Beltre’s historic blast brightens mood on dark and stormy day for Rangers

Adrian Beltre altered the course of storms on a rough day for the Texas Rangers and lead his team to an 8-3 win in the process.

On Friday, just after midday and a half-dozen or so hours before the team started its final three-game home series of the season against the Seattle Mariners, general manager Jon Daniels informed manager Jeff Banister that he’d been fired.

Don Wakamatsu, who will serve as interim manager for the remainder of the season, also tried to project a positive tone. This, despite the fact that he will have just 10 games, none of which matter one iota in the standings, to prove he deserves to be a top candidate to replace the man who brought him into the organization before the start of this season.

The fact that the Rangers have lost their last four in a row and 11 of the past 15 games doesn’t help matters, either.

Since he took over in 2014, Banister helped this team win two division titles and was named the American League Manager of the Year in 2015.

In 2015 and 2016, his teams failed to make it out of the first round of the playoffs before the rebuild began. Sources said a rift gradually developed between the players and the manager, which might have cost Banister his job in the end.

The largely indifferent reactions from the players in the clubhouse before the game reflected that.

Still, Beltre said that he and his teammates would follow the leaders of the club, whomever they might be. And he certainly lived up to that promise.

“Obviously, it was a weird day, a lot of stuff going on,” Beltre said. “A lot of rain, but we survived this day and we’re going to come back tomorrow and try and do it again.”

Before the game, Globe Life Park was drenched with heavy, scattered downpours. It was the kind weather that looms and lingers.

But in the first inning, with runners on second and third, Beltre cracked an opposite-field home run just over the right-field fence that got an excited reaction from the dugout and a strong reaction from the brave 29,420 fans in attendance who risked getting soaked.

Beltre’s home run, the 476th of his career, gave him sole possession of 29th place (passing Cardinals legend Stan Musial and Pirates icon Willie Stargell) for 30th place on the all-time home run list.

But Beltre wasn’t done. In the bottom of the third inning, he went down two strikes in the count, fouled off the third pitch and eventually drew three straight balls to push the count full. The 21-year veteran then managed to bloop a cutter into shallow right field that scored the runners on second and third.

The two-run single, which pushed Beltre’s career RBI total to 1,703, allowed him to pass Reggie Jackson and Jim Thome for 22nd place all-time.

The likely future Hall of Famer went 2-for-3 with five RBIs and two runs scored as the Rangers led 8-3 before the game was delayed and eventually called by the umpires after a lengthy delay in the seventh inning due to what can best be described as a torrential downpour.

More importantly, his offense seemed to provide a spark to his teammates. Six Rangers batters had at least one hit and three hitters had at least two.

By the time the game was called, the team had accumulated nine runs off of eight hits.

On the mound, Connor Sadzeck, Ariel Jurado, Eddie Butler and Alex Claudio collectively surrendered nine hits and three runs.

Of course, the man who likely appreciated Beltre’s presence the most was Wakamatsu. It was, after all, his first major league win as a manager.

“We don’t know how much longer he (Beltre) is going to be here, this year, next year, or whatever it is,” Wakamatsu said. “(We) don’t ever (want) to squander that, the ability to talk to him and get that leadership. There’s ten days left and there’s still time to talk to him.

“Hopefully, he’s back. We’ll find out. He’s a special player that comes along once in a lifetime.”

After the game, Beltre said he was “honored” and “humbled” to be be in such historic company as Thome, Jackson, Stargell and Musial. At the same time, he wasn’t thinking about this lost season, a fired manager or the team’s long road back to contention when he lifted the clouds over the field and the organization with that first-inning home run.

“In a situation like that I always want to come up big, but I wasn’t thinking about that,” Beltre said. “I was thinking about trying to do my job. I hit in the middle of the lineup and my job is to produce.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2018 at 10:32 PM.