The Texas Rangers’ win in the 2023 World Series marks only the fourth time one of “my” teams has won the World Series. Ironically, I first became a baseball fan in 1962, when my parents and I LEFT Dallas to move to Kansas City, MO. DFW had no major league baseball team back then. Daddy had taken me to a minor league game or two – Dallas’s minor league team was called the Spurs back in those days, if I recall correctly – but they never piqued my interest.
Then when I was 11, in July 1962, barely a week after we moved to KC, Daddy took me to see the Kansas City A’s play the defending world champion New York Yankees. Whitey Ford was the Yankees’ starting pitcher that day and, predictably, the Yankees won, 3-1. But I was hooked on baseball from that day forward!
These were the Yankees of Mantle, Maris, Berra, Howard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer, and so on, and I was seeing them in person!
However, the A’s – owned by Charles O. (for Owner, the joke went) Finley – were pathetic, perennial occupants of the American League cellar. Their “big” names weren’t so big – Siebern, Lumpe, Rakow – ever heard of them? I didn’t think so.
Then, in 1963, my parents bought me a transistor radio, and I soon discovered that I could pull in the cross-state St. Louis Cardinals’ games on station KFEQ out of St. Joseph’s, MO. That September, the Cardinals went on a tear, at one point winning 19 of 20 games to pull to within 1 game of the National League-leading LA Dodgers. That they ultimately lost the pennant to the Dodgers was of no consequence – I was now a Cardinals fan. Oh sure, I still rooted for my hometown A’s, but my heart belonged to the Cardinals.
On June 15, 1964 – which was the trade deadline back then – the Cardinals traded one of their star pitchers, Ernie Broglio, to the Chicago Cubs for a little-known outfielder by the name of Lou Brock. Cardinals Manager Johnny Keane was enamored of Lou’s speed on the basepaths and was convinced he would hit – despite a pedestrian .257 batting average to that point in his young career. Keane immediately put him in the starting lineup and set him loose on the bases, meaning that he had an automatic “green light” to steal bases whenever he got on base – no need to wait for a signal from Keane. In his first start, Lou had two hits – a triple and a single, stole a base, and scored a run. Before Lou’s first week with the Cardinals was up, I saw how exciting this young player was and picked him as my favorite player.
Lou went on to lead the Cardinals out of 6th place in the National League – on the day of the trade – to the National League pennant and a World Series victory over the Yankees. From the day he joined the Cardinals, he hit .348 for the rest of the season, with 33 stolen bases. In 1985, his first year of eligibility, he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Lou still has the all-time best career World Series batting average – .391 – for players who have played at least 20 World Series games.
The Cardinals went on to win another World Series – over the Boston Red Sox – in 1967, with Lou amassing a World Series-record seven stolen bases. He tied his own record the next year, when the Cardinals lost to the Tigers.
So, in my first six years as a baseball fan, “my” team had won two World Series. I never imagined that it would take another 56 years to match those two! From the time the Kansas City Royals were born in 1969 (near the end of my senior year at Oak Park High School in the North Kansas City district) until Joanna and I moved from Denver, CO (which had no major league team at the time) to the DFW area in 1987, I was a Royals fan.
So the last time one of “my” teams won a World Series before this week was 1985, when the Kansas City Royals beat the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games (I had quit rooting for the Cardinals when they fired broadcaster Harry Caray after the 1969 season – though Lou Brock remained my favorite ballplayer, and my favorite athlete, just ahead of Muhammad Ali). I thought about that the other night when the Rangers clinched this year’s World Series – the last time one of “my” teams won the World Series, I was able to call Daddy and celebrate with him – he remained a Royals fan until he passed away in 2007. Daddy took me to so many ballgames when I was growing up, and we always enjoyed talking sports with each other, so I missed him the other night, would have loved to call and talk with him about the Rangers’ win.
However, what made up for not having Daddy with me was being able to celebrate with my son, Travis, whose middle name – Jason – his mom and I gave to him in honor of his granddaddy (Atwood Jason “Jase” Jones). Because of disability resulting from a stroke suffered in 2013, Travis lives with me. We have had a great time the past few weeks watching the Rangers’ playoff games together. I mean, a really great time! When they clinched the other night, I was standing. After all, I knew the Rangers were depending on me in those last couple of innings – wearing my Rangers cap & jacket, standing, pacing, and encouraging them – “Come on, Marcus, we need you to earn that big paycheck, hang in there, don’t chase, make him pitch to you, put a good swing on it . . .” “Come on Sborzy, just throw strikes – but make ’em good strikes; come on, you’ve got this guy!”
The moment they clinched, Travis stood up and hugged me – it felt good, sharing a victory hug after all the frustration we’ve endured as Rangers fans through the years. In my early years as a baseball fan, it was Daddy and me. Now in my 70s, it’s my son and me – what could be better than that? Baseball can be a very special bond between father and son – it surely has been that for me.
And it spans the generations. When we first moved to the DFW area in 1987, Travis was not quite 2 years old. We soon established a tradition – one that lasted 5 or 6 years until the early ’90s, when my mother’s health started declining, making it almost impossible for Mother and Daddy to drive up from Austin. So, for 5 or 6 years, they would come up when the Kansas City Royals – still Daddy’s team – were in town. Daddy, Travis, and I would go together to see the Royals and Rangers play. We called it “the night of the three Jasons.” You see, Travis is the fourth generation to have Jason as his middle name – Daddy was Atwood Jason Jones, Jr. (his father had passed away in 1955, when I was 4 years old); I’m William Jason Jones (the William is in honor of Daddy’s Uncle Het, William Hetzel Jones); and Travis Jason Jones. The three of us had a great time watching those games together when Travis was little, and those times are special memories for Travis and me now.
We were missing someone else the other night, too. Travis said, “I sure wish Mom were here to see this.” Joanna, who passed away from kidney disease in February 2021, was not the avid baseball fan that Travis and I are, but she would have been rooting for the Rangers the other night, too. Her favorite thing about going to a Rangers game, however, was getting a turkey leg from the concession stand. In fact, when Travis and I went to a game without her, I would make a point of buying a turkey leg to take home to her. She loved them. (It was her favorite part of the State Fair every year, too.)
For lifelong fans, baseball holds a treasure trove of memories. I haven’t even mentioned getting to meet Lou Brock, in 2001, and getting three autographs from him; or Stan Musial once turning me down for an autograph – apparently, in light of all I’ve read about him, the ONLY person he was ever anything but pleasant to; or the time, on Memorial Day 1964, my parents and I saw Mickey Mantle, in uniform, walk into the stands (only 10 feet or so from where we were sitting) on a day he wasn’t in the lineup – the only player I’ve EVER seen do that – start walking up the steps and then turning to yell to the Yankees’ bullpen, “I’m going to get the beer and pretzels!” Oops, I guess I have mentioned them now!
As I said, a treasure trove of memories. And now, I have a fourth World Champion to celebrate! In closing, I’ll quote the not-so-great, but oh-so-quotable, Chico Esquela, Mets second baseman in the 1970s (actually, a character created & personified by Garrett Morris in the early days of Saturday Night Live), but without the comic dialect, “Baseball’s been very, very good to me.”