It's Time!

I’m sitting here, still wiping the tears from my eyes. We did it! My team, the Texas Rangers, have beat the Yankees to be crowned American League Champions! That means we’re going to the World Series! There’s no other way to describe how I feel than this…WWWWOOOOOOOHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOO!!! This is the singular defining moment of my year to this point. Last year the singular defining moment was the birth of my goddaughter/niece. I was there in the beginning. I, my brother, and my two best friends, Fern and Jon, went to Opening Day this year as we have for several years now. We witnessed the beginning of what will ultimately be defined as the greatest year in Rangers history. My brother and I bought a mini-plan of tickets this year. I must have made it to almost twenty games this year and watched the vast majority of the rest on television. I bought a new jersey at the beginning of the season to add to the ten I already own. I bought five more t-shirts as well. A couple of stickers, several beers, two big bags of sunflower seeds, three new caps, and a sweatshirt round out all the Rangers gear I purchased throughout the season. This is about the norm for me. I am a die-hard, no holds barred, never say die, never leave early, never quit, always stand and sing during “Deep in the Heart of Texas”, eleven bobble head having Rangers fan. And when things are good, life is good. And when things are bad, life is still good, because it’s the Rangers. I love ‘em!

How much of a fan am I? Well, besides hardly missing a game and buying enough merchandise for an entire family, I am versed in Rangers history. I know about the great players in our history. I know about the good times in our history. I know that the franchise was originally the Washington Senators who moved to Texas at the urging of the Mayor of Arlington and local businessman Tom Vandergriff, founder of the Vandergriff auto sales empire. I know that Arlington Stadium was originally called Turnpike Stadium and was home to the minor league Fort Worth Cats and Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs. That’s right, the Rangers played in a converted minor league stadium for the first 22 years. Did you know that Ted Williams managed the Rangers back in those days? Do you know how many numbers the franchise has retired? I do…only three: 26, Johnny Oates; 34, Nolan Ryan; 42, Jackie Robinson (by MLB). This is a point of contention for me and my brother because we can name so many former Rangers who deserve their numbers to be retired. That is a whole other blog in itself. Do you know how many players are in the Texas Rangers Baseball Hall of Fame? I do…13, including recognizable names like Jim Sundberg, Fergie Jenkins, and Rusty Greer. Speaking of Rusty Greer, who was a hero of mine as a kid, he is currently working at Texas Wesleyan University as an assistant baseball coach under former Ranger Mike Jeffcoat. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

My love for the Rangers spawned from hot summer afternoons and evenings sitting in the metal bleachers at Arlington Stadium. This was back in the day when they gave out full size bats to the first 5,000 kids under 13 in attendance. And we would take those bats and bang them on the metal seats to make as much noise as possible. The Bobby Valentine days…when it was literally a 50-50 bet whether we would win or not because we were just an average team. I remember my Dad explaining things to us as they happened. I remember the clunk of batting practice homeruns on the seats around us. Those were the days when baseball in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was just a secondary attraction. Back when if you lived in Dallas, you had to pass by the monument of Dallas’ true love, Texas Stadium, on your way to Arlington to watch baseball. My more vivid memories come from the Ballpark. The Rangers moved into their new stadium in 1994 and we went to one of the first games there. It was like a castle, a cathedral, compared to Arlington Stadium. Everything had the look and feel of a stadium from the 40s and 50s, except it was brand new. We used to sit out under the homerun porch in right field and yell at Rusty Greer to try to get his autograph. This team, these stadiums, the memories…all of them feed my continuing love and respect for Rangers baseball.

Sure, the relationship soured during the Tom Hicks era. I was old enough to understand that we were good enough to make it to the post season, but not good enough to make it to the World Series. I was young enough that not making it to the World Series killed me. I was old enough to realize we overpaid for A-Rod. I was young enough to let stupid management decisions like that jade my love of the team as a whole. I started climbing back on board after I graduated college. A-Rod was gone, Michael Young was emerging as a leader on the team and things seemed great. Except that they couldn’t make it back to the postseason. But my love for them grew back more and more. When I met my best friends along the line of my life, their love for Rangers baseball just boosted mine. Pretty soon we were making trips to Opening Day every year, buying jerseys for each other, and going to games together. We talk baseball all the time now. In fact, the one person that called me to celebrate the Rangers win tonight was my buddy Fernando, who is my Rangers accountability partner. He lives in Atlanta, but still loves the Rangers so much that he came back the past few years for Opening Day.

So, all of you out there who read my blog and like to know what’s going on in the world of me, here it is…I am completely stoked about the World Series! I am sitting here in my Claw and Antler shirt and Rangers shorts looking at $400 standing room only tickets on StubHub and seriously considering buying some! I just order two more Rangers t-shirts (an AL Champions one like they were wearing on the field and in the locker room after the game and a “Hambino” Josh Hamilton shirt). I am drinking an ice cold, Texas brewed, Shiner Bock, listening to the post game roundtable radio show, and thinking about how to clear my schedule and skip classes next week so that I can see the World Series games (which start Wednesday). The Rangers, they are my heart. And you know what else I realized as I was looking online for AL Champs shirts? I need to find a woman who already has the Texas Rangers “T” logo thong or panty, because the woman who is Rangers fan enough to have that underwear is Rangers fan enough for me.

Since I've been gone...

Alright, I’ve been slacking off a little on this whole blog thing lately and for that I apologize. Apparently there is a good deal of you out there (more than five, less than ten) that enjoy reading these things. I didn’t know I meant so much to you. I honestly have some relatively good excuses…sort of. My Monday blog that should have been done earlier this week didn’t make it to press due to me staying at my folk’s house all weekend taking care of their dogs. I didn’t have my laptop with me. Well, wait, yes I did, but my folks don’t have wifi at their place and my non-wireless network card doesn’t work in my computer, so I didn’t have access to my notes etc. So there you go, that is why I miss my early week blog entry. Sure, I could have done it later on, but I try not to waste time on my blog on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday due to the fact that I have classes and should be working on those. I didn’t get it done on Friday this week because I had a relatively busy day compared to how my usual Friday goes. I had a lunch meeting with a friend, a client meeting for my class project, to help my mother put up Halloween decorations outside their house, and then the Rangers first ALCS game (don’t get me started on how elated and heartbroken I was in a span of four hours due to that one). Today we celebrated my folk’s anniversary which is actually Monday, so I have just gotten around to doing this (since I can’t sleep and there is nothing on TV).

I have struggled with what to talk about in this blog since my life lately has been a little less than exciting. Sure, I’ve been busy and done some fun things, but none of them seemed terribly blog-worthy. So, I’m going to my playbook and coming out with a canned topic I thought up when I first decided to refocus my blogging efforts toward talking about my life. There is a neat little list I made up that is saved as a Word file on my desktop (if you know me, you know how seriously OCD I can be at times and how forgetful I can be at other times, so making lists gets me through my everyday life). It started with things that I noticed I do on a regular basis. Then it started to include things that seem uniquely bachelor-esque. Then it mutated into things that bothered me or were on my mind at that specific moment. No, the topic this week is not my blog topic list or how I make lists in general (though that topic has now made it onto my blog topic list). My blog topic this week has come about due to some things I’ve experienced over the past week and a half.

This topic may not seem important to some of you, but to a man such as me, in my situation, this is a very important part of daily life. I’m talking about chick radar. The reason this topic came to me started on Thursday when I was at the State Fair with my brother, sister (in-law), and niece. We were walking into the fair past the crowd control barriers and ticket booths when out of the corner of my eye I spotted her. The first thing I noticed was blond hair. Now, I’m not necessarily a guy who digs blonds (all the girls I’ve dated were natural brunettes except one who was dirty blond at her lightest). It’s hard not to notice a blond. They stick out in a crowd, especially when that crowd is filled with rambling geriatrics (apparently Thursday was senior citizen day at the fair). She was cute, shorter than I would usually go for, but hey, you don’t have to be picky when you’re just looking (sounds terrible, I know). She disappeared into the crowd and I thought nothing of it after that. Then, it happened again. Standing in front of the Fletcher’s corn dog stand waiting on my sister to get something to eat, a pretty brunette slipped through the crowd toward the auto show building. I locked on right away. Once is just a coincidence, but two times of finding the prettiest girl in the crowd, that’s almost uncanny.

My brother had noticed how much my head had been on a swivel and mentioned something about the second girl who seemed to be working at the car show. Now, this was a full minute or more after she had caught my eye, which struck me a little. The situation became more apparent as we were leaving the butterfly enclosure (not my idea to see the butterflies, but don’t get me started on that) about an hour or so later in the day. We were walking across the lobby of the building where the butterfly deal is and there was this six-foot, gorgeous brunette and her shorter but equally cute friend paying to get into the exhibit. They were right there, plain sight, so I figured you’d have to be blind to miss them. My brother and sister disappeared to change my niece’s diaper and when they came back and asked what we should do next, I said, “I’d like to go back and see the butterflies again.” My brother was stunned by that and asked, “Why?!” I of course said, “Didn’t you see that six-foot brunette and her friend in line to get in?” He said he hadn’t. I realized then and there, my chick radar had kicked back on.

Every man has some form of chick radar. I even knew a homosexual gentleman who could spot the hottest girl in the room before the straight guys could. It’s nature or something like that. Beautiful women just get your attention right away. They draw your gaze. To quote the film Beautiful Girls: “A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high…full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise.” Sometimes this chick radar can just click off or stop working. As in the case of my brother, who is happily married to a woman he thinks he doesn’t deserve and the father of the prettiest baby girl I’ve ever seen. When life works for you like that, chick radar just isn’t needed. But, when you’re single, you know you’re single, and have somehow come to the conclusion that being single is best thing for you right now, then chick radar is your best friend. It shows you all the wonderful prospects out there. It shows you how beautiful women don’t just exist in your dreams or on TV. They’re right there, in front of you every day. This is the greatness of chick radar. I had noticed it starting up late last month when having dinner with a group of old friends in a trendy restaurant in Frisco (an upscale suburb of Dallas). I was the only single person at the table (a topic I’ll touch on at a later date)…and the only one who noticed the bachelorette party that was seated two tables away. That, my friends, is chick radar.

Now for the sensitive side of me to make a statement: in no way do I measure a woman’s worth by her appearance. Nor do I base my relationships, whether friendship or something more, solely on looks. I doubt there are many who will argue whether it takes an initial physical attraction to spark a relationship. Of course it does. But what makes relationships work, what makes relationships last, is personalities. I haven’t been in a relationship that didn’t involve attraction not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally (because I wouldn’t invest myself in a relationship that didn’t have those things). To quote Prince Akeem from Coming to America: “I want a woman that will arouse my intellect as well as my loins!”