Tag Archives: Texas Rangers

Let’s go, Rangers!

Posted on August 2, 2008 | Comments Off on Let’s go, Rangers!

Going to be interesting, our trip to Arlington today to see the Rangers play the Bluejays tonight. Mr. Boy, who has become a daily reader of the sports pages, is a fount library of statistics and youthful opinions about his Rangers. Add to that his recent reading of The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams, and our bedtimestory reading lately of The Thinking Fan’s Guide To Baseball.

Last night, watching the Rangers beat the Jays 9-8, the camera focused on retired Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan. "There’s Nolan Ryan," Mom said. "Oh, Mom," Mr. B. said. "Whitey Ford was better. Ryan didn’t have any control."

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Posted in Mr. Boy

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Umpire ejects pitcher

Posted on July 31, 2008 | Comments Off on Umpire ejects pitcher

I think it was the first time I saw a pitcher cuss an umpire, as happened in last night’s game between the Rangers and Seattle. Mariner’s reliever Arthur Rhodes is under some pressure, apparently, not knowing whether he’s going to be traded to the Marlins. But when he was pulled in the bottom of the eighth, after loading the bases with walks, and giving up a pop fly to bring one of them in, he left the field saying bad things to the homeplate umpire, who ordered Rhodes ejected, as well. The Rangers won 4-3.

Rhodes, it seems, has long been controversial, according to Wikipedia: "In 2001 [he] was pitching against the Cleveland Indians when Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel said that Rhodes’s glowing diamond earrings were distracting him from seeing the ball. This incited an argument…that led to Rhodes’s ejection…Since then, players have not been allowed to wear distracting jewelry on the field."

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Posted in Texana

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Hamilton, Bradley, Kinsler & Young

Posted on July 7, 2008 | Comments Off on Hamilton, Bradley, Kinsler & Young

Might sound like a law firm but these guys are the top four hitters of the Texas Rangers, and Mr. B. was thrilled to discover this morning on the way to day camp that they’re all new AL all-stars.

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Posted in Texana

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Ran Runnels, the Hangman of Panama

Posted on June 25, 2008 | Comments Off on Ran Runnels, the Hangman of Panama

They’re still trying to figure out if Randolph Runnels really was a Texas Ranger before he was hired by the builders of the first transcontinental railroad (forty-seven miles across the Isthmus of Panama connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific) to solve a nasty bandido problem.

 Runnels didn’t fit the physical image of a Ranger, according to historian David McCullough in his 1992 book Brave Companions, but he acted the myth well enough: he hanged seventy-eight men in two separate incidents in 1852 and, lo and behold, the banditry stopped. The Texas Rangers Association apparently has no record of Ran’s Ranger service, but their records admittedly aren’t complete. But at least one railroad historian found sources crediting the Ranger tale, and there was a Runnels who had to do with the Rangers in the 1850s, Texas Gov. Hardin Runnels who took office in 1858. He was a champion of the Indian-fighting Rangers and he may have been Randolph’s brother.

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Posted in Library, South of the Border, Texana

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Bradley breaks another bat

Posted on June 7, 2008 | Comments Off on Bradley breaks another bat

So Mr. B. and I are watching the Rangers and Tampa Bay and sometime bad boy (though reportedly recently reformed) right-fielder and slugger Milton Bradley strikes out. Then he breaks his bat over his knee. I’ve read about it but never saw it until tonight. Mr. B. didn’t say much about it. He’d probably like to break his bat sometimes when he strikes out, too, but his bat is aluminum. And Ranger shortstop Michael Young is his favorite hitter, anyhow.

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Posted in Mr. Boy

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Captain John Coffee “Jack” Hays

Posted on April 13, 2008 | Comments Off on Captain John Coffee “Jack” Hays

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Mathew Brady’s rendition of the famous Texas Ranger, whose early exploits are commemorated in a plaque atop Enchanted Rock, in the Hill Country west of Austin. He was the first of the great captains who built the Ranger legend. A quiet, unassuming fellow who exploded into action when confronted with peril, usually in the form of raiding Indians, often Commanche. “Powder-burn them!” he would yell, as his men chose individual warriors to ride down and kill. I can’t imagine what he would have made of political correctness, let alone modern Hollywood claptrap about Indians. But I suspect it would have been profane. Read more about him here.

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Posted in Guns, Texana, The Culture

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The Lone Ranger

Posted on August 21, 2007 | Comments Off on The Lone Ranger

Clayton Moore is welcome to the title he guarded so assiduously until his death in 1999. I still remember the outfit I got for Christmas when I was in second grade, especially the double-holster set with those faux pearl-handled, long-barrel .45s. Cap pistols, of course. I don’t think you can even buy those things anymore. (Well, maybe you can, but they’re pricey.) My mother being from Texas–even though we were then part of my father’s Air Force career and so living in Tripoli, Libya–The Lone Ranger rig was a natural. None of this phony kickboxing stuff that television now attributes to the Texas Rangers. They are, in any case, more often detectives with accounting degrees these days than their famous incarnation: the Samurai of the Old West.

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Posted in Scribbles, Texana

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