Giants fans in the Bay Area have been waiting since the team moved to San Francisco from New York in 1958 for a championship. There have been four National League pennants, but no World Series title. A similar dynamic is at play in Texas.
When the Giants face the Rangers for Game 3 Saturday it’ll be a first for The Ballpark at Arlington. Neither the current home of the Texas franchise, nor its predecessor Arlington Stadium, has ever hosted a World Series.
Early in its existence, and we’re talking the mid-‘90s, the Ballpark at Arlington had a perfect game when Kenny Rogers sat down each Angels batter he faced. There have been All-Star festivities, but the Rangers have historically been the definition of postseason futility, that is, when they’ve made the postseason.
Until this year, the Rangers had not won any postseason series, yet they’d only appeared in three total. Each time it was the Yankees putting them down in an American League Divisional Series. Actually, before beating the Rays in Tampa to open this year’s ALDS, the Rangers had only won a single postseason game.
The intersection of all of this past frustration into this one successful playoff run for the Rangers could mean a very emotional and fan-frenzied set of World Series contests over the three days of games in Arlington from Saturday through Monday.
Of course, most of the players, other than longtime Rangers like Michael Young and Darren Oliver, haven’t been with the franchise long enough for this to completely register. Yet, the DFW fans who’ve seen the Cowboys win Super Bowls, the Stars a Stanley Cup, and the Mavericks in an NBA Championship series have been waiting for this day since the then-Senators, moved to Texas from Washington D.C. in the early ‘70s.
Giants fans know exactly how a wave of enthusiasm can carry from the AT&T Park stands to the team on the field. The question is, do Rangers fans and their players have enough experience in playoff baseball for any of this to matter?
Sports
Laurence Scott covered each of those epic 49ers vs. Cowboys NFC Championships in the ‘90s and is thrilled to be on the beat as the Bay Area and DFW Metroplex collide again for the World Series.
