SPORTS A Season in Hell

AS THE TEXAS RANGERS IRON out the kinks for their 20th American League campaign, the leadership is once again out to create, in the mind of the naive consumer, a fantasy world in which the Rangers somehow become competitive for the division championship.

Pitching coach Tom House, the team’s resident intellectual, will tell us that “because of a non-threatening offseason environment, ” his fourth and fifth starters are “focused into a favorable kinetic structure. ” The unflappable and apparently un-fireable Bobby Valentine will grin his blinding grin, ooze confidence, and deliver his considered judgment that, if everybody does the job he’s capable of doing and things fall into place, “we’ll be right there at the finish. “

All of this serves to show how drastically at least one thing has changed in the 20 years American League baseball has been presented in Arlington. While the game itself remains the same, the methods of the participants’ self-expression have been totally revised.

Allow me to illustrate:

The year was 1973. Whitey Herzog was the rookie manager of the Texas Rangers. It was the day before the opening of spring training, and Herzog was sizing things up. “If Rich Billings is the first-string catcher again, then we’re in a lot of trouble, ” he said.

Sportswriters conveyed that report to Billings, who thought about it for a moment and then said, “Obviously, he’s seen me play. “

I was there to see that bolt of candor, as well as everything else in this narrative, having been assigned to follow the team around for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

After week one of spring training, I asked Herzog for a thoughtful evaluation of his starting pitchers. Again, the: blunt truth from the White Rat: “They didn’t tell me that Rich Hand and Mike Paul are a couple of shitballers, ” he said, “or that Pete Broberg is a big c—. “

What came next was the grim task of returning to my seaside cabana at the Surf Rider Resort, an accommodation that came equipped with size 16EEE cockroaches, and translating Herzog’s thoughts into passages fit for a publication that regarded itself as a “family newspaper. “

The next day I quoted Herzog as having said. “I’m a little disappointed in the velocity of two of my starters, and I’m worried about the competitiveness of another. “

During week two, Herzog secured the services of an outfielder named Alex Johnson, who was notorious for his dreadful attitude. “Ordinarily you worry that a guy like that might poison your ballclub, ” Herzog told me. “But how do you poison this team?”

After week five, with the start of the regular season close at hand, Herzog looked at his assembly of talent-which was largely a collection of castoffs and outlaws-and declared. “We’re a couple of players away from being a contender. Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax. “

The Rangers on opening night produced the following starting lineup: Billings, sure enough, was the catcher. The first baseman was Mike Epstein, who considered baseball an annoying distraction to his flying lessons. Davey Nelson, an overachiever who drove a pink Porsche, was at second.

Toby Harrah started at shortstop. Harrah would eventually become an all-star, but at this point he was still struggling to adapt to the complexities that life presented outside of Sissonvilie, West Virginia.

Joe Lovitto, who once headed a teenage gang known as the San Pedro River Rats, opened at third base. Lovitto was shortly shipped out, replaced by Bill Sudakis, a. k. a. Sudsy, who would wind up in trouble with California authorities for conspiracy to distribute you-know-what, and who was then replaced by Jim Fregosi, who was at work on his autobiography entitled The Bases Were Loaded And So Was I.

Alex Johnson started in left field. Elliot Maddox was in center. He later sued the city of New York, alleging his career was ruined when he tripped over a sprinkler head in the outfield at Shea Stadium.

Jeff Burroughs-the Long Beach Long-baller-was the right fielder. He claimed that he was slowly being driven insane by the strong prevailing south winds at Arlington Stadium that were depriving him of a “60 home-run season. ” He also claimed that Wayne Newton was the greatest talent in the history of American show business.

The designated hitter was Rico Carty, who referred to himself as “The B-e-e-g Boy. ” The B-e-e-g Boy had posted some b-e-e-g numbers with the Braves, once upon a time, but by now his legs were shot. “I’ve seen better knees on a camel, ” the team doctor told me.

The team got off to a rocky start, but somehow won a few to briefly poke its head out of the cellar. Then came a six-game road swing to Chicago and Minnesota. Herzog surveyed the pitching matchups and said, “We won’t win a game. “

As usual, Whitey was right, and the groundwork was established for a season in last place.

In June, simply for purposes of novelty, the Rangers drafted David Clyde, a left-handed pitcher out of high school in Houston, and pressed him into the starting rotation. This was a cruel stunt to pull on a fellow one week past his 18th birthday.

Clyde won his major league debut and was a box office bonanza, but the rigors of the very adult world of big-time baseball hardened both his arteries and his spirit. The trouble may have begun prior to his third start, in Milwaukee, when a Rangers veteran pressed two black capsules into Clyde’s hand and said, “Take these, kid. You won’t have to go to sleep for a week. “

By midseason the only player who was having any kind of year at all was Johnson, who was batting over. 300 but refused to deal in any kind of social interchange with the oilier players. On airplanes and on bus rides from the hotel to the ballpark on the road, Johnson kept his head buried in electronics manuals.

Some players theorized that Johnson was making an atomic bomb.

Once, on a ride through one of the nastiest areas of the Bronx en route to Yankee Stadium, the bus rolled past an ugly urban street scene in which a kid armed with a bat was fending off some knife-wielding adversaries.

Johnson looked up from his book, grinned, and said, “1 guess he’s the designated hitter. ” That was the first and last thing I heard him say all season.

To prove that things could get worse, July brought the Bernie Brewer incident: in Milwaukee. Bernie, a sort of mascot, sat perched in a little chalet atop the Scoreboard, dressed in Oktoberfest regalia, and when a Brewer hit a home run, Bernie zipped down a slide into a giant mug. releasing white balloons that were supposed to represent beer bubbles.

This is the kind of thing that persons living in Milwaukee apparently find amusing. But after the Rangers lost a doubleheader at County Stadium, Herzog blew his stack and claimed that Bernie was stealing Ranger signals and flashing them to the Brewers.

“He wears these white gloves and when he claps his hands, once for a fastball, twice for a curve, and so forth, he tips off our pitches. ” Herzog declared. The White Rat was fuming. “If he does that again tomorrow, I’m gonna climb up there into his goddamn little house and personally kick his ass. “

Brewers management was appalled by the allegation. Bernie Brewer, Herzog was informed, was the retarded teenage son of one of the team’s owners.

That was the only time I ever saw Herzog back down. He privately conceded that the effects of the long season might be doing funny things with his brain.

Herzog, as manager of the Royals and Cardinals, would later prove to be one of the outstanding strategists and judges of personnel in baseball. In September of 73, however, he was fired as manager of the Rangers. Not even Whitey could survive this bunch.

One thing about that ’73 team: It refused to quit-until it had lost 105 games, most ever by a Rangers team. But of alt the Rangers teams, this one, to me, was easily the most memorable, and it had a curious connection to the much better Rangers team that will take the field this year.

One July night at home against the Angels, the Rangers hitters suddenly woke up and belted three triples in one inning, each a bazooka shot off the center-field wall. The shame of this shocking event led the opposing pitcher to say later that he thought not of retirement, but of suicide.

Luckily, he changed his mind. The poor sap’s name was Nolan Ryan.