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Category: Texas Rangers (Page 2 of 33)

The Enormous Abyss

September 8, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The Rangers took two of three from the Astros over the weekend, the first of which Whitney and Carley and I experienced in person at Globe Life Field Friday night. It was a 12-inning triumph in which the kids, particularly Cody Freeman and Dustin Harris, again played pivotal parts. The atmosphere was electric, as it always is when these two Lone Star rivals get together. The World Series trophy was on display–I guess we want to remind all the Astros fans that we won it last–and it was our first time to see the brand new Adrian Beltre statue outside the centerfield gates. So we patted Beltre’s head, took the pic with the trophy, and then sent the selfie to all our Rangers friends after Harris’ 12th inning single drove home the winning run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shockingly, the Rangers are still in this thing, just a half-game back of a wild card spot. Just as amazingly, if Texas can win just one of the three remaining games against the Astros, they will take the annual Silver Boot Trophy for the first time in nine years. And Myles Hill will have to buy me lunch at Whataburger.

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A prayer from A Cry for Mercy by Henri Nouwen. Especially if you are a minister or a congregational leader. My hope is that this might give voice to your heart in ways you never would have expected. And that you will be given encouragement and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I am impressed by my own spiritual insights. I probably know more about prayer and contemplation than most Christians do. I have read many books about the Christian life, and have even written a few myself. Still, as impressed as I am, I am more impressed by the enormous abyss between my insights and my life.

It seems as if I am standing on one side of a huge canyon and see how I should grow toward you, live in your presence and serve you, but cannot reach the other side of the canyon where you are. I can speak and write, preach and argue about the beauty and goodness of the life I see on the other side, but how, O Lord, can I get there? Sometimes I even have the painful feeling that the clearer the vision, the more aware I am of the depth of the canyon.

Am I doomed to live on the wrong side of the abyss? Am I destined to excite others to reach the promised land while remaining unable to enter there myself? Sometimes I feel imprisoned by my own insights and “spiritual competence.”

You alone, Lord, can reach out to me and save me. You alone.

I can only keep trying to be faithful, even though I feel faithless most of the time. What else can I do but keep praying to you, even when I feel dark; to keep writing about you, even when I feel numb; to keep speaking in your name, even when I feel alone.

Come, Lord Jesus, come. Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Amen.

Seven Logos

August 19, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The Texas Rangers sent me a survey this week about the team’s “brand.” They want my opinions and, I assume the opinions of thousands of other Rangers fans, on logos and taglines, uniforms and colors, how much baseball I watch, how often I go to the ballpark, and what I like and don’t like about how the Rangers are marketed, promoted, and otherwise presented to the public.

It took about 15-minutes to fill out the survey and it was a lot of fun on several levels. It was interesting to see what they’re asking and how they’re asking it. It seems the Rangers know they’re competing with the Mavericks and Stars for sports fans’ loyalty and entertainment dollars, but they don’t see themselves in any kind of competition with the Cowboys–they know the football team is its own thing. The Rangers appear to be interested in my thoughts on everything from the mascot, Rangers Captain (not a fan), to the new Rangers Sports Network (love it). It was soul-cleansing to tell the Rangers that I despise the City Connect uniforms (they asked!) and more than a little satisfying to correctly answer a couple of trivia questions that only hard-core Rangers fans would know.

The most difficult part of the survey was ranking all their uniform colors and designs. I love the 1970s red “Rangers” script across a clean white jersey, but that current red and white “TEXAS” across the navy top also looks pretty sweet.

The quickest and most fun part of the survey was ranking all seven of the Rangers historic team logos in order from my favorite to my least favorite. This is easy because my feelings about this are strong and have not changed. Here are the seven in my order of preference:

1. The OG 1972 cowboy hat logo with the old west letters. This was the first Rangers logo we saw when the team moved to Arlington in 1972. This was the Rangers sticker I put on my lunchbox and the bumper sticker I put on my bedroom mirror when I was seven or eight years old. This was the logo on the front of my Dr Pepper Junior Rangers Club membership package I got from Tom Thumb. It’s a classic. And by far my favorite Rangers logo.

2. The Montreal Expos ripoff logo. The team employed this logo during most of the 2000s, including during their first trips to the World Series in 2010 and 2011 and their World Series title in 2023. They unveiled this logo while I was working for and with the Rangers at KRLD in 2003, and officially retired it after the ’23 season. It’s clean, it’s neat, it’s the one they used the longest, and it’s connected to the Rangers’ most successful seasons. This is the logo I have in at least six places in and on my truck. It’s not technically baseball correct in that the ball on the logo has blue stitches. But I really love it.

3. The ’80s State of Texas logo. This one is highly nostalgic for me as it reminds me of Rangers games at Arlington Stadium and the players I watched there. This logo is old Charlie Hough and brand new Ruben Sierra and Juan Gonzales. This is “V-Ball,” unconventional and charismatic manager Bobby Valentine. This logo is Oddibe McDowell, Larry Parrish, Mitch Williams, and Julio Franco. This is the logo Nolan Ryan wore when he pitched his sixth and seventh no hitters and when he struck out Ricky Henderson for his 5,000th K. More than that, this is the logo they were wearing when I really fell in love with baseball and the Rangers. I had a drivers license, we could sit in the aluminum outfield bleachers for five dollars, and we went all the time. All the time. This is the Rangers logo when I took my brother Keith to all those games during my summers home from college. This is the logo when I took Carrie-Anne to games when we were dating, including a memorable July 4th Rangers game in 1989. The more I think about it, maybe I should have ranked this one at number two.

4. The current “T” logo. I like the design of the “T.” I like the simple strength it communicates. It falls very much in line with the traditional “letter” on a baseball cap. But I’m not sure I’m wild about it being the main logo that’s used for everything. It’s enough for the cap that tops off the whole uniform; I don’t think it’s enough to represent the Rangers on everything. If you want to brand the Rangers with that “T,” you need something else with it. It looks very similar to the T-Mobile logo, but not nearly as nationally recognized. It’s not like the Yankees’ or the Dodgers’ interlocking letters; it’s not iconic. I don’t think too many people outside Texas know that “T” as the Rangers. But of all the things they’ve put on their cap, this current “T” is the best.

5. The badge logo. It’s the only logo in Rangers history, besides the aforementioned “T” which should only be on a cap, that has no baseball or anything representing baseball tradition in it. It’s an historic Texas Rangers badge outline and a generic font over the banner they use in the Overhead Door logo. It’s an evolution of the All-Star Game logo MLB used when Arlington hosted the Midsummer Classic in 1995. And it’s too busy. It looks like something an 8th grader would draw.

6. The diamond logo. This is the logo the Rangers unveiled when they opened The Ballpark in Arlington in 1994, so in my mind it’s mostly associated with the red uniforms and caps, which they also wore for the first time in history during that era. This logo goes with the first Rangers team to win a division championship in 1996, so it belongs in my heart with Johnny Oates and Pudge Rodriguez, Rafael and Juando, Ken Hill and John Burkett, Will Clark and Rusty Greer. It’s not very imaginative at all. Boring. The bold and exciting part of this era was the beautiful new ballpark and the red unis.

7. The weird “TR” thing. The best thing about this strange faddish logo is that it only lasted two seasons, 1982-83. During those two years, the Rangers finished a combined 51 games out of first place. Good riddance. They fixed it in 1984 by designing another state of Texas logo that spelled out more directly what “TR” couldn’t quite accomplish. I cringe when I see this horrible logo. Even if the Rangers survey had included the City Connect panther or that weird City Connect “TX” with the spur in the survey, I still would have ranked this “TR” thing dead last.

I’d love to get your opinions on these seven logos. Click on comments at the top of this post and rank yours in order. The way the team has played the past couple of weeks, this is about the most interesting Rangers thing going.

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Netflix’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, are in prime time with today’s drop of the much-anticipated series, “America’s Team: The Gambler and his Cowboys.” All eight episodes have been released today, but I am only going to watch one at a time. No matter how much I’d love to binge this thing all night tonight, I’m only going to watch one per day. I want the proper time to process. To soak in it. And write about it here.

I’m anticipating goosebumps and laughs and maybe, hopefully, learning something new or gaining an insight with each episode. I’m hoping there’s a lot of footage of those training camps at St. Ed’s in Austin. I’m hoping Nate Newton is featured. I’m hoping Troy Aikman says what he really thinks. I’m hoping it’s not JUST a look back at those awesome teams of the early ’90s, but also an undeniable spotlight on the unforgivable truth that under the leadership of the star of this series, it’s been 29 years and counting since the Cowboys last won a divisional playoff game. Two years ago, Netflix paid the Jones family $55-million for the rights and the access to make this thing. I hope it’s honest.

Peace,
Allan

Real Texan

July 29, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The day the boys were born, the Rangers were in fourth place in the AL West, three games under .500, and ten games back of the Astros. Since then, they’ve won 11 of 13 to pull into second place, four games back of Houston, and into the third Wild Card playoff spot.

Sammy and the El-Man are bringing that Rangers MOJO!

 

 

Well. Until last night. Yeeesh!

Who was that guy wearing the Jacob deGrom jersey last night in Anaheim?

Let’s Go Rangers. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

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Sixteen years after its series finale, ‘King of the Hill’ is making a comeback with a full season of all new episodes beginning Monday August 4 on Hulu. If you’re even mildly interested, I recommend this excellent piece in the latest Texas Monthly by Sean O’Neal titled, “Why ‘King of the Hill’ is the Most Significant Work of Texan Culture in the Past Thirty Years.”

O’Neal puts ‘King of the Hill’ in the same category as Larry McMurtry and ‘Friday Night Lights’ for its serious and seriously entertaining treatment of what it means to be Texans living in Texas. What Mike Judge, the show’s creator, tackles so well is the plight of Texans who live in urban areas–84-percent of us now–attempting to live into and through the outsized Texas legends and myths and the expectations that come with them. ‘King of the Hill’ is also about relationships between dads and their sons, namely how the sons are almost always disappointing the dads and how the sons know it. And how they cope. I’m not sure how uniquely Texan that is. Texas might contribute to it.

What first attracted me to ‘King of the Hill’ in the late ’90s is how perfectly it captures my experiences growing up in southeast Dallas with the Tom Landry Cowboys, blue laws, St. Augustine lawns, traditional values and gender roles, and the State Fair of Texas. The random references to Luby’s Cafeteria, Tom Thumb, Central Expressway, and Drew Pearson are emotional for me. I also really love Tom Petty’s frequent voice work as Luanne’s boyfriend, Lucky. But what keeps me watching the re-runs today is that the show is ultimately about our identities as Texans: our copped attitudes, our inherited traditions, the foods we eat and refuse to eat, the weird mix of superiority and insecurity with which we’re all familiar. This brand new season features a freshly-retired Hank and their son Bobby as an adult chef working in Dallas. A lot has changed in Texas over the past 16 years, and I’m sure a lot has changed in Arlen. I can’t wait to see how Hank and his friends deal with today’s politics, social media, electric cars, and veggie tacos. But we’re all still Texans, trying to get along, attempting to do what’s right, trying to help our fellow Texans, and navigating all the ups and downs of living life with those we love the most.

The best part of O’Neal’s excellent article is near the end when he quotes Hank Hill as saying, “A big part of being a man is doing things you don’t want to do.” Hank’s not complaining. He just feels a certain understated pride in assuming the mantel of being useful. He finds identity and meaning in being the one other people can count on. In a lot of ways, that’s Mike Judge’s vision for what it means to be a Texan. Or, at least that’s the way O’Neal interprets it:

“Like being a man, being a real Texan isn’t about aspiring to some outsized, mythical life but about finding fulfillment in doing the things that need doing, the same way we’ve learned to embrace the things about Texas that, if I’m being honest, aren’t all that great: the heat, the harsh terrain, the Dallas Cowboys. We’re not super beings, but simply the descendants of people who arrived in some of the most unforgiving land in America and declared it, rather obstinately, to be heaven on earth. Our surroundings may have softened and shifted, but that stubborn self-reliance remains.” 

Read the piece. It’s very well-written. And maybe go to Whataburger for lunch today.

Peace,

Allan

Shooting While Scattered

April 8, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Bump Wills…

Thanks to Florida’s suffocating defense that kept Houston from even attempting a shot on their final two possessions, Tim Neale won our church office March Madness bracket challenge and I finished in second place. Tim is our back-to-back office champion, but we don’t know whether he qualifies for the free meal and dessert at our next staff lunch, or if we should buy it for his son, Seth. I finished as the runner-up. Andrew nailed down last place pretty decisively.

In other news, I won our Stanglin family bracket, finishing two points ahead of Whitney and six points ahead of last year’s champion, Carrie-Anne. That means Carrie-Anne’s bracket came off the front of the refrigerator first thing this morning and mine went up. It’ll be on full display in our kitchen for twelve glorious months. It’s just something we do. I’m not certain how healthy it is, but it’s just something we do.

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One of the several reasons we chose Emerson Elementary as a GCR local missions partner is that they are the MISD campus for “medically fragile” students. All Midland public school students from 7th grade down who have special physical needs go to Emerson where they have trained staff and facilities to take care of them. That part of the campus is equipped with hospital beds, oxygen, lifts, and everything that’s needed to support these most vulnerable in our community. They do incredible work at Emerson, work that most people know nothing about.

Our church recently purchased a special set of swings for the Emerson playground that meets the particular needs of those sweet kids. GCR bought the swings and paid for the playground expansion and the installation of the swings as just another piece of our partnership together. The swings were completed and unveiled last week, and our ministry team was invited to play with the kids on the new equipment this morning.

The sun was shining, the winds were calm, and the swings were swinging. The kids squealed with absolute delight and more than a couple of us joined them in being sad when it was over.

We are so thankful to God for our partnership with Emerson and so blessed by him to know so many wonderful teachers and staff who take such loving care of these precious children. We’re considering building into our work schedule some daily P.E. time at Emerson.

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Our youth minister, Jadyn Martinez, has been on mandatory bed rest for the past three weeks or so while she endures the final laps of a high-risk pregnancy. We’re missing her terribly around here, so yesterday we surprised her by showing up at her house for lunch. There was some fear that the surprise might raise her blood pressure and liver counts so that little Zion might come a week or two earlier than we need. But her doctor’s appointment late yesterday confirmed that everything’s still really good.

Except for Jim eating most of Jadyn’s chips, I think she enjoyed the surprise and getting to spend a loud lunch laughing together and getting caught up. Or she faked it really well.

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It was 34-degrees at Wrigley Field last night when the Rangers started their game against the Cubs. The wind chill was 23. And the Rangers were not good. Nasty Nate was uncharacteristically wild–two walks, two plunks, two stolen bases–and the Rangers bats were frozen in the 7-0 shutout loss. I’m not sure if that game has anything at all to say about where Texas might be in a month or two, or even at the end of the year. We’re not reading anything into an April game that was the second coldest in Rangers history. But how they respond tonight in equally frigid circumstances? What they learn and how they bounce back or not? That might could tell us something.

Josh Jung is off the DL and should be in the lineup tonight. I’m hoping that can help get this team over the Mendoza line.

Peace,

Allan

All For Texas!

March 27, 2025 / / 1 Comment

Opening Day 2025 is finally here and the Texas Rangers are poised to make a lot of noise in the American League, beginning with today’s season opener at home against the Red Sox. I think I’ve got everything you need for today, beginning with this short hype video promoting the season slogan: All For Texas!

After last year’s disappointing defense of their first ever World Series title, the Rangers have made several changes in personnel and attitude so Bruce Bochy can continue his odd streak of winning championships every other season. General Manager Chris Young has admitted his mistake of assuming that the ’24 Rangers would produce exactly like the ’23 Rangers and, when they didn’t, mainly hoping they would “come around.” So, Young never made any moves and, as we all know, the team never quite put it together. Now, Young is vowing to never let that happen again. He’s been using the term “performance-based” over and over for the past six months. Baseball is a meritocracy, he keeps saying. And they’ve made a few dramatic moves to reflect this commitment to the culture. Neither Evan Carter, the team’s 2023 “Little Savior,” nor Dane Dunning, their best 2023 pitcher, are on the Opening Day roster. Nathaniel Lowe is out at first base for Jake Burger and Kyle Higashioka has been brought in to push Jonah Heim at catcher. Here’s a D Magazine article written by the legendary Jamey Newberg on Chris Young’s reflections on 2024 and his “performance-based” priorities for 2025.

The Rangers are picked by many regional and national pundits to not only win the AL West this year, but to take the American League pennant and return to the World Series. I haven’t found any writer or broadcaster picking Texas to win the World Series–the Dodgers and Braves are the favorites to win it all. But there’s a lot of excitement around the potential of a starting rotation that includes a steady Eovaldi, a healthy deGrom, and the electric Vandy boys, Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker. Not to mention an offense that should be among the top two or three in the majors. Here’s a Rangers preview from Sports Illustrated’s Ryan Reynolds that includes five bold predictions about those pitchers and the Rangers’ chances in the American League. And here are ten things to know about the 2025 Rangers from the great Evan Grant.

Nasty Nate gets the start in Arlington today against Boston at 3:05.

Let’s Go Rangers!
Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!

Allan

Best. Lunch. Ever.

November 5, 2024 / / 3 Comments

So, I had lunch today with the Texas Rangers World Series trophy. What did you do?

The Rangers are doing their best to share the joy of the team’s first ever championship by touring the World Series trophy all over the Republic of Texas. It made it to Midland today for a glorious 90-minute showcase at the Golden Chick on the south side of town. Golden Chick is a corporate sponsor for the Rangers; that’s the connection. The event was promoted to start at 10:30am and run through 12:00noon. I arrived at 10:15am. I wanted to be early. I didn’t know what to expect in terms of long lines and wait times for my personal moment with the hardware.

There were no lines.

When I pulled in, there were seven or eight random guys standing around in the parking lot, wearing a variety of Rangers shirts and caps. Perfect strangers. I joined them for an awkward couple of minutes. And then the Golden Chick manager opened the doors and we walked in together. Unsure. Expectant. I was breathless. I was thrilled at this exciting opportunity, but also very much aware that sometimes my experiences don’t match up to my expectations.

Once my eyes adjusted from the crisp sunlight outdoors to the fluorescent gloss of the restaurant, we noticed that the trophy was still being unpacked. Cheryl Springer, the Rangers Trophy Tour Coordinator, was wearing white gloves and carefully removing the 30-pound Tiffany treasure from its case. I watched in stunned silence as she placed the trophy on a perfectly centered stand and slowly, almost theatrically, removed the black velvet cloth.

I might have gasped. Quietly. My eyes might have misted up a bit. Maybe. The 2023 Texas Rangers World Series trophy was six feet away from me, in all of its gleaming glory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once Cheryl gave the go-ahead, the other guys all started taking pictures. They formed a bit of a line and, one at a time, handed their phones to Cheryl to snap their personal proof that the Rangers really did win a championship. Cheryl looked at me and said, “Are you going to get a picture?” I needed a minute. My eyes were more than a little misty now; I was on the verge of a full-on blubber.

If you know me well, you understand; if you don’t, you won’t. I was overcome all over again with the emotion of the long-awaited World Series win and how much fun it was and how long we had all suffered and all the great players of the past who got close and going to all those games my whole life with my brother and my dad and my daughters and celebrating the Fourth of July at the Ballpark with Carrie-Anne that first summer we were dating and the agony of one-strike-away and how we held our breath and each other’s hands during  that last Arizona at-bat and screamed when Josh Sborz spiked his glove and hugged each other and popped open the champagne and cried with unabashed joy.  Here it all was, flooding over me all over again. I needed a minute.

Someone I didn’t know said, “Hey, let’s get a group picture!” None of us knew each other, but none of us wanted this to be just a personal individual moment. This guy’s instincts were perfect. We were united in our love for the Rangers and in our desire to celebrate the title one more time. The Rangers were the reason we were all in that same Midland Golden Chick at the same time. So we gathered around the trophy and Cheryl took the picture. New friends.

And then I asked Cheryl to take a few pictures of me. Just a few.

 

 

 

 

People trickled in and out for those first 30-minutes. And then my friend Brandon Brunson showed up. This Brandon is the good Brandon, the Rangers fan; not Brandon Hill, the bad Brandon, the Astros fan. We took a couple of photos together with the trophy and then settled in for a nice lunch of chicken strips and fried okra, watching the fans come and go–all ages, all ethnicities, all different backgrounds and diverse histories with the team. We were sitting close enough to the trophy to hear most of the people sharing their stories with Cheryl. A dozen Midland fire fighters got a group pic with the trophy. An eleven-year-old boy, who did not suffer nearly as long as most of us, smiled really big for his shot. A fancy woman in Gucci logos from head to foot complained that none of her girlfriends would accompany her, but she had to come see it. Brandon and I really enjoyed that lunch together, in the shadow of the Rangers World Series trophy, watching the fans share their memories.

We were getting up to leave at about 11:45 when Cheryl came over and said, “Would you be able to stay for about ten more minutes?”

Um. Yes. What’s going on?

“I need help packing up the trophy and loading it into the truck.”

Brandon and I immediately sat back down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, we helped pack the Rangers World Series trophy back into its case. We helped cover it with the black velvet cloth. We carefully placed it inside the custom foam-filled steel traveling case. We secured the locks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We helped Cheryl tear down the backdrop. And then Brandon and I wheeled the World Series trophy out the door and towards the truck that would carry it to Odessa this afternoon and Albany this evening. We giggled as we moved that historic cargo across the Golden Chick parking lot. My motives were not completely pure; I was trying to figure out how to get it to MY truck a few spaces over. What are the odds that we’d be moving the trophy like this? It was crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We lifted it. Carefully. Slowly. I think, maybe, subconsciously trying to milk the moment to last as long as possible. We are contributing to the cause! We are integral to the program! Go team! We loaded it into the back of the official vehicle of the Texas Rangers World Series Trophy Tour and, after one last picture, slammed the gate shut. Brandon and I looked at each other with satisfied grins. Can you believe this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best. Lunch. Ever.

Is Albany too far to drive for dinner?

Peace,

Allan

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