How ‘Bout Dem Rangers Now?

The Texas Rangers were eager to announce a major trade for pitcher Jon Matlack at the 1977 winter meetings, but there was a last-minute holdup.

Then-Ranger owner Brad Corbett, on a pay phone in the lobby of a Honolulu hotel, was engaged in a heated argument, waving his arms and puffing furiously on a fat cigar.

“I’m telling you, this is a great trade,” Corbett screamed into the receiver, as reporters huddled nearby. “I can’t understand why you don’t like it!”

This went on for a few minutes until Corbett threw his arms up in exasperation, turned to the writers and said, “Here, why don’t one of you guys talk to him.”

Paul Hagen, who covered the Rangers for the old Dallas Times-Herald, grabbed the phone, expecting to chat with a general manager, coach, player personnel director or scout.

The voice on the other end?

It belonged to the owner’s 12-year-old son, Brad Jr.

True story.

To understand what the Rangers have accomplished this season--they will play the first playoff game in the franchise’s 25-year history tonight in Yankee Stadium--one must fathom the depths from which they have risen.

The Ranger Station is where infielder Lenny Randle once punched out Manager Frank Lucchesi. It is where four men--Lucchesi, Eddie Stanky, Connie Ryan and Bill Hunter--managed the team during an eight-day span in 1977.

It is where, on one opening night, it had rained so hard in the afternoon that a helicopter was brought in, flown low in an attempt to dry the field . . . and crashed.

It is where former owner Eddie Giles, an oil man who “didn’t know first base from an enchilada,” according to long-time Dallas Morning News columnist Randy Galloway, appointed himself interim general manager, fired Manager Don Zimmer, and then went to the clubhouse with a bizarre request.

“Could you stay for another three or four days until I find someone else?” Giles asked Zimmer.

“I should have told him to go to hell,” Zimmer later recalled. “But I didn’t think it would do any good . . . so I went ahead and did it.”

Until 1994, the Rangers played in Arlington Stadium, which current team President Tom Schieffer called “a minor league facility in every way.” They had never been in first place after Aug. 18, and had never finished fewer than five games out of first in a full season.

They’ve also been dwarfed in the Dallas market by the Cowboys, who have won five Super Bowls and virtually monopolized newspaper space and television-radio time during the 1970s, ‘80s and early ‘90s.

There were many September days in Arlington Stadium when a huge roar rumbled through the crowd after a foul ball. Why? The Cowboys had just scored, of course.

“This is a football town, always has been,” Ranger reliever Jeff Russell said. “I always wondered if we scored a run, would you hear a big roar at a Cowboy game?”

You might this fall. The eyes of Texas are now on the Rangers, who went virtually wire to wire in winning the American League West and have caused fickle football fans of Dallas to take notice.

“If we put a World Series in this park, this can be as good a baseball town as anyone,” Schieffer said, amid the plush, new Ballpark in Arlington.

Winning, and putting a stake into the heart of those age-old Ranger axioms--”They’ll fold after the All-Star break,” and “They’ll wilt in the summer heat,” hasn’t hurt.

Neither has the apparent demise of the Cowboys, who were 1-3 before Monday night’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles and are still reeling from a string of suspensions and arrests that culminated with receiver Michael Irvin’s recent drug conviction.

“That was like the final shove over the edge,” said Galloway, who also is host of the highest-rated sports radio talk show in Dallas on WBAP. “People are tired of everything going on at Valley Ranch, and at the same time the Rangers pushed their way to the division title. The timing couldn’t be more perfect for them.”

A recent Morning News poll of 503 area sports fans revealed that 61% have a “high interest” in the Rangers this season. About 77% said they had high interest in the Cowboys, but almost half said their recent off-field problems have lessened their enthusiasm for the Super Bowl champions.

“When it’s mid-September and I’m getting more baseball calls than football calls . . . that’s not normal,” Galloway said. “Especially when the Cowboys aren’t playing well. That’s usually 911 time around here.”

Galloway conducted his own poll, asking listeners if they had the choice, would they rather have the Cowboys win a fourth Super Bowl in five years or the Rangers win the World Series.

“We got 42 calls in an hour and a half, and they were 36-6 in favor of the Rangers,” Galloway said.

Another factor in the Rangers’ rise: They are the anti-Cowboys.

While the Cowboys are known as Arrogance, Inc., a group that seems to care more about what’s written in the papers than in their playbooks, the Rangers have forged an image of a hard-working, blue-collar, no-nonsense group.

Players like each other, they like Manager Johnny Oates, there is no whining or mouthing off. General Manager Doug Melvin has made all the right moves, improving the pitching staff and team chemistry.

“They got rid of all the crybabies, whiners and egomaniacs, the Ruben Sierras, the Kenny Rogers’, the Kevin Browns,” said Steve Garret, a 48-year-old Bedford, Texas, resident who last week camped in line to purchase playoff tickets. “I’ve never seen a Ranger team put together like this.”

It’s hard not to like these guys. The Rangers’ star and most-valuable-player candidate, Juan Gonzalez, puts God and family above baseball on his priority list and is hitting .314 with 47 homers and 144 RBIs. Their all-star catcher, Ivan Rodriguez, is short and stocky but has a cannon for an arm and runs the bases as if he’s in Kenny Lofton’s body. He’s hitting .300, with 47 doubles and 86 RBIs.

Shortstop Kevin Elster (.252, 24 homers, 99 RBIs) and third baseman Dean Palmer (.280, 38 homers, 107 RBIs) have overcome potentially career-ending arm injuries, and left fielder Rusty Greer (.332, 18 homers, 100 RBIs) is a fearless defender who runs into more walls than a crash-test dummy.

The Rangers, picked by most to finish third in the West, have combined power and clutch hitting with reliable starting pitching and great defense--they once played 15 consecutive errorless games in August.

They have also been a resilient bunch.

When their nine-game lead over Seattle dwindled to one in a span of nine days, with the Rangers on the brink of one of baseball’s worst collapses after Garret Anderson’s two-out, two-strike, two-run double in the bottom of the 10th had given the Angels a 6-5 victory Sept. 20, the Rangers bounced back to win four of their next five games.

“My confidence didn’t waver at all,” Oates said. “When I woke up that next morning I had the ability to get up, so it was a good day. We’ve lost a number of very tough games this season, but we always came back the next day and played well.”

The Mariners never caught the Rangers, who clinched the division title Friday, but Oates wasn’t that concerned with Seattle.

“We had a unique kind of pressure this year,” he said. “Since the All-Star break we’ve heard a lot about how the Rangers always collapse. I was looking over my shoulder, but not at the Mariners, at history.

“I have all the respect in the world for the Mariners, A’s and Angels, but the biggest obstacle we’ve had to overcome was our history.”

Was that fair to these players, though?

“This team has carried an extra burden born of 25 years of not winning,” Schieffer said. “Even though most of these players weren’t even here five or six years ago, they’ve still had to answer the question of why we haven’t won. Basically, they suffered because of the sins of the past.

“But by winning, we put all that behind us. This is confirmation that things have changed, that we’re not a sad-sack franchise any more.”