You never forget your first: For some, including Eric Nadel, ’96 Rangers remain favorite
For long-suffering Texas Rangers fans, this moment is hard to beat.
True, it didn’t result in a World Series berth, but it did give — finally and at long last — fans in North Texas a brief taste of what postseason baseball felt like.
The 1996 American League West championship was the first for the Rangers after 24 years of futility in Arlington.
They took sole possession of first place by May 1 and buoyed by an 18-9 record in May stayed there for the rest of the season. They held off the Seattle Mariners to win the division by 4.5 games.
“That’s may favorite team of all-time. They finally held on and won,” said the Rangers’ Hall of Fame radio voice Eric Nadel. “Several other times the Rangers had been in first place in the second half and never maintained it.”
Although the Rangers were beaten by the New York Yankees 3-1 in the ALDS, their first postseason will always remain special to fans (and broadcasters) who had been following the team for more than two decades.
The clincher came in classic Rangers’ fashion, too. Their Friday night game against the then California Angels at what was then called the Ballpark in Arlington went 15 innings. The second-place Mariners were playing the Athletics on the west coast. The Rangers could clinch with a win or a Mariners’ loss with two regular-season games remaining.
The Mariners lost 8-1 in a game that lasted 2 hours, 45 minutes. The Rangers were in extra innings tied with the Angels at 2-2 at the time.
Nadel’s broadcast partner and Cowboys’ Hall of Fame broadcaster Brad Sham was working the inning but, in a gracious move, let Nadel announce the special news to the listeners. The Rangers lost 4-3 in 15 innings but that didn’t dampen the excitement.
“We then had this huge celebration after losing a game, which was typical Rangers fashion because nothing ever came easy for the Rangers,” Nadel said.
The ‘96 team also holds a special place in Nadel’s memory because it was the first time he felt DFW came of age as a baseball town.
“I remember we came back from New York 1-1 in the ALDS and the crowd stood for every pitch of both games even though we had a night game on Friday and a noon game on Saturday,” he said. “That, to me, was the unveiling of Dallas-Fort Worth as a baseball town, the way the crowd responded for those two games.”
