Congratulations, Texas Rangers

I haven't watched hardly any baseball this year. But I did tune in for some of Game 6 of the ALCS on Friday night, just in time for the fifth inning. That's when the Yankees walked Josh Hamilton with two outs in order to pitch to Vlad Guerrero. Only Vlad Guerrero doubled into the gap to score both runners to put the Rangers up 3-1. And then Nelson Cruz homered to score two more runs, and the Yankees' goose was cooked. The camera shot of Yankee manager Joe Girardi standing in the dugout after the home run made my day. He was probably thinking, "Great, so tonight I will be visited by the ghost of George Steinbrenner."

Normally I would not congratulate the City of Dallas on anything. The Dallas Cowboys might be the only pro sports franchise I find to be more yucky than the Yankees. And I don't care for the Dallas Mavericks either.

But the Rangers - they are okay in my book. Back in the eighties, my aunt and uncle would take us to Rangers games whenever we would visit them in Dallas. They were an average team back then and I still remember many of their players - Pete O'Brien, Scott Fletcher, Steve Buechele, Oddibe McDowell, Pete Incaviglia, and Charlie Hough. So the Rangers always had "second-favorite team" status for me (after the Reds) and I became sort of a Nolan Ryan fan in later years when he showed up and started throwing no-hitters in his forties. My aunt would sometimes send me Nolan Ryan clippings from the Dallas papers.

So I felt like I could share a little bit of the Texas joy the other night as they celebrated the first World Series appearance in nearly 50 years of franchise history. I wonder if the old Texas Rangers hat I got at Cap Night in 1986 is still floating around somewhere back home. . .