Rangers’ Success More than a Fluke

It wasn’t just that the Texas Rangers won 14 straight games and overtook the Oakland Athletics, at least temporarily, in the American League West.

It wasn’t just that for 16 days the Rangers never lost, that they hit the ball harder and more consistently than perhaps any team ever over such a span.

It’s even more than batting .384 or scoring 8.1 runs per game, which they did during the streak. It’s more than becoming the first team this season to defeat Roger Clemens.

And it’s more than rallying from behind four times in the late innings, getting breaks that at times bordered on the eerie and scoring runs in bunches, especially in extra innings, when they scored 14 times in 10 innings.

The streak began May 13 with 19 hits and a 12-5 victory over the Red Sox. Nolan Ryan got hurt in No. 2, but the Rangers beat Detroit, 8-1, anyway by going six for 10 with runners in scoring position.

They pounded Clemens, 13-5, for No. 6. They twice came from behind to win No. 8. They were down to two outs before winning No. 9. The Twins stranded 21 runners in No. 10. “That was one where you say, ‘Whoa, we caught a break,’ ” third baseman Steve Buechele said. They trailed in the ninth before winning No. 12 and were saved when a foul ball hit a speaker in the Kingdome.

It wasn’t perfect. Three pitchers got hurt, Manager Bobby Valentine made 42 pitching changes, and hitting offset some mistakes. No. 5 starter Kenny Rogers went 3-0 because the Rangers got him 32 runs.

The bigger point, though, was that anyone can notice 14 in a row, but the Rangers didn’t just get respectable last week. The streak got headlines, but it’s part of a continuing success story because the Rangers have been very respectable for a very long time now.

They’re 88-57 (.607) since June 7, 1990, and 36-19 (.655) with young Juan Gonzalez in the outfield. All of a sudden, baseball has noticed a batting order that could be the best anywhere, with veteran Brian Downing leading the AL in hitting at the top and the “Four Amigos” in the middle -- Ruben Sierra, Rafael Palmeiro, Julio Franco and Gonzalez -- who may total 100 home runs and 400 RBI.

All of a sudden, the Rangers not only have power and speed and defense, but presence. Not just Ryan either.

In fine-tuning a team they thought was close to being decent, they added two unemployed free agents, Goose Gossage and Downing. Downing, 40, has been spraying line drives since Day 1 and is leading the AL in hitting. Gossage, 39, has rediscovered his 93-mph fastball and is 4-0 with a 2.70 ERA in middle relief.

“I want our young guys seeing how people like Gossage and Downing react to things,” Valentine said.

Both are among the summer’s sweetest stories. Gossage returned to the states after getting lit up in Japan last summer and accepted a make-good invitation to camp with the Rangers. He showed surprising pop, made the team and has settled nicely into a setup role for closer Jeff Russell.

Downing’s story is even better. After the California Angels didn’t offer him a contract, he spent the winter hoping for an offer.

“First, spring training started without me,” he said. “That was one milestone. Then they played some games, and that was another. Then they played three weeks’ worth of games, and I knew that was it. Who ever gets picked up three weeks into spring training?”

He’d stopped taking batting practice and was planning a vacation when the Rangers phoned, saying they’d released Pete Incaviglia and would Downing be interested?

“It has been great,” he said. “Every game I’m playing now is one more than I ever thought I’d play. It’s such a great feeling I can’t begin to describe it.”

He’s at the top of a batting order that was leading the AL in hitting by 17 points until a midweek slump. And pitchers were throwing him strikes because of the people behind him.

Sierra almost won the AL MVP award in 1989, tailed off because of a sore knee last year and is as good as ever this year. He broke into the big leagues a year after Jose Canseco, and their numbers the last four years are similar. Sierra has more total bases but trails in home runs, salary and profile.

Franco and Palmeiro are proven commodities, and to the “Three Texas Amigos” has come a fourth: Gonzalez, 21, who is a solid 6-foot-3, 200 pounds and one of the best prospects since, well, Sierra.

“I have never seen anyone come up with all the tools he has,” Gossage said. “I’ve just never seen a young player this good.”

A spring knee injury shelved him until April 26, but he has more than made up for it by driving in 33 runs his first 28 games.