he held the team record for home runs and RBIs.

The team improved to 83-79, but three other West Division teams won 90 games or more and Texas finished fourth, 16 games off the pace.

Shortly after the 1990 season began, owner Chiles – whose oilfield company was being pummeled by the energy crisis – sold the Rangers to an investment group fronted by future President George W. Bush. It was the fourth new ownership team in 17 years but proved to be the most stable up to then.

The group announced plans to build a new stadium – The Ballpark In Arlington. Arlington voters loved the idea and, the following year, approved a sales-tax increase to help fund it.

During the season Ryan again led the league in strikeouts, became the oldest pitcher to throw a no-hitter and earned his 300th career win. Bobby Witt won 17 games and Incaviglia bopped 24 home runs, but the team finished third, at 83-79.

Catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez made his debut in the 1991 season at age 19. Rodriguez grew to become one of the finest catchers in the game. He was named to 10 All-Star teams in his 12 years with the Rangers, and won 10 Gold Gloves, six Silver Sluggers and one AL Most Valuable Player Award.

In May Ryan threw his seventh career no-hitter, three more than any other pitcher. Gonzalez hit 27 home runs and drove in 102 runs, while Palmeiro batted .322 and chipped in 26 homers.

Construction began on the new stadium in 1992, as the Rangers finished the season eight games under .500, at 77-85. The poor play earned Valentine the boot as manager in July, with coach Harrah taking over in the interim.

At the trading deadline, Grieve completed another blockbuster trade, sending Sierra, Witt, and Russell to Oakland for controversial outfielder Jose Canseco, who brought the national spotlight to Texas, and not in a good way. In a game against Cleveland, Canseco lost sight of a fly ball, which bounced off his head and over the fence for a home run. But the primary attention Canseco brought to Texas came later, from his 2005 book, Juiced – his personal account of his own steroid use and those of teammates, including accusations against many Rangers.

On a more positive note, Grieve persuaded ownership to give scouting director Sandy Johnson a contract extension, cementing the team’s commitment to do a better job of developing its own players.

Kevin Kennedy took over the dugout in 1993 as the Rangers’ new manager – the team’s 15th since 1972. Kennedy got to preside over one of the most memorable events in franchise history, one still talked about today. On August 4 against the White Sox, Ryan plunked third baseman Robin Ventura on the arm with a fastball. Ventura took a moment to think about it, then charged the mound. Ryan caught him in a headlock and punched him six times before the benches emptied and knocked both men to the ground.

Sadly, Ryan’s season and career ended abruptly in September, when he ruptured an elbow ligament in a game against Seattle. He elected to retire at age 46 rather than go through surgery. The team finished second in the division at 86-76.

The Rangers’ new ballpark, modeled after the retro-look Camden Yards in Baltimore, opened in 1994 to great fanfare. It was a big success with fans, who turned out in record numbers – 2.5 million for the strike-shortened season.

In July lefty Kenny Rogers tossed the team’s first perfect game. The Rangers signed first baseman-DH Will Clark to replace Palmeiro and he led the team in batting at .329, while Canseco added 31 home runs. But the team finished 10 games under .500, at 52-62 – technically “first place” in the division because the season was cut short by the players’ strike that resulted in the first World Series cancellation since 1904.

The poor record led to Grieve’s dismissal as GM. He was replaced by Doug Melvin, who chose Johnny Oates to replace Kennedy as manager. Oates would lead the Rangers to their first postseason action just two seasons later.

The team’s first year under Oates, 1995, saw continued success at the plate and mediocre pitching at best. Four hitters reached double-digit home runs, paced by Gonzalez with 27, and Clark added 92 RBIs.

On the mound, lefty Kenny Rogers had a fine 17-7 record, but no other pitcher finished above .500.

The Ballpark in Arlington hosted the 66th All-Star Game in the middle of the year, providing a new kind of excitement for fans, who saw the National League beat the American League, 3-2. For the regular season, also shortened by the players’ strike to 144 games, Texas finished in third place at 74-70, 4½ games behind Seattle.

After two decades featuring varying degrees of futility, frustration, and failure, the 1996 Texas Rangers clinched their first postseason appearance in franchise history, winning the Western Division by 4½ games with a record of 90-72. It was their first 90-win season since 1977. Attendance was a record 2.88 million.

Oates was named co-Manager of the Year, tied with Joe Torre of the Yankees. Gonzalez was the American League MVP with 47 home runs and 144 RBIs. Seven other players had double-digit homers, including newcomers Mickey Tettleton and Dean Palmer.

The Rangers faced the Yankees in the American League Division Series, and won Game One in New York, 6-2, with home runs by Gonzalez and Palmer, and a complete game from John Burkett. However, the Yankees took the next three games to win the series.

This seems an appropriate stopping place, now that we have followed the Rangers from their inception as (in the salty words of Whitey Herzog during a private spring-training conversation) “the worst ****ing team in baseball,” to champion of the American League West. The team would win two more division titles in the next three years. From 1996 through 2015 the Rangers earned seven playoff appearances and two American League pennants. Fun, in the early years, came mostly from off-the-field activities. Mercifully for Rangers fans, their fun can now be found between the lines.

JOE STROOP, retired, spent 55 years as a professional communicator, beginning at age 15 when he took an after-school job as a DJ at the local radio station (best job ever). He earned a degree in journalism and worked at Dallas-Fort Worth radio/TV stations covering local news and sports, including the Texas Rangers’ first opening day. He joined the Associated Press, covering every Rangers home game for several seasons, including the tumultuous Doug Rader era, and was awarded that Holiest of Grails, a BBWAA membership card. Somehow, he was enticed to join the public relations department of a Fort Worth-based airline, later managed his own PR firm, and retired as a regional PR manager for a San Francisco-based national bank. He has continued to write about baseball, contributing “throwback” articles for a Rangers web site and SABR projects. Today, he, his gorgeous wife and two brilliant, successful children are all DFW residents.

Notes

1 Bernie Lincicome, “Rangers Fire Rader for Losing Ugly,” Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1985.

2 baseballhall.org/discover/awards/j-g-taylor-spink/charles-dryden.

3 washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/redskins/history/rfk/articles/baseball.htm.

4 texas.rangers.mlb.com/tex/history/rangers_hall_of_famers.jsp.

5 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Short.

6 baseball-reference.com/players/c/cartyri01.shtml.

7 Mike Shropshire, Seasons in Hell (New York: Donald I. Fine Books, 1996), 67.

8 Rusty Burson, 100 Things Rangers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2012), 237.

9 Josh Lewin, Ballgame (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2012), 16.

10 Shropshire, 69.

11 dallasnews.com/sports/texas-rangers/headlines/20130622-townsend-40-years-after-memorable-debut-ex-ranger-david-clyde-recalls-a-career-cut-short.ece.