Rangers bank on Jeff Banister’s never-quit way of life

In just about every market in the region where Texas Rangers games are shown on TV, Jeff Banister was there this off-season raising the Rangers’ flag.

He was in Round Rock, Waco and San Antonio.

He was in Lubbock, Oklahoma City and College Station.

He talked about the 2015 season in Fort Worth at the TCU Baseball Banquet, in Dallas at the Dr Pepper Awards Dinner, and in Arlington at a stop on the winter caravan.

Until Jan. 19, when right-hander Yovani Gallardo was acquired from Milwaukee, Banister rated as the undisputed biggest off-season addition for the Rangers, who in early September unexpectedly found themselves in the market for a new manager.

Banister was the choice from a list of candidates that numbered around 40 and included interim manager Tim Bogar, who went 14-8 after Ron Washington resigned without warning Sept. 5.

The Rangers aren’t short on All-Star players, some of whom are among the best in the game when healthy. Yet, the face of the franchise this off-season has been Banister, whose career managerial record is 0-0.

Moreover, the Rangers have taken Banister’s trademark Twitter hashtag from his @Bannyrooster28 account — #nevereverquit — and turned it into a marketing campaign.

It has been placed prominently on the team website. It’s available on T-shirts in the team store. Even shortstop Elvis Andrus has used it in his tweets.

If it looks like the Rangers are putting the cart before the horse, they are. But club officials believe in Banister, who is less than a week away from the beginning of his first spring camp as a major league manager.

Banister believes that never ever quitting, especially in the face of two life-threatening medical circumstances, has put him in this position and will make him successful going forward.

“Where did I come from? How did I end up in this seat?” Banister said. “It’s because I didn’t quit.”

Deep roots

The first time #nevereverquit appeared in a Banister tweet was Sept. 23, 2013, two days after he had used #neverevergiveup.

The tweets came as the Pittsburgh Pirates were fighting for a spot in the National League playoffs, and he felt the keep-fighting message might sink in better with the social-media-savvy players if they saw it publicly from their bench coach.

Though #nevereverquit began as a late-season rallying cry, it started decades earlier as a way of life for Banister, who was told to quit playing baseball after he needed reconstructive surgery on his right knee at age 14.

He heard the same warnings as a sophomore at La Marque High School when diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in his left ankle and osteomyelitis, a severe infection, and again a few years later at Baytown Lee Junior College after breaking three cervical vertebrae and becoming temporarily paralyzed from the neck down from a home-plate collision.

But Banister was still standing, still playing, still catching, now in the minor leagues, when his father picked him up from an off-season substitute-teaching gig the afternoon of Jan. 13, 1988.

Bob Banister, a football and basketball coach at La Marque, wanted to buy his son four new tires for his drive to spring training. A father-son conversation ensued, one that the son has never forgotten.

“When he picked me up that day, the whole way we started a conversation of, had I written down all the things that I’d been through in my life,” said Banister, who has the date tattooed on his left forearm.

“It was going to be important, that there was an impact to be made. He used the words to me, ‘Don’t ever quit on the people that invested in you.’”

Around 7:30 that night, Bob Banister was pronounced dead of a heart attack.

That’s where #nevereverquit began, and his father’s message is what it means. More than not giving up when times are tough, #nevereverquit is about honoring the people who have offered their support by not quitting on them in the face of adversity.

The roll call of people Banister won’t let down seems endless. He could spend all day naming names, an emotional task that often leads him to shed a few tears.

His dad, mom and sister.

Coaches, players and friends.

Even ol’ Doc Lockhart, the aging former Army surgeon who kept telling Banister to find another activity besides baseball after seven operations on his left ankle, the alternative to an amputation to stop the cancer, and in face of potential life-and-death consequences of his neck injury.

“People didn’t stop believing in me. Why? I don’t know,” Banister said. “It’s still emotional for me.

“There’s a whole trailer full that I won’t forget. At the end of the day, I won’t quit on their time, and I hope at the end of the day that they felt it was worth it.”

Banister lasted long enough in the Pirates’ organization to log one big-league at-bat, an infield single as a pinch hitter for Doug Drabek on July 23, 1991, for a Pittsburgh team that would win 98 times en route to the National League East title. Talk about another emotional moment for Banister.

His elbow blew out the next season, and coaching became his future. He managed for five seasons in the minors from 1994-98, going 299-330; served as the Pirates’ major-league field coordinator from 1999-2002; as minor-league field coordinator from 2003-10; and as the big-league bench coach the past 4 1/2 seasons.

Yes, Banister was told that he would never be a big-league manager. #Nevereverquit is also about being a bit of a hard case when others cast their doubts.

“I’d love to think that when people are telling you, ‘You can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t,’ there’s enough [attitude] in me … ” he said.

Relationship building

Banister’s hope is that the Rangers have a tick more, uh, attitude in them each night than their opponents, but it’s going to take more than a hashtag to instill it.

Each player is different, and Banister knows that. No facet of his job since he landed it Oct. 16 has been more important than trying to build a relationship and build trust with each player, and that will be heightened when spring camp opens Saturday for pitchers and catchers.

Banister must get the players to buy into his way and his message, but he can’t come across as a salesman. Players can sniff out bull quickly, and Banister needs to make sure he doesn’t step in it.

“It’s going to take more than conversation and me saying it,” Banister said. “If you’re going to believe in what you say, you have to live it, you have to talk about it, you have to model it. Showing up every day. Looking to have a better day than yesterday. Striving to be better at everything we do. No opportunity wasted.”

Rangers players became sold on Washington after seeing his passion and work ethic, and by the way he allowed them to patrol the clubhouse with minimal intervention. Banister won’t go about things too differently, though he will likely be more of a talker.

The players who have spent the most time around Banister this off-season are sold. They have learned of his back story and have felt his energy as he talks one-on-one or at various off-season events.

“When you get a guy like him that can communicate and bring the players together to pull in the same direction, I think he’s going to do that,” catcher Robinson Chirinos said. “He’s going to try to put everyone on the same page and with the same goal and try to pursue that goal.

“The way he talks and the way he sees this team, it means a lot to everybody. He wants to win, and so do we.”

When the team is together for the first time Feb. 26 and Banister stands before the group and launches into his first speech, he can’t miss. He’s heard the line about never getting a second chance to make a first impression.

But he also isn’t planning to tell his story. He will if asked, but he wants the players’ individual stories to be what drives them.

“Each one of us is unique in that we have our own story,” Banister said. “What I hope is that they’re comfortable with theirs and that they use it for motivation. Our story is part of what stokes our passion for what we want to do and where we want to go collectively.”

Going all in

General manager Jon Daniels understands the notion that making a first-time big-league manager the focal point of a team’s off-season marketing campaign is potentially setting up Banister and the Rangers for a mighty fall.

Daniels, though, also can make a strong argument that Banister was the Rangers’ biggest off-season acquisition. Plus, Fort Worth resident Gallardo was acquired too late to be a sales pitch.

While Banister is an unproven manager, his story is of a fighter and a winner. Who doesn’t like that? It even came with its own slogan.

“When your business side is charged with messaging and identifying what the messages are going to be, that’s one that resonated,” Daniels said. “There’s some risk of diluting it, but where it’s from and how genuine and pure it is, I’m not worried about that.”

Banister has embraced being the face of the franchise this off-season, making the rounds on the annual winter caravan, participating in a coaching clinic during Fan Fest, and speaking at various events.

But he has also uprooted his wife, Karen, and son, Jacob, from League City south of Houston to Keller. (Daughter Alex will be playing volleyball next year at Baylor.) Banister is 20 minutes from Globe Life Park, and he gets to live and work in the same city for the first time in his career after 29 years in the Pirates’ organization.

“That’s the coolest thing ever,” he said.

Banister also said that he wants to reconnect the fan base with the ballclub after a dismal 2014 and after disappointing finishes in 2012 and 2013. Part of that is being part of the community.

“I want them to know I’m in the corner with them,” Banister said.

So far, the fans have embraced him and his story. They have embraced #nevereverquit. He and the Rangers believe the fans will come to understand why it’s not just a trendy hashtag.

While #winsandlosses will become the way fans ultimately define Banister, no one will ever be able to say that #nevereverquit isn’t already quite a story.

“It’s who he is. He lives his life that way,” Daniels said. “It’s not an act.”

This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Rangers bank on Jeff Banister’s never-quit way of life."