The Texas Rangers: A Journey to Their First World Series Title

The Texas Rangers, a professional baseball club, belong to the Western Division of the American League. Major league baseball came to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 1972 courtesy of Arlington mayor Tom Vandergriff and franchise owner Robert Short. Vandergriff was able to persuade the entrepreneurial Short to relocate his Washington Senators ballclub to Texas, and the Rangers were born. That 1972 season got off to an ominous start when the scheduled April 6 start was canceled by a player's strike. When the season finally did begin on April 21, only 20,105 fans came out to see the Rangers' first ever victory. Arlington Stadium had the capacity for 35,694 fans, but this turned out to be the second largest crowd of the inaugural season. The great Ted Williams, the Rangers' first manager, could not bear the continuous losing of a 54–100 first season in Texas and stepped down at the end of the year. The 1973 season was even worse as the club suffered through a 57–105 record and went through three managers. The highlight of the season came in June when the first sellout crowd in Arlington Stadium history saw newly drafted eighteen-year-old David Clyde win his debut over the Minnesota Twins. Clyde's career quickly fizzled however, due to his rush to the big leagues purely for box office gain.

The 1974 season marked the sale of the club from Short to a group headed by plastics tycoon Bradford G. Corbett. This transfer sparked an upswing on the field, as the club finished with a record of 84–76. This was a twenty-seven game turnaround over the previous year and earned Billy Martin the league's manager of the year award. First baseman Mike Hargrove was named rookie of the year, and outfielder Jeff Burroughs became the third player in major league history to be named a league's most valuable player in his second full season of play. Ferguson Jenkins also won a franchise record and league-leading twenty-five games. The next season was eagerly anticipated. However, the Rangers reverted to previous form, and Martin was fired in mid-season. The 1976 season was more of the same, as the team managed to win only seventy-six games and traded away Burroughs and Jenkins. The bizarre campaign of 1977 was expected to be another season of sub-par Rangers baseball, yet it turned into the franchise's most successful season. Despite going through four managers, including Eddie Stanky for one game, the Rangers won ninety-four games, finishing second in the division. The club slipped to eighty-seven wins the next season but again finished second in the division. This pattern continued through the strike-shortened 1981 season, with the team having respectable records but never finishing higher than second. By this time, Fort Worth oilman Eddie Chiles had bought the club, and the Rangers plummeted in talent and record throughout the first half of the decade. The hiring of manager Bobby Valentine in 1986 saw a brief upswing with his young team of inspired rookies winning eighty-seven games that year. However, the next two years resulted in identical sixth place finishes.

The 1989 season saw the arrival of superstar Nolan Ryan, as well as emerging superstar Ruben Sierra. The club won eighty-three games, and there was renewed hope. A group headed by George W. Bush had purchased the team, and fans were turning out in large numbers. The first half of the 1990s again saw some Rangers success. In 1992 and 1993 Juan Gonzalez won back-to-back league home run titles. In 1994 the highlight of the franchise's twenty-two year stay in Texas was finally unveiled when the Ballpark in Arlington was opened. Pitcher Kenny Rogers christened the premier ballpark in July of that year with the first perfect game by a left-hander in American League history. The Rangers went on to finish first in their division in 1994, despite a losing record, but the mid-August strike by major league players canceled that year's postseason, and the team's first chance to reach the World Series ended prematurely.

Under new manager Johnny Oates, the Rangers fell to third in their division in 1995, despite posting a winning record, but went on to win divisional titles in three of the next four seasons (1996, 1998, and 1999). Unfortunately for the team's loyal fans, the Rangers had to play (and lose to) the New York Yankees in the playoffs each time. The Rangers fell to fourth place in 2000, as they were unable to compensate for the loss of Gonzalez and pitcher Aaron Sele, who departed as free agents after the 1999 season, and All-Star catcher Ivan Rodriguez, who missed almost half the season with a broken finger. Before the 2001 season, however, owner Tom Hicks sent shock waves through the baseball world when he signed slugging shortstop Alex Rodriguez of the Seattle Mariners, generally considered the best player in the major leagues, to a ten-year, $252 million contract, by far the richest in baseball history.

The Rangers got good value for their money out of Rodriguez. In his three years with the Rangers, he hit 156 home runs, drove home 395 runs, and batted .305 while missing just one game. The team, however, finished last (out of four teams) in the American League West Division every year. Rodriguez, along with Michael Young, Juan Gonzalez, and Rafael Palmeiro, among others, assured a potent offense, but the team lagged in pitching. After the 2003 season Rodriguez was traded to the Yankees, perhaps the only team in baseball that could afford to assume his contract.

A key member of the Rangers (the “face of the franchise,” as longtime stars were dubbed) during the first decade of the twenty-first century was infielder Michael Young, who was acquired in a low-profile trade with the Toronto Blue Jays during the 2000 season. During his thirteen-year tenure with the Rangers, he accumulated 2,230 hits, won a batting title (.331 in 2005), and was a seven-time All-Star (2004–2009, 2011).

In October 2005, 28-year-old Jon Daniels assumed the duties of general manager. Daniels, the youngest GM in major league history, was part of a youth movement overtaking front offices. This new breed of executive relied on sabermetrics, a statistics-saturated approach to young players that supposedly was more predictive of future performance than traditional statistics and the subjective evaluations of scouts and coaches.

The Rangers spun their wheels for manager Buck Showalter from 2003 through 2006 (319–329 in four seasons). Beginning with the 2007 season the Rangers replaced Showalter with Ron Washington, a coach for the Oakland A’s and a former major league infielder. The team remained mediocre through 2009, but the stage was being set for big improvements.

One major upgrade was the 2008 addition of Josh Hamilton, a former Tampa Bay first-round draft pick who had been suspended by the league for drug use but had made a modest comeback with the Cincinnati Reds in 2007. In his first season with the Rangers, Hamilton led the American League in RBIs with 130. In 2010 he led the league in hitting (.359) and slugging (.633) and won the Most Valuable Player award. He was an American League All-Star from 2008 through 2012. Though he never led the league in home runs, he was renowned for his tape measure shots.

The Rangers had a breakthrough season in 2010, as they won their first American League pennant. Having started as an expansion team in Washington, D. C., in 1961, the Rangers were, in effect, celebrating the franchise’s fiftieth season with its first pennant.

If the 2010 World Series was something of an anticlimax (the San Francisco Giants bested the Rangers in five games), the 2011 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals was a major disappointment. In Game 6, the Rangers were tantalizingly close to winning the Series (twice they needed just one strike to seal the deal) but lost the game (10–9) in extra innings. The next day they lost the seventh game by a 6–2 score. Consecutive pennants were a major milestone for the franchise, but the failure to win a title, particularly when it appeared victory was imminent, remained a sore subject with Ranger fans in subsequent years.

In 2012 the Rangers returned to the post-season but bowed out in the Wild Card game. They failed to make the post-season the next two seasons, but new manager Jeff Banister led the team to division titles in 2015 and 2016. In both seasons the Rangers did not advance beyond the first round (the American League Division Series) of the playoffs. In 2017 and 2018 the team failed to play .500 baseball. Chris Woodward, a first-time manager, was hired beginning with the 2019 season. The Rangers continued to disappoint, however, finishing below .500 every season during his four-year tenure.

In 2016 the Rangers announced that they were going to build a retractable-roof stadium across the street from Globe Life Park. Dubbed Globe Life Field, the facility was scheduled to open in 2020. The stadium was ready on opening day, but the COVID-19 pandemic shut down baseball during spring training, and the “opener” of the truncated regular season did not occur until July 24. The first Rangers game at Globe Life Field was played in front of a crowd of zero, with life-size cutouts of fans placed in the stands, as was the case at other Major League ballparks. The Rangers did not make the post-season in 2020 (they finished the pandemic-shortened season at 22–38), but their new ballpark did. Major League Baseball selected Globe Life Field as a neutral site for the post-season. Globe Life Field hosted the National League Division Series (the Los Angeles Dodgers over the San Diego Padres), the National League Championship Series (Dodgers over the Atlanta Braves), and the World Series (Dodgers over the Tampa Bay Rays). A proper opening day for the Rangers was finally held in 2021 in front of 38,238 fans. The 6–2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays was the first of 102, miring the team at the bottom of the American League West Division. Nevertheless, the climate-controlled Globe Life Field welcomed a total of 2,110,258 fans that season.

The year 2022 also proved to be disappointing despite the signing of two blue-chip free agents, Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, so major changes were made before the season’s end. Manager Chris Woodward was let go. More significantly, Jon Daniels was fired and replaced by Chris Young, who broke into the major leagues with the Rangers in 2004 and went on to a thirteen-year career. Young was originally hired in December 2020 to work under Jon Daniels (ironically, Daniels had traded Young to San Diego in 2005). Standing at 6 feet, 10 inches, Young became the tallest general manager in baseball history the day he was promoted.

Another major announcement occurred after the season, when the Rangers hired Bruce Bochy, the only Major League manager ever born in France. Bochy, a catcher in his playing days, had retired from managing after the 2019 season. A twenty-five-year veteran, he managed the San Diego Padres for twelve seasons and the San Francisco Giants for thirteen. He won one pennant with the former and three World Series with the latter (including in 2010 against the Rangers).

The results were immediate. During the 2023 season the Rangers frequently sat atop the American League West. Four Rangers (catcher Jonah Heim, second baseman Marcus Semien, third baseman Josh Jung, and shortstop Corey Seager) were elected to start the All-Star Game in Seattle. As the season evolved, however, the quest for first place evolved into a three-way race between the Rangers, the Seattle Mariners, and the Houston Astros, who had dominated the division in previous years.

The Rangers won twenty-two more games in 2023 than in 2022, a major improvement. The total attendance was 2,533,044, the highest total since 2016. Yet the season ended on a down note. The Rangers finished in a tie for first place with the Astros. The Astros had won the season’s series against the Rangers, so they were declared division champions. As a consequence, the Astros received a bye in the first round of playoffs while the Rangers had to travel to St. Petersburg, Florida, to take on the Tampa Bay Rays in the best-of-three Wild Card Series.

The Rangers dispatched the Rays in two games with the pitching staff yielding just one run over eighteen innings. This allowed the Rangers to move on to the American League Division Series to face the Baltimore Orioles, another team that had significantly improved (eighteen more wins than in 2022) in 2023. Like the Rangers, they had not appeared in the post-season since 2016. The Rangers bested the Orioles in three straight games, and ran their post-season win streak to five games. The Rangers advanced to the American League Championship Series, where they faced their arch-rivals, the Astros, who were making their seventh straight appearance in the ALCS.

Though the two teams represented the largest metro areas in Texas, they had not met during the regular season until interleague play was instituted. From 2001 through 2012 the two teams played a home-and-away series for the Silver Boot trophy. After the Astros moved to the American League and joined the Rangers in the West Division in 2013, the rivalry heated up, as the two teams now faced each other six times each season, three series in Arlington and three in Houston.

The Rangers won the first two games of the 2023 ALCS in Houston, thereby extending their post-season win streak to seven. Then they lost three in a row in Arlington and suddenly found themselves facing elimination. Back in Houston for the sixth game, the Rangers rose to the occasion and won handily (9–2). The two teams who had finished with identical records in the regular season now found themselves with identical records after six games in the ALCS. The decisive seventh game was described by sportswriter Brian McTaggart as “the biggest baseball game in the state’s history.” That might have been so, but the result was lacking in drama, as the Rangers romped to an 11–4 victory. In all seven games the visiting team was victorious. It was only the second time in baseball history that all the home fans went home disappointed after every game in a seven-game series. (The Astros were also involved the first time in 2019 when they lost the World Series to the Washington Nationals.)

Ranger right-fielder Adolis Garcia, who hit five home runs and drove home fifteen runs, won the Most Valuable Player award. His fifteen RBIs was a record total for a post-season series. He broke the record set by former Ranger outfielder Nelson Cruz, who drove home thirteen in the 2011 ALCS against the Detroit Tigers (Cruz, however, hit six home runs in that series, which remains the record for a post-season series).

The National League pennant winners, the Arizona Diamondbacks, were arguably the weakest opponent the Rangers faced in the post-season. The three teams the Rangers had dispatched in the play-offs averaged ninety-seven wins during the season. Arizona had won eighty-four, or just three games above .500. After splitting the first two games of the World Series in Arlington, the Rangers and Diamondbacks headed west to Phoenix for games 3–5. The Diamondbacks fans had little to cheer about as the Rangers won all three games, completing a clean sweep of eleven post-season road games, taking the World Series in five games, and winning the first title in the franchise’s sixty-three-year history (fifty-two in Texas). Broadcaster Eric Nadel, the voice of the Rangers for forty-five years, pronounced, “It’s over! It’s over! The Rangers have won the World Series! Ranger fans, you’re not dreaming!”

Bruce Bochy became the only manager in Major League history to win a World Series with a team he had previously defeated in a World Series. Corey Seager, who hit three home runs (he was the first shortstop ever to do so in the World Series), drove home six runs and scored six, won the World Series MVP award for the second time (he had also won in 2020 when the Dodgers defeated Tampa Bay at Globe Life Field). Jon Daniels’ acquisition of Seager and Marcus Semien (both were All-Stars in 2023) ultimately bore fruit even though he wasn’t around to enjoy the championship celebration. Chris Young, the new boss, became one of a select few in Major League baseball to win a World Series as a player (he pitched for the champion Kansas City Royals in 2015) and as a front office executive. Two days after the Rangers won the World Series, the city of Arlington held a parade in their honor. The Arlington Police Department estimated the crowd to be at least 500,000.

The only down note during the Rangers’ historic post-season run was the death of former Ranger Frank Howard before the third game of the World Series. Howard, who hit 237 home runs with the Senators in eight seasons, moved with the franchise to Texas. He hit the first home run in Ranger history (and Arlington Stadium history) on April 21, 1972. Before he died, he was the oldest living Washington Senators alumnus. He had played for the worst team (54–100) in Ranger history but didn’t quite live long enough to see the Rangers reach the top.