Baseball Junkie

   Wow......I can't believe what I just witnessed. I am such a sports nut, getting excited with whatever sport happens to be in season. I must confess though, baseball is my favorite, the Texas Rangers...my team. I grew up with the Rangers as my team even though I was an Okie. I would take road trips to Arlington on the weekends so I could catch a double header. I would go by myself early Saturday morning, hole up in some Motel 6, then take in two games on Saturday and usually an early afternoon game on Sunday and then hit the road back to Oklahoma.

    Then as a adult, I worked for the Texas Rangers as a part time gig,at the old Ballpark in Arlington. I would have done the job for free and thought of it as a way to get a free season ticket. I worked my real job, getting up and starting at 3:00 am and then finishing the day off around 10:00 pm at the ballpark. The jobs at the park had lots of perks...meeting the players...lots of autographed balls and  getting to watch  baseball.

    The era of ball during the early years was not very good fundemental ball. We lost more than we won, but we had our players and managers that always kept it interesting. There was the great Billy Martin, manager at the time who was a great player in his own rite with the New York Yankees. He was fired..hired..fired and hired several times by the same team, the YANKEES. His legacy, besides being a great player and manager was his firey temper and disposition. He was a brawler, heavy drinker and a much publicized womanizer, but when the lights came on he was The Competitor.

      Several years later, we were fortunate enough to have the living legend Nolan Ryan as a pitcher for our team. Yes you are right, the same Nolan Ryan that is President of the Texas Rangers now. In Nolan's prime, you could be sitting in the upper deck in the old ballpark on days he pitched, and with each pitch he let out a grunt that echoed through out the upper deck. He was so animated and gifted that I would buy 5 or 6 tickets every game he pitched hoping for a piece of history to document my presence when he threw a NO HITTER..He left a legacy, a standard and a prototype for pitchers of this era to try to emulate.  He is THE MAN...
     Well the Texas Rangers are on the thresehold of a return to the World Series...ONE MORE WIN.. is all that it takes. I hope they can clinch tomorrow...Well this will sound cheesy, but as I sit writing this at my computer, I can't help but think that I would not have this forum to write my thoughts without the genius of the computer pioneers such as the late great Steven Jobs. Without their visions, I would be sitting at my old typewriter pecking away and wearing out a bottle of white out covering up all my errors. Also, I wouldn't be able to sit in my study wasting time playing Words With Friends with my daughters and wife on my I-phone. Thanks Apple and I can hardly wait to see what new gizmo comes out next. Thanks....R.I.P....