Longtime Texas Rangers TV analyst will scale back schedule, not quite ready to retire
Just two days after the Texas Rangers traded Elvis Andrus, their longest-tenured player, one of their longest-tenured employees has laid the groundwork for his own departure.
Tom Grieve, the team’s TV color analyst who has been with this franchise for five decades, said he plans to reduce his schedule to 24 games in 2021.
Grieve will turn 73 in March and while his approach towards fitness and nutrition should be an inspiration for everyone, he just sounds like a guy who knows that time is coming.
“I don’t want to feel like I stayed around too long, but it’s getting there,” Grieve said in a phone interview. “I don’t want to feel like people are saying, ‘He’s ready to hang them up,’ but it’s probably getting close to that time.”
Whenever he does make that decision, the Rangers will certainly make it an event.
No one within the Texas Rangers, or Fox Sports Southwest, is going to make Tom Grieve leave on anything other than his own terms.
The Rangers said Tag can call games for as long as he wants.
Wise move considering that Mr. Ranger has a connection to every single generation of Rangers’ fans.
He has not made any decision if he will remain on for 2022, but reducing his schedule to 24 games for ‘21 means it’s just another logical step. Twenty four games is likely the minimum number of games a person can do and still be considered a “regular” broadcaster for an MLB team.
He still enjoys calling games, but he’s been around the game long enough to know there comes a time when someone else gets to do the job.
“When they first approached me about cutting the schedule back to 155, or 140, it was hard because I thought I had to go to the ballpark every day. That’s what I had always done,” Grieve said. “But then after I did it, I really liked [having that time].
“This is just enough games to feel like you are still a part of everything,” he said. “That’s what I want to accomplish; to be a part of the team, and still to be able to go to the ballpark. I like being on the field before the games, during batting practice. Talking to coaches. Talking to players. Talking to sportswriters.”
(Not sure I believe that last one, but I’ll take charity in whatever form.)
Grieve said he expects this will allow former Texas Rangers outfielder David Murphy to take on an expanded role during the telecasts with color announcer C.J. Nitkowski and play-by-play voice Dave Raymond.
On-the-field reporter Emily Jones recently announced that she signed a new contract to return for her eighth season.
Grieve’s original plan was to be in the booth for 46 games when the Rangers opened the new stadium in 2020.
About that. The Rangers did move into the new Globe Life Mall, but MLB’s COVID policies did not permit fans in the stands for the abbreviated 2020 regular season.
For those who were able to attend any game last season all shared the same sentiment: It wasn’t the same.
Before 2020, it wasn’t uncommon for a person to say about a game, “Man, nobody was there.” In 2020, we actually meant it.
It was one thing to say it, and quite another to live it.
“The players played as hard as they could. The games were real. They weren’t spring training games,” Grieve said. “The product was as good as it could be. The players will tell you with 40,000 fans your adrenaline is higher. You can’t force that.
“It’s the same for broadcasters. It wasn’t the same.”
Although Grieve battled prostate cancer more than a decade ago, he said that issue is well behind him and he’s in good health. Grieve works out daily, and his “moderation” approach to eating is something we should all follow.
But he’s also noticed that as he gets older, everything is not quite as sharp as it once was.
“When I fill out a scorecard, I used to just put in the guy’s last name,” Grieve said. “Now I write down both the first and last names. Just to make sure.”
There is another issue — the game itself.
The way baseball is played today is not having any effect on Grieve’s decision to reduce his schedule, or even eventually retire from the booth, but today’s MLB is not exactly a broadcaster’s dream.
Most broadcasters are not fans of a game that has become far more stationary.
“As far as looking down at the field, I don’t like what I’m seeing. It’s a walk, a strikeout or a home run,” Grieve said. “Baseball people are not dumb. They are doing what they think they need to do to win games. But the offense now is basically slow-pitch softball.”
Grieve was a first-round pick of the Washington Senators in 1966, and he became the Rangers Player of the Year in 1976.
After his playing career ended in 1979, he joined the Rangers’ front office and was named their GM in September of 1984. He remained in that job through the end of the strike-shortened season of 1994.
This will be Tom Grieve’s 27th season in the Texas Rangers broadcast booth, and he’s not sure if it will be his last.
It may not be his last, but 24 games feels like the right number.
This story was originally published February 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
