2008 Preview: Texas Rangers

Why the Texas Rangers, you ask? Because you have to start at the bottom if you want to scale the mountain. (That's Angel Mountain, in the Anaheim of Los Angeles Range, FYI.)

The Texas Rangers came into being in 1972 when the Washington Senators left Nixon's poopy backyard for the wahd open Texas spaces. Those same afterthought Senators had come into being in 1961 when their predecessors deserted D.C. for a snowy excellence in Bloomington, and became the Minnesota Twins. That's the real story of the Rangers, in fact—the Senators moved after 60 years of awfulness to become good, and baseball's brilliant "expansion" put a new awful team in its place.

It stands to reason that, born in a stroke of logic such as this, they would inherit the awful and move it with them to Texas. In 1972, the Rangers boasted Frank "Hondo" Howard, a would-be hero if only he could do anything besides hit 20-odd home runs. Plus, he wore thick glasses to top off a lumbering 6' 7", 255-pound pre-'roids era body. (I saw him hit a triple in Detroit, once. Against Texas.) The rest of the team was Chuck Hinton, Mike Epstein and Jimmy Piersall. The Texas Rangers gave us interesting news from time to time, but a .468 winning percentage through 1988 is the only story that everyone knows for sure.

In 1989, George W. Bush bought the team—that is, his dad coaxed a bunch of rich guys to give a coke-head a shot at doing something right for a change. As was his style in those fun-filled years aboard the Good Ship Johnny Walker, Bush sent Sammy Sosa to a great career somewhere else, then got bored and became the Governor of Texas. The owners showed their gratitude to the State for getting the boy out of their hair: the Rangers immediately got good and had a new stadium to boot. But the team soon returned to its genetic origins, and since 2000 has lost lots of games, in buffoon style.

This year looks to be more of the same. Manager Ron Washington—a bad name in Texas, as I pointed out, just as Texans are bad in Washington—reportedly spent the last half of last year feuding with players. This is likely due to his insistence on dedication, decidedly not a strong part of Ranger heritage. The club off'd Mark Teixeira late in the season, then let Jerry Hairston, Jr. and Brad Wilkerson go away. Washington picked up ex-A's Adam Melhuse, who is a good platoon at catcher, and Milton Bradley, who can really play even when he's making news about some outburst. The club signed Jason Jennings and even took a shot with Edgardo Alfonso. Washington may have control of the team now, but it's not that good a team yet.

I won't go so far as to state the Rangers are bad. Because they have this cycle of mediocre for five years, to near-success, to fall-down-go-boom, then back to mediocre for five years. They've played poorly for eight years and are due to surprise us all this or next year, and THEN crash and burn. This could be the year they again lead the AL West until August, only to fall victim to an historic surge by the Angels or A's. If that happens, it'll be easy enough to declare them bad before next season, and then forget them for five seasons. So I'll just leave it at this: the Rangers have always been bad, or at least not good enough, so there's no reason to think they'll change their ways after, oh, 100 years.