Not every closing of a ballpark needs to linger like an Irish wake.
Case in point: the original ballpark in Arlington. Formerly Turnpike Stadium, before the carpetbagging Washington Senators moved in.
Records show that what later was renamed Arlington Stadium was opened in 1965 after taking only 12 months to build at an amenity-free cost of $1.9 million.
Its final day was held Sunday, Oct. 3, 1993, amidst great fanfare that included, as I recall, far too many Field of Dreams clips. The Darth Vader bass tones of James Earl Jones punctuated the solemnity.
Some undoubtedly were sad to see old Arlington Stadium pass into memory. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.
The old place was round and shadeless and increasingly rusty. It lacked romance, though our former colleague Jennifer Briggs, an Arlington kid, once confessed that it was in the grandstands at Arlington Stadium that she received her first kiss.
The 22 seasons of somewhat major league baseball certainly didn’t inspire any sonnets. The stadium hosted no playoff games. Only once in those 22 seasons did the Rangers win more than 87 games. The team never finished closer to first than five games.
The local newspapers devoted copious column inches to Arlington Stadium’s final days. Newspapers were a lot different — and a lot bigger — back then. A perusal of the archives, however, suggests that no tears were shed in chronicling the closing of the Rangers’ original home on the range.
My last newspaper column from Arlington Stadium read thusly:
Time has come to leave the old ballpark
Star-Telegram, Oct. 4, 1993
By GIL LeBRETON
Sports Columnist
ARLINGTON – Admittedly. this place was no Taj Mahal.
But home is where you make it. And for 22 seasons, Arlington Stadium served the Texas Rangers just fine, thank you.
Those who relish this weekend in pointing out the old park’s rusty flaws and its relative shortage of Kodak Moments are missing the point.
Lacking any ivy or any towering green wall to scale, a great ballpark is more often defined by great players, making great plays, at timely moments of great and meaningful ballgames. The Rangers kept running about three greats under par.
Thus, the franchise isn’t merely telling This Old Stadium goodbye. The Texas Rangers are parting with their fruitless, meandering past.
The appropriate response, I believe, is, ‘”Last one out is a rotten egg . . .”
Time flies when you aren’t winning pennants. And the audience was reminded of that in assorted sizes yesterday, as the club staged its “Heroes of Arlington Stadium” old-timers game.
Mickey Rivers. Al Oliver. Jeff Burroughs. Jim Sundberg. Fergie Jenkins. Gaylord Perry.
Twenty-two years of Arlington Stadium memories were there, squeezed into the same dugout.
There was Toby Harrah, stylishly tucked into his 1974 Texas uniform. There were Bump Wills, Gary Ward and Bert Campaneris.
Larry Parrish talked about the memorable week when he hit three grand slams. Wills reminisced about the 1977 night when he, Harrah and Mike Hargrove turned a Manny Sanguillen grounder into the Rangers’ first and only triple play.
Frank Lucchesi remembered the 1975 night when he was named to replace Billy Martin, and how he told Jenkins to go out and win one for the new skipper. And Fergie did.
But there we go again, telling war stories. This Old Stadium is going to have to be remembered for more personal moments than that.
For a lot of us, this is where we taught our sons (and daughters) about baseball, the game we love. This is where we watched him carry the flag out on Scout Night and thought we could never be so proud. This is where, one cool spring evening, we were sitting together above home plate and caught a foul ball off the bat of then-Detroit Tiger Pete Incaviglia, who was facing Nolan Ryan.
This is the stadium where, together, my late father and I saw his last baseball game. Who says you need a World Series to make a stadium memorable?
“It’s kind of sad,” said Harrah, who has been a part of the organization for 14 seasons. “‘But it is sad — it’s like the end of an era. This place has been a part of my life.”
With his old Rangers uniform yesterday, Harrah wore a well-used Rangers cap. It was Billy Martin’s old cap.
In the dugout before the old-timers game, they were telling the story about the night that Sparky Lyle plopped, sans uniform pants, into a birthday cake that had been wheeled into the middle of the clubhouse. It turned out that the cake was meant for owner Brad Corbett.
But it all changed in 1988, they say, the December morning that the franchise signed Nolan Ryan. That signal moment defined the franchise and dragged the Rangers, by their .240 batting averages, into new-found respectability.
Perhaps it’s all the better, therefore, that the Rangers leave This Old Stadium behind. The fans have always sworn that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence — or, in this case, the parking lot.
A poignant farewell to This Old Stadium would be appropriate here, and so here goes:
Last one out is a rotten egg.
— end —
The Rangers, somewhat fittingly, lost that final home game, 4-1 to the Kansas City Royals, completing a stunningly encouraging 86-76, second-place season.
The last home run at old Arlington Stadium was hit by the Royals’ Gary Gaetti in the ninth inning off Texas closer Tom Henke. The last Rangers hit at the ballpark was an eighth-inning single by . . . wait for it . . . Manny Lee. The home team’s final home run at the stadium came the night before by Rob Ducey.
The last out? Juan Gonzalez, a grounder to short.
Nobody stormed the field. Jose Canseco didn’t disappear into a row of corn. The music from The Natural was played, oh, about 15-20 times.
In Arlington Stadium’s final ceremonial act, team president Tom Schieffer, wielding a shovel, liberated home plate from its moorings and the plate was wheeled — via pickup truck — through the center field wall’s gates and over to the new ballpark for replanting.
For good luck? Nahhh. Don’t be silly.
As I recall, there were no inebriated fans that final day to storm the field for turf remnants or to vandalize the bleachers, ripping out the furniture for souvenirs.
The irony is that the one thing the Rangers dearly needed to take from the old ballpark to the new never made it. Nolan Ryan retired before he could ever throw a pitch at The Ballpark in Arlington.
