28dec
Today is the birthday of the former Ranger great Einar Diaz…I never had one interaction with him that I can recall, but I hated Einar Diaz, for reasons that mostly didn’t have anything to do with him…he sucked—but big deal; it’s not like this team never had guys who sucked…I hated him because he replaced Pudge…and after all those years of watching incredible, best-we’ve-ever-seen-anywhere play from Pudge at the hardest position to play in not only this game but any sport, we were left with Einar Diaz…I also hated him because he was a John Hart acquisition, and I remember the day John Hart flippantly told us ‘you’re going to love this guy, he plays with his hair on fire’, as if these Texas yahoos don’t know anything about baseball anyway, so if he tells us that about the guy who was going to replace the greatest Ranger ever, that would be good enough; now—what’s our tee time at Dallas National?…it infuriated the hell out of me because I knew we were about to be spared to death…and we were…and it made me hate Diaz just for being there and John Hart for being a go-play-golf general manager and thinking he could put shit over on us…but that is not what’s on our mind today…it was a year ago on this day that the fact that it was Einar Diaz’s birthday came to our attention…I don’t remember where I saw it or what brought it to mind…but it made me think of him, John Hart, and that whole sorry era of Rangers baseball…and the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got…so I did the only thing I could do: I went into the office, sat down at the computer and posted the fact that it was Einar Diaz’s birthday, the guy who John Hart once told us we were going to love because he played with his hair on fire, on Facebook and Twitter…that was it, I thought…but the next day I started thinking, ‘wonder if any other former Ranger greats have a birthday today?....one or maybe more did…so I put them up…that was the root of this year-long exercise and today it comes full-circle and it also comes to an end…some, particularly those near me, have wondered exactly what I was doing and why, so let’s answer a few FAQ’s…as to the why of it, the best reason I can come up with is I am a bit OC and I fell down a rabbit hole I couldn’t get out of…many thought I must be getting paid by somebody; no, I was not…all I got out of it was the fact that it connected with far more than I’d thought it would; you guys got into it, so powered by that, we stayed the course…is this genius?...that’s in the eye of the beholder but I would say decidedly not; the birthday list and the statistical data is all there at the world’s ultimate website/timewaste, the great Baseball-Reference.com…it was a learning experience on something I really care about and I now think differently of some of those who’ve come through here…some were better than I remembered them; some were worse; and still others were about what I thought…what I really liked, though, was being reminded of some of the great individual seasons guys had, most of which were swallowed up by weaknesses that could not be overcome, like Jim Bibby’s incredible 19-19 1974 season (when are we going to see a guy figure in 38 decisions again, let alone break even in them?), Buddy Bell’s great years, the sudden emergence and flameout of George Wright, Doc Medich’s surprisingly solid tenure here and his still-unexplained unraveling after baseball, the stand-up nature of Larry Parrish, the sturdy work of the reinvented Frank Tanana on shit teams, the sorriness that made everybody hate Lee Mazzilli, the usefulness and versatility of Ramon Vasquez, and many more…but anybody could’ve done that—cribbing the data was nothing…there were many stories brought to mind that those too young for the early years or just not interested until World Series started coming around might not know about…a lot of personal anecdotes were brought to mind as well…I didn’t get too hung up on being factual with those; what you got were my own recollections, based on what I saw as a fan, things I read in the media, things I heard said by the media, fans and others, and my own sense of what they brought to the party…you also got a good bit based on my own experiences of interacting with some but not all of them…there are a good number of people around who knew them far better than me; they went on the road with them, they were out there every day and they may look at some of this and say ‘that’s ridiculous; so-and-so was nothing like that’…fine; we’ll defer to them…there’s a lot that’s gone on with this franchise over the years, though, and if you got your memory jogged a time or two along the way, or maybe there was a story you’d not heard before, great—I guess that was the endgame…in any case, thanks for reading
mr
-30-

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