Rangers Risin'

Earlier this month, while in the midst of orchestrating a deal for the purchase of the Texas Rangers. George W. Bush picked up a Dallas newspaper one morning and saw a picture of his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, jogging around the nation's capital wearing an Astros cap.

Forty-two-year-old George W., the President's eldest son, couldn't resist the chance to put the needle to his father. He called the White House. The President was busy, but Bush did talk to his father's secretary, Patty Presock. "Patty. I saw my father jogging in an Astros hat!" he complained. "That stuffs got to quit. Not only that, but from now on, anybody that asks him, he's got to say he's a Texas Rangers fan. That's the new rules in the family."

While Bush made the call to the White House in jest, it was in keeping with the message he had been giving out in the months preceding last week's approval of the purchase of a majority interest in the Rangers by Bush's 14-member group, which bought Eddie Chiles's 58% interest in the club for $25 million, plus $9 million in assumed debt. If Bush has his way, the whole of north Texas—not to mention large segments of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana—will one day be donning the blue hat with the red T. The way things have been going in the last few weeks, that day may come sooner than anyone dared to dream. Indeed, Bush and his associates couldn't have picked a more propitious time to buy the Rangers.

On the day of Ryan's most recent gem, the Dallas Mavericks ended their season by failing to make the NBA playoffs for the first time in six seasons; that civic disaster came on the heels of the Cowboys' dismal 3-13 season in the NFL. The decline of the Mavs and Cowboys only accentuates the Rangers' sudden ascent. Through some deft winter trading and a notable dip into the free-agent market to acquire Ryan, Texas finds itself fielding the best club in its history, one with a solid five-man rotation, a couple of .300 hitters, two others with serious power, and some speed on the bases. The Rangers have never been so rich.

And high time. The club, which migrated from Washington. D.C., for the 1972 season, has never won a division title. Like all floundering franchises, it has pulled its share of major gaffes. For the Rangers, the granddaddy of them all came on a day that Texas general manager Tom Grieve will remember forever. It was the spring of '82. Grieve, then the assistant farm director, was in a meeting in Florida with farm director Joe Klein when word came that the Rangers' front office had traded Ron Darling and Walt Terrell, the two best young arms in the team's minor league system, to the Mets for outfielder Lee Mazzilli. "Joe was so upset, he left the room," Grieve says. "That was the end of the meeting. It was a pivotal moment in our franchise. A real bad day."

Four years later, the Rangers flashed some momentary pizzazz—finishing second, five games behind the Angels—but then slid to a tie for sixth in 1987. Last year, they drowned under the Oakland tidal wave and finished alone in sixth, 33½ leagues under the sea. Even without the likes of Darling and Terrell (or Dave Righetti and Tom Henke, two other good arms the Rangers let get away), Texas pitching wasn't the villain in '88; the staff gave up fewer hits than any other in the American League. But the offense was as stagnant as the Rangers' annual payroll—at $6.5 million one of the lowest in the majors. Last fall, Grieve and team president Mike Stone developed plans to acquire some big league talent and then appealed to Chiles and Texas's chief minority owner, Edward Gaylord, for a $4 million increase in the payroll, to $10.5 million. The 78-year-old Chiles, who had owned the Rangers since 1980 and had been looking to sell them, agreed. "If that's what you need, you got it," Chiles said.

Says Grieve, "It was up to us to justify the added expenditure." And it seems they have. In a nine-player deal with the Chicago Cubs during the winter meetings in December, Texas gave up three pitchers, including ace reliever Mitch Williams and starter Paul Kilgus, for starter Jamie Moyer and outfielder Rafael Palmeiro, who finished second in the National League in hitting (.307) and doubles (41) in 1988, his first full season in the majors. Since Palmeiro could play first, too, that left Rangers first baseman Pete O'Brien as trade bait. And the Cleveland Indians bit, taking O'Brien, infielder Jerry Browne and outfielder Oddibe McDowell in exchange for gifted second baseman, Julio Franco, a .309 hitter over the last three seasons.

Franco, in the Indians' view, had an attitude problem. After the trade was made, Texas manager Bobby Valentine says a number of his peers approached him as if offering condolences over the acquisition of Franco. "They said things like, 'Good luck with that one,' " Valentine says. All Valentine knew was that he was getting a superb hitter who looked like Lionel Richie, could steal 30 bases a year and practiced a work ethic that Valentine had come to appreciate late last summer when Cleveland visited Texas in fiery-hot weather and Valentine watched Franco work out in the weight room every day. But even Valentine had no clue that instead of an attitude problem he was getting an upbeat, animated clubhouse leader who would take under his wing the Rangers' best young player, 23-year-old slugging rightfielder Ruben Sierra.

"I saw the two of them shake hands the first day in spring training," says Texas pitching coach Tom House. "Pretty soon they were Mutt and Jeff." Franco, 27, who was born in the Dominican Republic, became the mentor that the Puerto Rican-born Sierra had been seeking. "He talks to me and I listen and I learn," Sierra says. And learns well: After 17 games. Sierra was hitting .375, with four homers and 15 RBIs—the fastest start of his career. Last April, he hit .167 and complained that he had trouble hitting in cold weather. Franco told him, "Don't worry about the cold. Just swing the bat." Meanwhile, Franco the Guru has led by example: His 18 RBIs at week's end were a team high.

The Rangers knew precisely what they would be getting in Ryan, whom they leapt at when he and the Astros had a falling out over contract talks. "No one expected him to leave Houston," Grieve says. "Scouts who saw him said there wasn't a significant drop-off from the way he pitched." Texas signed him in December to a guaranteed one-year, $2 million deal. "Forty percent of our additional budget went to Nolan Ryan," says Grieve. Ryan was an ideal complement to the Rangers' young starters—Bobby Witt and Kevin Brown, both 24, and Moyer, 26—who can learn from him, and he would provide an intriguing contrast to Texas's 41-year-old knuckleballer, Charlie Hough. One night an opponent sees Hough's 73-mph floater and the next, Ryan's gas. The addition of Ryan to the staff also allowed Valentine to put starter Jeff Russell in the bullpen as a closer.