Rangers fans, nearby businesses looking for long playoff run

If you’re looking for the Globe Life Park grounds crew to magically give the Texas Rangers home-field advantage, Devories Spencer said you’ll be disappointed.

While baseball lore is filled stories of tricked-up turf to help the team, Spencer, the assistant groundskeeper, said that isn’t true at Globe Life Park in Arlington.

“Some guys, from what I hear, like to keep it tall in the infield to slow down the ball,” Spencer said. “Some guys keep it short so it can play fast. We just keep it normal at 1  1/16th of an inch. It plays fine. It plays fast.”

The Rangers host the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 3 of the American League Division Series at 7 p.m. Sunday, not long after the end of the Dallas Cowboys’ home game against the New England Patriots at neighboring AT&T Stadium. The Rangers lead the best-of-five series 2-0.

While the more than 150,000 fans expected to attend the games will keep traffic and parking attendants busy, Spencer said it’s business as usual for the Rangers’ ground crew.

In fact, the fall weather conditions actually make it easier to keep the field in shape.

“It’s not too much of a change,” Spencer said. “The only thing different is painting the field and making sure the mound and the plate are in order.”

Elsewhere around the ballpark, bunting has been added to the balconies in the outfield and T-shirts urging the Rangers to “take October” have been stocked. New concession items, including a hot dog topped with cotton candy, will also be for sale.

Fans are encouraged to leave early and stay late to avoid traffic tie-ups.

‘It’s going to be nuts’

For the Rangers, it’s the first time to host a playoff game since losing to the Baltimore Orioles in the 2012 American League wild-card game.

Business owners in Arlington’s entertainment district welcome the postseason fun.

“Oh my Lord, it’s going to be nuts,” said Randy Ford, owner of J. Gilligan’s Bar & Grill.

The Arlington eatery expects to shuttle about 800 fans to the Cowboys game, then hopes some will come back and stick around to watch the Rangers on big screens afterward.

Ford said his mother, who does the books for the restaurant, noticed the impact the year after the Rangers’ last World Series appearance.

“We were down $25,000 the same week, and my mom asked what was wrong,” Ford said. “I told her: ‘The Rangers aren’t in the World Series. That’s what happened.’ ”

All reserved seats are sold out for Sunday night’s game. As of Friday, there were about 5,000 tickets still available for Game 4.

When the Rangers make a long playoff run, it can be huge for Arlington bars and restaurants.

In 2010, Sports Business Digest said the economic impact to Arlington was $7.5 million.

“Right now we’re hearing great things, positive things from our hotels, restaurants and attractions,” said Ronnie Price, president and CEO of the Arlington Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We’re very excited for the Rangers, and a World Series run would have a significant impact on not just the Arlington economy but the surrounding areas.”

At Humperdinks in Arlington, the restaurant is expecting huge crowds Sunday since it offers shuttles to both Cowboys and Rangers games.

“We are asking everyone to truly be patient,” said assistant manager Yoschico Anderson. “The one thing we’re afraid of is we might be tight on parking with so many people coming down for both of these games.”

If the Rangers keep progressing in the playoffs, Anderson expects Humperdinks to remain packed.

“I think it will be like last weekend, when it was shoulder-to-shoulder in here with everyone waiting to see them clinch,” Anderson said. “It could just be the beginning.”

A local crowd for baseball

While some area establishments may be crowded, the baseball playoffs aren’t expected to draw many out-of-towners.

The demand for Rangers playoff tickets is almost exclusively local, while Sunday’s Cowboys game has fans coming from all over, said Scott Baima, owner of Texas Tickets.

“They’re coming from Mexico, Arizona and the Midwest for the Cowboys,” Baima said. “There’s a lot of out-of-state interest.”

Blue Jays fans aren’t expected to travel in large numbers. Baima, for example, had only shipped four tickets to Toronto.

That shouldn’t be surprising, said Michael Davis, a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business who has studied ways to measure the value of publicly funded sports venues.

Davis said there isn’t a measurable economic impact from events like the major-league playoffs.

“What happens is you get a lot of spending at the ballpark on merchandise and concessions, but most of that money tends to go elsewhere,” Davis said.

The expense of tickets and spending at a game or partying at a sports bar tend to depress revenue at other venues.

“It may be good for those venues, but that’s money that’s not going to be spent somewhere else,” Davis said. “Whatever transient gain there is for those establishments, it’s somebody’s else’s loss.”

But Davis said there is an intangible benefit. A winning team can have a positive emotional impact on a community.

“It can help a city’s self-image and the way a city presents itself to the rest of the world,” Davis said.

‘Still waiting for the Rangers’

One local fan with ties to both the Rangers and Blue Jays won’t be making it to Arlington this weekend.

Randle Harwood, Fort Worth’s director of planning and development, is a Rangers season-ticket holder but also supports the Blue Jays.

A planning conference in Boston will cause him to miss a Rangers playoff game for the first time.

Growing up in Wiarton, Canada, about three hours of Toronto, Harwood, 53 was first a Montreal Expos fan and then switched to the Blue Jays when they started as an expansion franchise in 1977.

In the garage of his Fort Worth home, there are pennants of the Blue Jays’ back-to-back World Series championship teams in 1992 and ’93 along with a photo of the ’92 team, the first to win a World Series. But it’s all consigned to the garage since his wife doesn’t allow any Toronto memorabilia inside their home.

“We moved here in ’89, and when the Blue Jays won it all, I ran down the street with both the Canadian Maple Leaf and Blue Jays flags,” Harwood said. “Most of my neighbors having no idea what I was doing. Two little ladies across the street invited me over just to find out what I was up to.”

Make no mistake where Harwood’s loyalities are in this matchup — he’s pulling for the Rangers.

“I’m still waiting for the Rangers to win a World Series,” Harwood said. “It’s time.”

This story was originally published October 10, 2015 at 3:05 PM with the headline "Rangers fans, nearby businesses looking for long playoff run."