Rangers manager’s roots run deep in Texas

He spent most of the last 29 years out of his home state playing and coaching in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, but Jeff Banister never really left Texas.

When the 51-year-old was named the Texas Rangers’ 18th full-time manager last October, it was more than a professional dream come true. It was also a homecoming. He’ll finally manage the game he loves, in the state he loves.

“He’s wanted to be in professional baseball ever since he was very young,” said Banister’s mother, Verda Rowland. “That was his sport. He played football and other things, but baseball was his sport, always.”

Growing up in La Marque, just north of Galveston, off Interstate 45, and about 38 miles south of downtown Houston, Banister was the son of a high school coach father and math teacher mother. A coaching job for Bob Banister brought them to La Marque in 1970, when Jeff was 6. His sister, Carey, was three years older.

“Even as a little boy, he’s had that confidence about him,” said Carey Kneupper, who lives in nearby League City. “He was just always a confident little boy. Probably when he was able to put that into words was after all his injuries.”

Blue-collar town

La Marque is just west of Texas City and Galveston Bay, where oil-refinery plants that helped build the area into one of the largest seaports in the world dot the landscape with flames shooting from smokestacks and smoke billowing into the sky.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, when Banister was attending La Marque High School, it was one of the premier school districts in the state, Verda said. By the mid-’70s, over 17,000 lived here. That number has dropped to fewer than 15,000 in 2013, and the high school, once in Class 5A, is now 4A Division II.

The town’s blue-collar toughness and local pride helped shape Banister as a youth. His stern but fair upbringing by parents who were well-known throughout the community also fostered his leadership qualities. But it was a battle with cancer while he was a sophomore that created Banister’s enduring outlook on life.

He spent much of a year in and out of a hospital while doctors diagnosed Banister with bone cancer and osteomyelitis (an infection of the bone) in his left ankle. At one point, doctors thought they’d have to amputate below the knee.

“It made him stronger,” said Verda, who took off from work, using donated sick days from fellow teachers, to be with her son throughout the ordeal. “All I did was encourage him to fight, fight, fight. And that’s exactly what he did.”

He recovered and earned a scholarship to Lee College in nearby Baytown. There, he suffered a career-threatening injury during a home-plate collision that left him paralyzed from the neck down for 10 days.

“I worried about that for years because every time he went out on that baseball field, I worried about him getting hit and that starting all over again,” Verda said. “It was one of those fears that he might injure that leg and it might be over with.”

And not just his baseball career, in Verda’s mind, but his long-term health. But Banister fought back and earned a scholarship to the University of Houston in 1985.

Force field of friendship

Greg Roach and Banister have been best friends since the third grade when they played peewee football together. As they grew into their teens they became inseparable. Roach eventually earned a football scholarship to Kilgore College and spent 30 years as a police officer, much of that time working in undercover narcotics in Tyler. They were the best man in each other’s wedding and their friendship has only deepened over the years, despite being separated by careers, family and daily commitments.

As Banister was waiting to board a flight for an interview with the Rangers last fall, he called Roach, who was shopping with his wife at a T.J. Maxx in Tyler.

“I was just walking through the halls and thinking, man, what a deal that would be if he made it,” Roach said. “I told him, ‘It’s just a matter of time. Somebody is going to have to give you your big chance.’ He was ready for it. He paid his dues. I know he’s going to be a good manager. Arlington is real lucky to get somebody like him. He’s a Class A fella.”

Even as a kid, Banister vowed to make it to the big leagues one day, Roach said. His battle with cancer only made him more determined. His brief paralysis after that collision only made him tougher.

“He talked about his dream of making it to the major leagues all the time,” Roach said. “He was going to make it to the major leagues. He fought and just stuck with it. His love for his wife and his kids is just unmatched. I look up to him so much. I know we’re the same age, but I’ll tell you what, I’ve never loved another guy like I love this one.”

Devastating loss

When Bob Banister died suddenly in January 1988 at age 48 from a heart attack after working out, it shook the Banister family to the core. Jeff, then 24, took his father’s death harder than anyone. Losing his father — his coach and his hunting and fishing partner — was devastating.

“It was very hard on him, I’ll tell you that. But he was very strong through the whole thing to help his mother and his sister,” Verda said. “We believe God has a plan for all of us. That was His plan. I think it made Jeff a better man. It made him so strong and so determined to do what he wanted to do.”

For much of their youth, Roach was an extended part of the Banister family. Bob Banister was his football coach and served as another father figure. The loss hit him hard, too.

“Jeff looked up to his dad like a god. His dad had that stern demeanor. He kind of had that poker face. He’d stare at you and you could never figure out where he was going,” Roach said. But Bob Banister also took them fishing and duck hunting. He routinely took Jeff and Greg to breakfast at Kelley’s Country Cookin’ just off I-45. Greg remembers being “scared to death of him” out of reverence.

“I played like I never ever wanted to disappoint him. I always wanted to play my best for him,” said Roach, who played linebacker, punter and kicker for Bob Banister, who was coaching the linemen for La Marque High School at the time.

But the elder Banister also liked having fun, too. He took the boys hunting and fishing throughout the waterways around Galveston.

“When they worked, they worked very hard,” said Verda, who remarried in 1989. “And when they played, they played very hard. That’s the way his father and I both were. We were very serious and tried to be strong disciplinarians, but when we played, we all played.”

Thunderstorms swept through town on the day of Bob Banister’s funeral. Afterward, Greg and Jeff walked the neighborhood, trying to sort out their feelings.

“It was just such a shock. He seemed fine and, the next thing you know, he’s gone,” Roach said.

The death of Bob Banister still makes the family emotional after all these years. For Jeff, the fragility of life, something he had already experienced, strengthened his resolve to fulfill his major league dream.

“The first time I saw Jeff coach, when he walked on the field, it was like watching my dad,” said Carey, her voice cracking. “He’s a lot like my dad. He was very quiet. He had this huge presence about him, just like Jeff. I think everybody respected him, which Jeff got from him. They respect their players. They get to know their players as individuals. They both want to see what makes them tick and respect the coaches around them.”

The loss of their father “blindsided” the family, Carey said.

“It didn’t change him, but it made him even more determined to get where he wanted to be and be the man that he was always striving to be and that my dad wanted him to be,” she said. “That ‘never, ever quit’ [credo], since his injury he’s lived by that.”

Having her brother come home to Texas sent her “over the moon,” Carey said.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am. I believe in him 100 percent. He’s the kind of guy that is going to succeed,” his sister said.

This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 5:16 PM with the headline "Rangers manager’s roots run deep in Texas."