After more than 50 years with the Texas Rangers, Mr. Ranger will call his final game
Because the state of the Texas Rangers remains in the “Greek Tragedy” phase of their 50-year, multi-stadium rebuild, you likely missed that one of their most credentialed, and celebrated, figures is at the end.
Not Jon Daniels.
The Rangers haven’t given their fans many reasons to tune in this season, but watching Tom Grieve call his final game is a good one.
The man we all call TAG is ready to touch the proverbial home plate for the final time.
On Wednesday, when the Rangers host the New York Yankees in the regular-season finale at Globe Life Mall, Tom Grieve will call his last game as part of the team’s television broadcast.
It will end Grieve’s 55-year run with the Texas Rangers.
He is 74, in good health, and ready to be retired.
“I am not one bit anxious about it,” Grieve said in a phone interview. “I know this is the right time to do this. I sensed when my playing career was over. I sensed when my time as a general manager was over. And I sensed when this was over.”
Anyone who has ever broadcast games, or pretty much worked in any profession for an extended period, should heed Grieve’s refreshingly honest assessment about his own performance.
“You’re just not as sharp, and I found that I am worried about remembering names, or getting tongue tied,” Grieve said. “I don’t want to take a single chance of broadcasting games, and people saying, ‘Tom is still doing it but he’s not quite what he used to be.’”
Over the last few years, Grieve steadily decreased his work load. He called 20 games this season.
In reducing his schedule he realized he wasn’t quite as familiar with the team, and the league, as he had been for decades.
He also realized he liked doing other things besides going to the ballpark.
“You’re just not in the middle of it like you always were; there are so many new people around, and that’s great but it’s not the same atmosphere,” he said. “When I used to fill out a scorecard, I knew every single player on both teams. I’d only put in the last name.
“Now, there may be 10 players per team whose names I don’t know anymore.”
The irony is Grieve never intended to be in the broadcast booth.
He came to Texas when the team relocated from Washington in 1972. He joined the team’s front office, after his playing career ended, in 1979.
He would later go on to serve as the team’s general manager, a position he held from 1984 to 1994. In his tenure the team enjoyed, at that time, its best moments.
After the ‘94 season, team president Tom Schieffer, and owners George Bush and Rusty Rose wanted Grieve to step down because they didn’t feel like they had “won enough.”
They wanted Grieve to remain with the organization. Grieve wanted no part of a role where he’d be hanging around the new GM.
“Somehow broadcasting came up,” Grieve said. “It hit me, ‘I know I can do that. Why not?’” That was 28 years ago.”
In that time, players come and go, but Grieve was a constant.
For a lot of people who follow the Texas Rangers, Tom Grieve was their guy.
“As these years have unfolded I realized more fans know me now as a broadcaster than they did as a player, or GM,” he said. “Some of them don’t even know I was the GM.”
In these years as a broadcaster, he connected with Rangers fans in the most genuine methods. He was himself.
He spoke of the fans he met, by name, and would graciously eat the cookies, on air, or whatever else that they may have baked for him.
The relationship with these fans, and this area, started about 50 years ago.
In 1972, a family from Grand Prairie befriended Grieve. They owned a gas station, and bought season tickets behind home plate.
After a game that season, Grieve was walking to his car when a 10-year-old boy ran up to him to hand him a cake.
German chocolate. Grieve wanted to thank the boy’s mom, but she was a little shy.
He eventually met the family, which started a friendship that endures. The Grieves were routine guests at their house for Christmas dinner.
They helped caring for each others’ kids when possible.
There are others like this. Countless pen pals Grieve made.
“I will never be able to express the heartfelt feelings and appreciation I have for the fans,” he said. “I will never be able to truly do it the way I want to, and that is to express my appreciation for the people.
“It’s been heart warming and I’ll never be able to say thank you enough.”
After Wednesday’s game, Tom Grieve will leave the Texas Rangers, but he will always be Mr. Ranger.
