Kuzul

Imagine this scene…

Somewhere in a  south Boston neighborhood, Little Johnny is walking through the living room with his Nintendo DS in hand when he sees Grampa sitting in Dad’s recliner, half napping, half watching some random news program. The story Grampa is paying no attention to is about the latest YouTube sensation, the homeless Ohio fellow named Ted Williams, the man with the golden pipes.

“Hey, Grampa. Do you know who this Ted Williams is?”

Grampa stirs from the drift into Dreamland.

“Huh? Wha–? Ted Williams?”

The old man sits up, beaming with pride. His grandson actually knows the name Ted Williams!

“Of course I know who he is! He is only the greatest hitter in history. He is the greatest player in Red Sox history. They called him ‘The Splendid Splinter.'”

Grampa continues excitedly, “Ted Williams is the last batter to bat over .400 in a season. He had a career batting average of .344 and hit 521 home runs! He was the greatest ever. Forget the Babe. Ted Williams was the best. The day he died was a sad, sad day.”

Little Johnny’s jaw drops as if it has come unhinged. His eyes are wide and filled with a strange mixture of fear and wonder. He looks from his grandfather to the image of the haggard, homeless man on the TV.

“O-OK, Grampa. Thanks!”

The boy turns and sprints through the house, calling, “Mom! Mom! Where are you?”

He finds her with her head in the washing machine, swapping out another load of laundry.

“For Pete’s sake, son? What is it?”

“It’s Grampa. I think he is losing it, Mom. I think he is going senile or something.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah! He thinks Ted Williams is some dead baseball player!”

Somewhere in the world something like that had to go down. Don’t you think?

The meteoric rise of the bass-voiced deadbeat dad and alcohol/drug-abusing panhandler Ted Williams illustrates just how we Americans can see Hell from the hand-basket we are crammed into. It also marks a definite shift in the way we conceive and pursue the American dream.

In the past, it was believed that, because of the opportunities afforded each of us by the freedoms and resources we enjoy as Americans, anybody could make it if he or she was willing to pay the price of blood, sweat and tears.

Back then, you heard people say things like, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

You had guys like Gale Sayers saying, “I learned that if you want to make it bad enough, no matter how bad it is, you can make it.”

(Some tow-headed kid is smirking. “Gale? A guy named Gale?!)

John Madden was warning anyone who would listen, “The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.”

(Same kid is saying, “Madden! I love Madden 11. Madden 10 sucked, man.)

And the immortal words of the even more immortal Vince Lombardi still echoed in our ears: “The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.”

But that was the olden days, back when we assumed success was the product of things like hard work, solid investment, and good timing.

To Generation xBox, that all sounds like sappy silliness of sentimental old fools. They know better. It’s not about hard work. It’s not about paying your dues.

It’s about making a really kick-ass video and getting it on YouTube. It’s about going viral, dude.

It’s about making it on American Idol. And if you don’t make it there and you feel like a complete failure and you console yourself by eating buckets of ice cream for years and years, then you can get on the Biggest Loser and be an overnight success.

Who wants to be the next Abraham Lincoln when you can be the next William Hung?

How hard must it be for youth football, baseball and basketball coaches to convince their kids that hard work and dedication really do pay off? Every time they pop online, some nobody is making everybody take notice. Some new sideshow has gone viral. Some new name is on everybody’s lips.

Like Ted Williams.

Yeah, that Ted Williams. The one whose sudden fame has already hit a brick wall with his arrest in Los Angeles. While media outlets across the nation line up to hear him talk, his daughter is opening up about dear old dad. Janey is her name. She was hauled down to jail with dad to sort out a disturbance they caused in the Renaissance Hotel.

According to the New York Daily News, this is Janey’s explanation of what happened:

“He said ‘You, you fat [expletive], and when he said that, I just got angry,” she recounted.

She added that her father — a former radio personality — has turned back to the bottle since his new-found fame.

“He’s consumed at least a bottle of Grey Goose a night, at least,” Janey said. “That’s not including the Coronas he orders, that’s not including the Budweisers he orders, that’s not including the other alcohol, the wines. He drinks “heavily.”

It seems that hot-wiring the Successmobile might not always be as good an idea as it seems. Maybe a little self-discipline, hard work, sacrifice and responsible behavior would be nice to mix in there.

Don’t get me wrong: I do understand the irony of a nobody like me having a voice on the Internet, being able to put a story like this out there for people all over the globe to read.

Come to think of it, if every every reader would give this article a FaceBook like and a Twitter tweet, maybe we can make it go viral and I can be the next Ted Williams. Though hitting .400 is out of the question for me.

I never could handle the off-speed pitch.

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Twas the night after Halloween and all through the stands

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Whereas the Texas Rangers are set to go where no Texas Rangers team has gone before; whereas legendary Rangers’ minority owner and president Nolan Ryan is a bona fide baseball man, while Dallas Cowboys owner/president/general manager/attention harlot Jerry Jones is a frustrated-but-overmatched head football coach; whereas, the 1-5 Cowboys still delusionally believe they are “a good team”; whereas Ron Washington, grammatically-challenged and homeless-looking though he may be, is a leader of men while Wade Phillips is a leaner on excuses; and whereas this is my blog and I will dadgum well do as I please, I hereby declare the SilverandBlueblood website the Red-Shoed Rangers site for a day.

So, forget football. Let’s talk World Series. More specifically, let’s talk Dallas (I know the Rangers are in Arlington, but you know the drill: This is Dallas) versus San Francisco, DFW versus the Bay Area. A generation ago, that would mean Cowboys versus the 49ers.

My, how the times have changed.

Which city boasts the best baseball team, or, as Ron Washington likes to say, “The team that played the best on that day,” will be decided over the next few days. But which city is best? Well, I will decide that, thank you very much.

Why? Because I can, and because I am highly qualified to do so.

I am a native Texan, born in Abilene, raised in Mineral Wells, married in Arlington, living in Grand Prairie. However, I lived an hour from San Francisco in the ’80s. I spent many a happy and carefree summer day freezing my butt off by the bay.

Frisco is a world-class city. There is no denying that. It is one-of-a-kind. It has mystique, beauty and charm. Dallas, conversely, is a town of true grit, a go-getter’s paradise. Dallas rises out of the north Texas prairie like a silver-and-chrome debutante emerging from a covered wagon.

The people in San Francisco have that weird, eclectic vibe that says “We’re cool, and we don’t even have to mention it. You know it.” Dallas people are busy adding that third-car garage to their suburban mansion that they may have to abandon soon if Obama isn’t stopped.

The girls in Dallas are definitely more attractive than the drag queens in SF, but the hippies down in the Haight-Ashbury district are more laid back than the gangsters in South Dallas or the uptight yuppies in North Dallas.

San Francisco has Pier 39; Dallas has the Trinity River. San Francisco has Lombard Street; Dallas recently got Cesar Chavez Drive (or Street or Way or whatever), after much wrangling. San Francisco has Ghirardelli Chocolate; Dallas has Frito-Lay.

San Francisco is wine country; Dallas is Dr. Pepper Nation.

San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge; Dallas has the George Bush Turnpike. San Francisco is the heart of the Silicon Valley; Dallas is the heart of the most recession-proof economy in the nation.

San Francisco is the bastion of liberalism; Dallas is the adopted home of President George W. Bush for a reason.

San Francisco has Joe Montana; Dallas has Roger Staubach. Each city’s NFL team has won five Super Bowls, but the 49ers still suck. Right, Cowboys fans?

If you want beauty and charm, go to San Francisco. If you need a job, come to Dallas.

Maybe the deciding factor is sister cities: San Francisco has the misfortune of being just a bay bridge away from that toilet known as Oakland, while Dallas has the western charm and artsy grace of beautiful Fort Worth for its prairie mate. Oakland has Al Davis; Fort Worth has “Hell’s Half-Acre.” The former appears to have spent a few years in the latter.

In the end, give me a piece of San Francisco sourdough bread to go with my Texas barbecue, and I am happy. (Well, that and the knowledge that we have the better baseball team here in Texas.)

Go Rangers.

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The Texas Rangers are—can you believe it?—but one win away from their first-ever trip to the World Series. They are one win away from sitting down the Mighty Yankees, the Bronx Bombers, Baseball’s Bullies. One win away. Just one.

“It’s time.”

This has been the slogan, the mantra, the battle-cry all season long from this club.

“It’s about time.”

This has been the thought in the back of my mind and on the tip of my tongue this entire MLB postseason. I do not mean that in any sort of bitter sense, or in any form of exasperation. I am not rolling my eyes or wondering what took them so long.

Truth is, I never much minded that my Rangers were seldom serious contenders for anything. They gave me a major league baseball team to follow and cheer and reverence when I was discovering the pure joy of playing the sport myself.

As a little leaguer in Mineral Wells, Texas, I would listen to those Rangers baseball games in my bedroom at night. The AM station WBAP was scratchy, but the signal was strong, especially at night. The smooth, dulcet tones of Mark Holtz and Eric Nadel against the backdrop of crowd noise made the game come alive in my mind. I could see every pitch, every swing of the bat, every stare-down, every scratch and spit. I was there.

And it was glorious.

The World Series never entered my mind back then. I didn’t have to fret over whether my team would in the Fall Classic or not the way fans in places like Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Oakland and Chicago did.

Heck, I knew my team wasn’t going to any World Series. That was fine with me, because they might win this game tonight. Jim Sundberg might throw some poor slob out who tried to steal second. Gaylord Perry might give some hapless batter jelly-leg with that nasty curve ball of his. Bump Wills might swipe another base. Toby Harrah might flag down an uncatchable ball deep in the hole, whirl about, and from his knees, throw out the batter.

The big picture hardly mattered when the little picture was so exciting.

“It’s about time.” But when I say that, I mean it like this: “Time is what it’s about.”

Time is the one commodity you cannot horde or save for a rainy day. It won’t stand still for you. It won’t go in the bank so you can withdraw it with interest later. Time keeps marching on…and on…

Time is what we have. Maybe not much time, who knows? You can do plenty of things with your time:

• You can waste time
• You can “spend” time
• You can mark time
• You can invest your time

People talk about doing things if they “ever find the time.”

You hear someone in a hurry say, “I haven’t much time.”

I have wasted plenty of time and invested some of it. I wouldn’t mind having a second shot at the way I used some of the time I’ve had.

I do not, however, regret a moment of the time I spent following the Rangers. I learned plenty of lessons about hope, disappointment, patience, achievement and effort. I learned from my transistor radio to imagine a game in my mind so well that it is a wonder my first real trip to the ballpark to see a real game was not a disappointment.

It wasn’t.

I do not resent the time spent cheering for a team that was always going nowhere, but taking me somewhere special in the meantime.

But this time it’s time.

And it’s about time.

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It isn’t like they are baseball neophytes. They aren’t a bunch of nobodies with no history. The baseball world at large may look at the Texas Rangers as a glorified Triple A team, never a threat, no great players, sub-par management.

And why not? After all, it did take the Rangers 38 years (49 if you count the time the franchise spent in Washington, DC) to win a postseason series.

Why should this franchise that has languished in mediocrity garner national attention? They are, and have always been, a collection of baseball also-rans, right? Just a bunch of nobodies going nowhere.

Well, no. Not exactly.

In fact, the Rangers have had their share of baseball royalty don their ball cap. Seriously! It’s true.

Take, for instance, the Rangers’ first skipper. He wasn’t some leftover or castoff from one of the other venerable Major League franchises. Nor was he some anonymous bench coach or minor league coach trying to make his mark at the highest level. He was, in fact, pure baseball genius. He was royalty. He was the man known as the greatest hitter who ever lived.

He was Ted Williams.

And he failed as a manager. He failed as a Texas Ranger. He failed to build a pennant-winning team. So did the parade of baseball legends who would follow him as manager of the Texas Rangers. Whitey Herzog, Billy Martin, Don Zimmer, Bobby Valentine, Kevin Kennedy: Just a few of the great baseball minds who could not get this franchise over the hump.

There were great players, too. Men named Ferguson Jenkins, Jim Sundberg, Toby Harrah, Gaylord Perry, Al Oliver, Buddy Bell, Mickey Rivers, Charlie Hough, Ruben Sierra, John Wetteland, and of course, the great Nolan Ryan, to name a few.

Even team ownership was royalty. I mean, how many Major League owners went on to become governor of Texas and president of these United States the way George W. Bush did?

More than 30 years without so much as a division pennant passed. While the Dallas Cowboys amassed eight Super Bowl trips and won five Lombardi trophies, the Rangers just continued to be the boys of summer, a nice team to go watch, but no expectations.

Then along came Johnny Oates, the late great understated skipper who would finally build a team for success. In the mid-90s, his Rangers won three American League West pennants. Three times they stormed into the playoffs with bombastic bats swung by men named Pudge Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, and Rafael Palmeiro.

Each time, the Rangers were summarily dismissed by an unimpressed Yankees team destined to make its own mark in the hallowed history of baseball’s greatest franchise.

Later, the Rangers success in the 90s would be marred by the revelation that Arlington was apparently Steroid Central. Jose Canseco’s book Juiced would open Pandora’s box and by the time the lid was finally forced back down, otherwise Hall of Fame careers would be viewed with suspicion at best and utter disdain at worse.

So, a new century rolls in from the shores that seemed so distant back in 1972, when these Rangers first hit town. A new beginning. Promise. Hope.

But Johnny Oates would soon be gone from Texas, and, sadly, just gone, the victim of cancer. Jerry Narron would not last long. Buck Showalter, a man known to turn a team around would have largely the same level of success all of his predecessors not named Oates had.

Another decade of dashed hopes and pedestrian finishes.

Then came 2010. The year would begin with a whirlwind of controversy. The funny-talking, king-of-subject/verb-disagreement manager, Ron Washington, would test positive for cocaine use.

Fire him, they all said.

No! came the answer from John Daniels, Nolan Ryan, and the rest of the management team. He is our man.

If only that had been the only controversy, the only off-the-field distraction. It wasn’t. There was the not-so-small matter of Tom Hicks’s finances. He owed a lot of people a lot of money. He had to sell the team. So, a deal was struck with the Chuck Greenberg/Nolan Ryan group, and everybody was happy.

Everybody but the creditors, who forced the team into bankruptcy court. The judge said a public auction would be held, and it was.

Meanwhile, general manager John Daniels, operating on a shoe string and a prayer, manages to snag the most coveted arm on the trade block… right out from under the snooty nose of the vaunted Yankees. Cliff Lee became a Ranger!

Still, with everything this club had been through this year, surely the baseball gods would deem the time inappropriate. Surely, the players would crumble under the white-hot lamp of scrutiny. Surely, the Josh Hamilton injury would set them back. Surely, 2010 would take its place alongside all of the years that passed before it as just another year of almost-but-not-quite baseball in Arlington, Texas.

Not so. Under the unlikeliest of managers, under the most difficult of circumstances, the 2010 version of the Rangers would go where none had gone before: the American League Championship Series.

But, why this team? Why this manager? Why did it take so long? Why could these guys do what some great players and great managers could not get done before them? Why did it take this organization 40 years to win its first postseason series?

I think Ron Washington has the answer. He summed it up perfectly earlier this year, when he gave this immortal answer to some question no one can even remember:

“Well, that’s just the way baseball go.”

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