Posted on 10/15/2010 9:48:12 PM PDT by BluesDuke
The easy part of the American League Championship Series will be enjoying the pitching showdowns in which Cliff Lee is involved for the Texas Rangers. Yea, verily, even against the Empire Emeritus. All things considered, the Rangers' and the Yankees' pitching may be about equal, if you don't consider advantage, Lee.
It's the Rangers' first trip to any postseason series off a postseason series win. It's the farthest the franchise has gone since its birth in 1961.
You say you forgot, or didn't realise the Rangers were that old? Gather 'round, pop the tab on a cold one. Learn how Texas got the Rangers because they had an owner whose McCourt-like leveraging to buy the team---when it was the Washington Senators---and Steinbrennerian (1980s edition) ways with wheeling and dealing turned it from brief potential contender back into a never-was also-ran.
Ages before the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals, Washington had two baseball teams, one after the other, both known as the Senators. And, it also had a legend: Washington---First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.
The legend was only a slight exaggeration. The Original Nats had a few dead last finishes but managed, somehow, to win a couple of pennants and a crazy enough World Series. (1925, with Walter Johnson winning the deciding game---in relief.)
Then Calvin Griffith, the adopted son (and biological nephew) of longtime owner Clark Griffith, found himself with a team of nowhere men, albeit with some fresh new blood of potential enough, particularly a big hit/no field infielder named Harmon Killebrew. He moved the club to Minnesota, where Minneapolis was slated originally as one of the franchises in the would-be Continental League.
That scheme, the brainchild of Branch Rickey, born of his aim at bringing at least a second major league team back to New York, prodded baseball government to expansion because government government was threatening to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption. Griffith's move to Minnesota prompted the American League, joining the National League in agreeing to expand in the wake of the failed antitrust exemption revoke, to award a new franchise to a group of Washington investors.
The New Nats' first pick in the expansion draft that built themselves and the Los Angeles Angels was a Yankee: Bobby Shantz, pitcher. Fat lot of good that did them: they traded him within days to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a pair of no- names. Then, they opened for business by picking up pretty much where the Old Nats left off. (Though, when the Old Nats came to town for the first time, under their new name and colours, the New Nats got really crazy---sweeping the Twins in four.) And, pretty much stayed there. Until trucking magnate Bob Short, the former owner of the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA, bought the team in the late 1960s.
Short merely borrowed himself into near oblivion to buy the team. He also refused to hire a general manager, while spending six figures to hire a manager of undetermined experience. A manager named Ted Williams. It worked, at first: Williams got into the heads of his Senators and got something out of them besides echo chambers. He also got them into the 1969 pennant race for most of the season.
The star of the team, Frank Howard, did what was expected of him. (Driving in runs, and hitting baseballs into earth orbit.) The rest of the team did what was theretofore unexpected of them---playing sound, fundamental baseball, hitting with instead of through or around the pitches, and pitching as though the strike zone were somewhere in the neighbourhood of home plate. Williams, of all people, was named Manager of the Year.
And Short went to work posthaste blowing the whole thing up.
He jacked up ticket prices right off that surprising 1969. The Senators had the highest prices in the American League in 1970 but the team wasn't even close to living up to them. That's because Short began proving himself a wheeler dealer who got more wheeled than dealt. And that included the trades he didn't make, which might have pushed the Senators from surprise to regular contenders. Consider:
* The Oakland Athletics were hot for power hitting first baseman Mike Epstein. Hot enough to offer the Senators future Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter. Straight up. Short turned that one down. No New Nat pitcher got anywhere near winning 20 games for the rest of their Washington tenure.* The Atlanta Braves also had the hots for Epstein. They were willing to part with All-Star catcher/third baseman Joe Torre to get him. Short wasn't willing to pull the proverbial trigger on that one, either.
* The Erstwhile Nats, a.k.a. the Twins, hungered for a promising New Nats slugger, outfielder Brant Alyea. For reasons never disclosed, Short didn't think all that much of what the Erstwhile Nats offered for Alyea, a third baseman who looked like he might come to hitting for power enough. A third baseman named Graig Nettles.
On the other hand, Short did have the hots for someone else's pitcher: Denny McLain. By 1970, however, McLain had devolved from a back-to-back Cy Young Award winner (and, in 1968, a 31-game winner) to an arm-troubled also-ran who'd spent most of the season in and out of suspension over a few gambling and gun- carrying escapades.
Short wanted McLain despite his being under suspension when, the day before the 1970 World Series, he swapped most of his infield to get McLain and three spare parts. How did McLain spend 1971? He became a 20-game loser and the sometimes-acknowledged leader of the Underminers, a group of disgruntled Nats dedicated to doing everything they could to make Ted Williams a non-entity as their manager.
Maybe the most decent thing Short did in his tenure was a deal he made with the Philadelphia Phillies, also in the 1970 offseason, a deal he couldn't put on paper because it might have proven illegal. He sent the Phillies three minor leaguers in exchange for the negotiating rights to Curt Flood, who'd sat out 1970 challenging the old reserve clause rather than accept the trade to the Phillies from the St. Louis Cardinals.
Short offered Flood a $110,000 1971 salary, with half to be paid in advance, and a promise that if the two couldn't agree on a contract Flood would be made a free agent. He also offered Flood a no-trade clause.
But the yearlong layoff and various problems dogging him off the field (his divorce, plus what some called excessive child support demands, not to mention financial problems tied to his portraiture business in St. Louis) had taken toll enough on Dred Scott in Spikes. Flood didn't have to be told. He left the Senators after fourteen games in 1971, leaving Short a note of apology.
Short was only too willing to sell the team if he could find a buyer to keep it in Washington---or, so he said. One story had it that comedian Bob Hope was approached as a prospective owner, except that Hope is also said to have decided it was too risky a buy.
A group led by Joseph Danzansky, the president of Giant Food, Inc., was ready to spend $50,000 for the option to buy the team before arranging to make the buy with a $6.6 million loan underwritten . . . by the American League's other owners.
Publicly, Short continued singing the mantra that he didn't buy the Senators to move them. Privately, he protested he could no longer keep operating in Washington . . . and threatened to sue his fellow owners if he wasn't allowed to move. Maybe the only thing that stopped Short from moving sooner than he did was that Washington's Armory Board, which administered RFK Stadium, was owed over $160,000 (not too much more than Frank Howard's salary) in back rent.
Pleading poverty didn't keep Short from signing a Dartmouth pitcher, Pete Broberg, with a $150,000 bonus. Or, from activating Broberg right away, in an eerie telegraph to the franchise's Texas toddlerhood and a too-fast-tracked high school phenom named David Clyde. Broberg was started against the Red Sox 19 June 1971. He kept the Olde Towne Team in check with a nasty fastball and a pocketful of breaking balls. It proved the highlight of his career; Broberg never completely horsed himself, and would never win more than five games a season before he hung it up after 1978.
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had grown up spending his summers working as a Griffith Stadium scoreboard operator. Now he went on tour beseeching large American companies to think about buying the Senators, especially if they had a corporate base or majority interest in Washington. No luck.
Late September 1971: The Danzansky group's offer was turned down flat, and the owners voted on whether to let Short move the Senators to Texas. The Baltimore Orioles (fearing what would happen over three decades later: the National League thinking about and moving into Washington) voted no. So did the Chicago White Sox. The New York Yankees, the Detroit Tigers, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Royals, and the Milwaukee Brewers (the erstwhile Seattle Pilots, they began their lives in the American League) voted aye.
Tom Yawkey of the Red Sox voted yes only out of consideration for Williams, his longtime Hall of Fame star. Calvin Griffith of the Erstwhile Nats thundered that Washington didn't deserve a baseball team. The Oakland Athletics abstained, pending owner Charlie Finley's hunker down with World Airways boss Ed Daly, who had previously shown an interest in buying the Senators for $9 million. Daly got the call from Finley---it's the bottom of the ninth. Daly replied he couldn't decide that fast.
But Finley could, and did: he now voted to approve the Short move. So did Gene Autry, the Calfornia Angels' owner, by proxy since he was undergoing eye surgery in Boston. Short got his approval to move the Senators, after all those months promising in public that he had no intention of moving the team.
To say the final home game of the Washington Senators II was a heartbreaking affair is to say 9/11 was a mere plane crash.
30 September 1971. The visiting opponents: the New York Yankees. Mike Kekich, soon to become one-quarter of the most bizarre trade in baseball history, started for the Yankees against Dick Bosman, one of the New Nats' more stout pitchers. By the bottom of the sixth, Bosman was out of the game and Kekich was the comfortable possessor of a 5-1 lead, the lone Nat run coming in the second on a single (Dave Nelson), a should-have-been forceout (Del Unser bounced back to Kekich, who threw a perfect strike to second only to see Horace Clarke bobble the play) left first and second, and a run scoring on another error at second.
Then Frank Howard opened the Washington sixth. Big Frank couldn't do much with Kekich's first two fastballs. Radio announcer Ron Menchine told his listeners (many of whom were in the ballpark, clutching portable radios) there was still time for the Nats to come back. The words were still traveling past his tongue when Kekich threw Howard a third straight heater and the gentle giant drove it into the upper deck.
Restless all game long to that point (banners displaying Bob Short's initials were only the most polite expressions of disgust), the RFK Stadium audience went nutsh@t. The customarily modest Howard let his manager shove him back up from the dugout steps for a curtain call. Big Frank tipped his cap. Then---still bathing in the wild ovation he was getting, from the fans with whom he'd often enjoyed a love affair since he arrived from the Dodgers in 1965---he wept openly.
He also opened a Senatorial floodgate. They finished their half of the sixth with a tie game at five. Howard's bomb was followed at once by (Dana Billings, Jeff Burroughs) knocking Kekich out of the game. Then, it was RBI bunt single (Nelson, scoring Billings), RBI groundout (Unser, scoring Burroughs), and--a strikeout and a walk later---an RBI double. (Elliot Maddox, scoring Nelson.) Two innings later, the New Nats took a 7-5 lead, on a one-out RBI single (Tom McCraw) and a sacrifice fly. (Maddox.) Then Joe Grzenda went out to pitch the ninth, trying to save it for Paul Lindblad (who stood to win after working two innings of spotless relief) and maybe end the Senators' term with a W.
Grzenda rid himself of pinch-hitter Felipe Alou and Bobby Murcer readily enough. But he couldn't rid himself of the natives getting extremely restless. By the time he finished Murcer off, fans began hopping the fences, jumping on and off the field, and threatening a full-scale riot. Williams ordered the bullpen to clear out and head for the clubhouse posthaste; Unser was so nervous for his safety that he left the outfield; and when the relievers ran across the field rather than under the stands---it was quicker to the clubhouse that way--- the fans poured onto the field to stay.
By the time they got finished, the RFK Stadium playing field looked like the aftermath of an atomic attack, and the game had been forfeited to the Yankees.
Short took the team to Texas, renamed them the Rangers, and saw 1972 much the same as 1971, just at a different address. In fact, the 1972 Rangers were worse than the 1971 Senators: they lost 100 of their 154 games. (The season was shortened by a quick players' strike.) Ted Williams had had it, and resigned at season's end. It stayed that way until 1974, when Billy Martin took the team and kept them in the AL West hunt until the final weeks, Burroughs finally becoming the player he'd been projected to become and winning the MVP.
By which time Short was gone, selling at a profit to Brad Corbett. Corbett began the long and sad Texas tradition of dangerous offence being beaten by bad or shallow pitching---its own. It would be 1996 before the Rangers won a division title, and this year before they got past the first round of any postseason.
Today's Rangers look very much like a team capable of keeping the Yankees from winning one in memory of The Boss. Today's Rangers were built by a man who doesn't seem likely to think about solving his team's pitching issues by spending about the price of a 2010 baseball franchise on a shortstop. They're now owned by someone who once pitched for the Rangers, pitching his lifetime no- hitter numbers six and seven and striking out his 5,000th career victim (who just so happened also to have been his 4,000th career victim).
They look nothing, in other words, like the manner in which they were born. But among the four combatants for the pennants who begin their battles tonight, they've gone the longest without anything smelling like a World Series appearance.
Things may get very interesting, indeed, if the World Series should match these Rangers to the San Francisco Giants. The Giants haven't won a World Series since their home address was New York, Dwight Eisenhower was the squire of the White House, and Washington was first in war, first in peace, and sixth in the American League.
The trouble is that the Rangers have more or less picked up where they left off in the division series. That series was won on the road. And the Rangers spent Friday night at home losing a Game One they looked to have had in the bank until the top of the eighth. Josh Hamilton---their personable young star, whose recovery from substance abuse moves his teammates to have ginger ale shampoos upon winning postseason sets instead of champagne, in his honour---abused CC Sabathia for a first-inning three run bomb, but the Yankees ended up abusing the Rangers' usually solid bullpen for a five-run eighth before sending The Mariano out for lockdown duty in the ninth.
And this time, they'll only get three cracks at the Yankees in the Bronx. Still . . .
That was then: The Newborn Nats' best pitcher, Dick Donovan, had only a 10-10 record to show for a 1.02 WHIP and leading the American League with a 2.40 ERA. This is now: Cliff Lee, who led the American League in WHIP (1.00), split a 12- 9/3.18 otherwise but has won twice in the postseason and given his team all the room it needs to let its bats bop.
They'll have to get through a Yankee club whose feature attractions include two high-priced spreads the Rangers could afford no longer: Alex Rodriguez, and Mark Teixiera. But they also include one guaranteed arm who got murdered early Friday; one 50-50 arm (Andy Pettitte); one arm (Phil Hughes) of still-suspicious durability; and a small host of question marks, albeit solid ones for the most part.
All the Rangers have to do is keep the Yankees from getting a game to The Mariano, who still looks better with his age beginning to show than most hotshot closers half his age. As he demonstrated Friday night. Even if he had to shake off a leadoff single and a man in scoring position (thanks to a sacrifice bunt) to do it.
They never thought you'd be talking about the Rangers in terms of their possibly reaching the Promised Land when they hit town to stay in 1972.
But then nobody ever imagined the Rangers would have something now that they sure didn't have when they were first yanked out of Washington---an owner the mere mention of whose name doesn't inspire thoughts of first degree murder. Yet.
CJ Wilson did pretty good for the first 7 innings and then the Rangers collapsed. ugh.
Yes, in another odd bit of trivia, the current manager's last name is Washington. And, the former Senators once had a future President as a part owner.
What a story. Wow. Good job.
I can’t believe they let the guy keep his job as Manager after they caught him snorting cocaine last year
True story: the first two Rangers’ games I ever attended - Ryan’s 5000th and then his 7th.
A couple of factual errors bug me here.
1. Bob Short jacked up the ticket prices in 1969, the first season he owned the team. The author says it happened in 1970, but ‘69 was the year they increased ticket prices, along with converting much of the general admission sections of RFK Stadium to reserved seats.
2. The Senators were not in the pennant race in 1969. The Baltimore Orioles ran away with the AL East title in 1969. There were no wild card teams then. The Senators did challenge for 2nd place for a time, but never had any hopes of making the playoffs that year.
Thanks for posting that article, BluesDuke!
I was living in the mid-cities area of DFW when the move to Texas was made in ‘72. I was at that first game where the kid David Clyde first attempted to be a starting pitcher. We fans have suffered for decades and the disheartening loss on Friday night to the NYY just adds more pain.
1. Bob Short jacked up the ticket prices in 1969, the first season he owned the team. The author says it happened in 1970, but ‘69 was the year they increased ticket prices, along with converting much of the general admission sections of RFK Stadium to reserved seats.Short made a larger rampup of the prices for 1970 than he had for 1969---the Senators ended up with the American League's highest ticket prices for 1970, based on one season of legitimate competitiveness. That's probably why the 1970 price jack is better remembered and often enough considered the more critical of the Short price jacks.
The New Nats hung in the 1969 AL East race long enough to raise some eyebrows and they actually got to within two wins of finishing fourth across the entire American League. It was a combination of that (the Orioles really turned on the afterburners come mid-to-late July, but I wouldn't knock an also-ran franchise getting up into the race in earnest in whichever position, and the Nats actually finished five and a half games ahead of the fifth-place Damnyankees) plus an overall improvement in many individual Nats' performances, that probably landed Ted Williams Manager of the Year honours.
They also finished sixth in the American League in attendance in 1969; it jumped up about 68 percent over 1968. The total 918,000+ attendance at RFK that summer was the best attendance in what was then 69 years of Washington baseball. Giving Short, alas, even more of the ammunition he needed to jack up the prices again.
There was one deal he didn't make that I didn't mention in my original piece, though it's just as telling as the ones I did mention: Short in the 1969-70 offseason could have had his pick between a pair of World Series-winning Miracle Mets---reliever Tug McGraw or Nolan Ryan, then working both roles for the Mets (and turning in a splendid pair of relief assignments during the Mets' postseason surprises), but both of whom would go on to long, distinguished (in McGraw's case), and even Hall of Fame careers (in Ryan's case)---if he'd been willing to part with Ken McMullen, whom the Mets thought could finally solve their already-longstanding deficiencies at third base with Ed Charles sticking to his retirement plans.
Short vetoed that one, too. Usually, some of the best deals are the ones you don't make. In Short's case, the ones he didn't make---including deals that might have landed him two prospective Hall of Famers and one of the best defencive third basemen the game has ever seen---probably helped guarantee that 1969 would be the only Senators II team that could be called genuinely competitive.
I can’t believe they let the guy keep his job as Manager after they caught him snorting cocaine last year
Washington was actually very forthright about it when he tested positive, neither he nor the Rangers acknowledged it publicly until spring training 2010, when Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated caught onto it and took it public. Apparently, these Rangers believe in second chances. It is not an unwarranted belief, and Washington never ducked responsibility for it.
Cause for optimism: The Yankees' pitching isn't exactly completely guaranteed. Andy Pettitte looked like his old self against Tampa Bay but he did tend to show his age too much down the stretch and you have to worry about that if you're the Yankees no matter how good he looked last week. Phil Hughes is still a durability question. And the fact that the Rangers strafed Sabathia last night is cause for alarm even if the Yankees figure he has to bounce back in his next turn. Plus, the Yankee bullpen other than The Mariano isn't as strong as it's been elsewhere.
The key for the Rangers, if you don't count trying to figure out how to win in the postseason at home: Get past the Yankee starters, get into their bullpen earlier, and don't let them even think about getting The Mariano warm. They may or may not have made a mistake in not sending Cliff Lee out to open the ALCS (remember what it cost Charlie Manuel in last year's World Series when he elected not to start Lee on short-but-not-drastically-short rest), but they can still count on two games from him at least if they can follow the previous prescription.
The real questions also include why he didn't even glance toward Neftali Feliz when he still had a lead to protect.
Cheers! I am watching now.
Rangers 1/0 1st inning
Oops! Make that 6-1, Ian Kinsler just tripled Cruz home . . . and the Rangers are going to get to play here bully bully bully: Hughes is out of the game and Joba the Hutt is in to pitch for the Yankees . . .
Make that 7-1-—Mike Moreland, two-out RBI single.
Yeah, baby!!!!!!!
Yuck the Fankees!!!!
Yeah, baby!!!!!!!
Yuck the Fankees!!!!
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