It's difficult to say what comes to mind when trying to sum up the history of Texas Rangers in a few words. The Rangers arrived from Washington in 1972, where the team usually had perennial losers. You may have heard of the phrase "Washington - first in war, first in peace, last in the American League." The Senators only won one World Series title, and it took four innings of relief from Walter Johnson in Game Seven (after he threw a complete game in Game Five) to wrap up the title. The franchise moved to Minnesota in 1961, only to be replaced by an expansion team - which meant more years of losing.
The Senators gave up on Washington and tried their luck in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in 1972, and things weren't much better. But eventually the Rangers figured out how to be good occasionally, which to be fair is about all anyone can ask of teams these days.
T.R. Sullivan wasn't around for every pitch in the Texas days for the team, but the reporter gave his best shot. He covered the Rangers for a newspaper and a website from 1989 until 2020. A 32-year run is pretty good in this business. Now he takes a look back at the franchise through some ugly lows and a few highs in "The Texas Rangers and Me."
It takes some time to go through 32 years, and Sullivan launches through 38 chapters to review his career. The Rangers haven't had that many employees who might move the needle nationally. Alex Rodriguez, Nolan Ryan, Iven "Pudge" Rodriquez, and Bobby Valentine might be the only ones who qualify there. He had more than his share of characters and personalities, though. Pete Incaviglia, Ivan Rodriquez, Kenny Rogers, Josh Hamilton, Yu Darvish, and Ron Washington probably belong on that list - for very different reasons. Some of the others that come up along the way will test the memory banks of all but the most devoted Rangers fans.
Sullivan does plenty of historical analysis of what went right and what went wrong. As far as I can tell from long distance, he is quite good at it. I'm sure his stories were extremely solid - to pay a nice compliment from someone else in the business. Texas had a two-year run to the World Series, falling in a particularly crushing manner in 2011 when the team was one strike away a few times from wrapping up that championship. The Rangers would have to wait until 2023 before getting that final out, but it came after Sullivan had retired. I'd bet he would have liked to have written about that moment at the time.
The book comes with a few couple of issues. The writing approach means that certain names will pop up more than once in the text, and background information gets repeated fairly often. It's almost as if the chapters are self-contained, and the repetition is at best distracting.
More importantly, Sullivan rarely puts himself into the story. In other words, there are a few tales about behind-the-scenes incidents and the obtaining of information, but not too many. More such moments - including the strain on the family - would have been nice. It would have been interesting to know how the author adapted when he switched from working for a newspaper to MLB.com. I'll throw in that there isn't much humor here, which is too bad. Veteran reporters usually have a zillion good stories to tell about life on the job.
It's easy to guess that a more personal approach might have made this a more enjoyable read to a wider audience. Even so, "The Texas Rangers and Me" ought to hit its target audience of baseball fans in that part of the world quite nicely.
Three stars
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