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Mayor Mattie Parker with Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux, left, and left-handed pitcher Andrew Heaney.
The Texas Rangers wanted to come to Fort Worth City Hall to share their recent good fortune, as well as new bling, with their friends and faithful fans in the West and Tarrant County.
There was only one problem with that: They don’t sell beer at City Hall.
Well, that’s how I interpreted the mayor's remarks.
“I said, ‘That's boring,’” Mayor Mattie Parker said of her reply to the proposal. “‘The fans deserve to see this amazing trophy in person because this is our team.’”
So, instead, they all came to the historic Stockyards to celebrate the Rangers’ making history by winning a first World Series championship, beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 4 games to 1. If you want to throw a hootenanny, you go to the Stockyards. And the best place down there for such a hoedown is, of course, Billy Bob’s Texas, the world’s largest honky-tonk, I’ve been told.
A collection from the Rangers organization showed up so everyone could see the Commissioner’s Trophy, presented to the World Series champions. Officials from the team set it down on a table onstage about 30 minutes before the VIPs showed. An onrush ensued for what turned into a world-record-vying selfie session.
If there were any lingering doubting Thomases — How could there not be? — doubt no more.
I saw that thing with my own eyes. The Rangers are indeed World Series champions. Line up the shots.
“To the fans, you showed up year after year after year,” Parker said. “Some of you, decade after decade after decade because you believed in this franchise and what the Texas Rangers mean to the city of Fort Worth, to Tarrant County, to Arlington, and really all across DFW. The Texas Rangers are now world champions.”
There are atheists and agnostics out there who do not believe or doubt the presence of God, but they all had blind faith in the Rangers for 50 years. Go figure.
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The scene at Billy Bob's.
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Hubert Garrett, who has been a Rangers fan since 1972, with his wife Sherry.
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The key to the city presented to the Rangers.
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She's pretty, ain't she?
But with the mayor’s comment, the hundreds, maybe a thousand, roared their approval. On at least three occasions they broke out with “Let’s Go, Rangers” chants.
Parker presented Rangers owner Ray Davis a key to the city. Someone nearby suggested he be given “all the keys to the city.”
Parker laughed in acknowledging this give and take.
Rangers broadcaster Emily Jones was the master of ceremonies. In addition to Davis, Rangers president of baseball operations Neil Leibman, pitching coach Mike Maddux, and pitcher Andrew Heaney, a key performer in the playoffs, were on hand. Tom Grieve, a former player, executive and broadcaster, and former player David Murphy also spoke.
An enthusiastic City Council was also present, outfitted in Rangers colors, as was Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare.
The Squeezebox Bandits, who did the damndest rendition of Charley Pride's "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone," entertained the masses while the caravans were en route. (I'm not sure the Squeezebox Bandits played that song to honor Charley Pride's love affair with the Rangers, but I certainly thought about it.)
Arlington has been a great home to the Rangers, make no mistake, but, like Parker said, this is our team. Despite some difficult early days, it was Fort Worth ownership — Brad Corbett, in a group that included Amon Carter Jr., and Eddie Chiles — that planted stakes in the ground. George W. Bush and Rusty Rose’s group included Richard Rainwater, and today, in addition to Davis, the team is co-principally owned by Fort Worth’s Bob Simpson, though you’d never know it.
He presumably has been out with a shovel digging for oil in the Permian Basin or the San Juan Basin during all of this.
O’Hare was among the Rangers fans who personally witnessed the series-clinching Game 5 in Arizona.
So, too, did Josh Rowe, 40, a Saginaw resident and lifelong Rangers fan who grew up in the Florence-Killeen area.
After the Rangers won Game 4, to come within one game of the championship in Arizona, his wife asked him, “So, what are you going to do now?”
What do you mean? Rowe said he asked his wife. “You’re going to go out there, right?” his wife responded.
Rowe thought about it and then talked himself out of buying a plane ticket.
“My wife wakes me up about 1:30 in the morning and says, ‘You know if you do not go and they win, you're gonna hate yourself,’” Rowe recalled the conversation while sitting just several feet from the stage at Billy Bob’s.
“I went online, booked some flights, ended up making it there before the game.”
He left around 3 p.m. Central on Wednesday, Nov. 1, and bought his ticket to the game while in an Uber on the way to the stadium.
The price for the game ticket was something equivalent to a grocery bill today. But, as I’ve been told, there are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.
Postgame, after “they kicked me out of the stadium,” he got on a plane and came home.
This roundtrip was all of eight or nine hours. He was home the same night.
That’s love. Or crazy. (Is there a difference, Plato?) To top it off, he ran into Adrian Beltre, former Rangers great, outside the stadium and got a selfie.
And he has the Wright Brothers to thank for it.
“I was just on a high, like, just so excited,” he said. “I wish I could have taken my kids, but I couldn’t have missed this.”
Rowe now is also bracing for his wife’s Christmas gift wish. She’s due a good one.