So this is what it feels like. Leaping around the infield, hugging in the dugout, arms aloft, cameras snapping, commemorative T-shirts donned at the speed of a Nathan Eovaldi fastball. Now, finally, the Texas Rangers know.
A World Series replete with rare feats ended with the biggest novelty of all: the Rangers are Major League Baseball’s champions for the first time at the 63rd attempt, a mere 51 years after a franchise that began as the Washington Senators relocated to the Dallas area.
No longer are the Rangers a festival of futility posing as a sports team, and the festering wound is finally cauterized from their previous World Series appearance, when they lost to the St Louis Cardinals in 2011 after twice being one strike away from victory.
Texas’ four-games-to-one victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks in the best-of-seven series, sealed with a 5-0 win on Wednesday at Chase Field, continues the Lone Star State’s run of success after last year’s win for the Houston Astros, who also took the title in 2017 and were runners-up in 2019 and 2021.
The Rangers’ media-shy majority owner, Ray Davis, a gas pipeline mogul, was even minded to speak in public.
“This franchise waited 63 years to pick up that trophy,” he said during the presentation ceremony on Fox Sports. “I’m a man of faith and I had to hope we would hold up this trophy one day, we always had that vision and we never gave up that hope.”
In 2021 the Rangers lost 102 games during the regular season; in 2022 they lost 94. In this campaign they won 90 times and lost 72, taking an American League wildcard spot and rolling over the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles without losing a game before overcoming the Astros, 4-3. They won all 11 of their road postseason fixtures, taking three straight games in Phoenix after Arizona had levelled the series with a 9-1 win in Texas last Saturday.
Dallas is the kind of city that expects some flash and flair. The Rangers infamously gave a $252m, 10-year deal to Alex Rodriguez in 2000 that was the biggest individual contract in sports history at the time and paid him more than the entire roster of the Minnesota Twins.
It was a statement signing, albeit one that stated: we have more money than sense. A-Rod was terrific but was traded to the New York Yankees after Texas finished bottom of the American League West division for three years in a row.
This time a more strategic $800m free-agent spree propelled the Rangers into the upper rank of MLB spenders and helped turn around their on-field fortunes, though the ace pitcher Jacob deGrom, signed last winter for $185m over five years, suffered a season-ending elbow injury and did not play after April.
Perhaps the most crucial acquisition was the manager. A year ago the Rangers general manager, Chris Young, persuaded Bruce Bochy to abandon his retirement in Tennessee after three years out of MLB. “I was sitting on a recliner there in Nashville just enjoying myself when he called me,” he told Fox. Young, a former pitcher, had played for Bochy in San Diego.
The France-born 68-year-old has won 15 of his past 16 postseason series and this is his fourth World Series ring after three titles with the San Francisco Giants, including a 2010 triumph over Texas. Bochy is one of only six managers to have won at least four World Series titles. He hailed his players’ toughness and resilience; they have cause to be thankful for his sage judgment and temperate personality.
A little over a year since he was keeping in touch with the sport by managing France in World Baseball Classic qualifiers in Germany – and being hammered by Great Britain and the Czech Republic – Bochy was the eye of the storm for a streaky team with explosive offensive potential.
“He was the perfect guy for this team,” Rangers catcher Jonah Heim told reporters. “His baseball IQ, his knowledge and his poise at the helm. We’ve been lucky that, no matter the situation, he’s always going to have that calm, stoic look on his face and we know everything’s gonna be alright.”
Corey Seager, a shortstop on a streak that was the baseball equivalent of asphalt in Maricopa county on a sunny afternoon in July, was named series MVP. In a pitching duel between Eovaldi and Arizona’s Zac Gallen, Seager broke up a no-hitter with a leadoff single in the seventh, albeit fortuitously as the ball zipped off the end of his bat.
The 29-year-old, whose $325m 10-year deal is the largest in team history, became the fourth player to win multiple World Series MVP awards; after receiving the accolade with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020.
Despite Gallen’s excellence, Arizona began to resemble the fitful wildcard team that went an unexceptional 84-78 in the regular season, rather than the perky upstarts who stunningly and confidently swept aside the Dodgers then came from behind to oust the more fancied Philadelphia Phillies in seven games in the National League Championship Series.
The Diamondbacks repeatedly faltered after earning chances to score on Wednesday night. They went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. It began to look as if the Rangers were playing rope-a-dope as they got to Gallen in the seventh inning and secured the win for Eovaldi with another four runs in the ninth courtesy of a glaring fielding error and a two-run home run by second baseman Marcus Semien, another crucial and costly free-agent acquisition.
At least Arizona played better defense when it came to protecting the Chase Field swimming pool. It was reportedly surrounded by security guards to stop the ecstatic Rangers from jumping in.
This was a series in which apparent momentum shifts were merely fragments of misdirection. The Rangers won game one 6-5 with an 11th-inning walk-off homer by star slugger Adolis García, yet were thumped the next night. They lost García and starting pitcher Max Scherzer to injuries in Game 3 but won anyway, 3-1.
The next day Texas thrashed the Diamondbacks, 11-7, scoring their first 10 runs by the end of the third inning. Disheartened fans hurled paper airplanes. Perhaps one fluttering on to the field and poking Seager in the eye would have been the only way to stop him, with Arizona manager Torey Lovullo determined not to walk him intentionally. Or maybe the Diamondbacks could have tried destabilizing the Rangers by holding a Pride Night.
The final outcome was deserved, with the Rangers erratic yet effective, their power ferocious and their bullpen, suspect during the regular season, a source of solidity. “They were the better team and they earned it fair and square … They can operate under any condition,” Lovullo said. “Nobody expected us to be here, it’s been a quick ascension and we’ve got more work to do but we’re going to be proud of what we’ve accomplished.”
Simply reaching this stage was a remarkable achievement for a young Arizona team with a payroll in MLB’s bottom third who lost 110 games in 2021 and 88 last season. Not that the television-watching public was mesmerised by the underdog bounce-back narrative. Despite teams based in two of the biggest metropolitan areas in the US, the second and third encounters were the least-watched World Series games ever.
That struck a downbeat note at the end of a year in which MLB instituted rule changes that made games faster and more exciting. The Rangers, though, were essential viewing. They were not always baseball’s best team over the course of the season, but they were irrepressible when it mattered most.
