Woodward: The End of the Season

Tomorrow marks the end of the regular baseball season (and the season, period) for the Texas Rangers. Time to go into hibernation until spring training. (Well, not quite. I guess I'll stay awake and watch the Phillies win the World Series.)

To be a baseball fan in Dallas is to cultivate, of necessity, a taste for the kind of goofy (yet somehow endearing) existential optimism exemplified by MLB.com's account of the Rangers' performance this season:

"The victory allowed the Rangers to clinch second place in the American League West for the second straight year after eight straight seasons of having finished no higher than third."

Ah, yes, the coveted AL West Second Place Trophy. Again. One word of advice to all you struggling major-league clubs out there: Before accepting Lucifer's offer to make you the "Team of Destiny," find out exactly what destiny he has in mind.

I don't mean to sound bitter. The Rangers gave me some genuinely thrilling moments this year, and some reasons (I think, I hope, I pray) to look forward to next year (when we'll be defending our second-place title with everything we've got). But I worry about how long a place like Dallas-Ft. Worth can keep on going without a pennant and still preserve any semblance of being a baseball town. It's not like we have a century-long tradition of being a loser. We're not Chicago. Or Boston. When it comes to professional sports, we're used to instant gratification.

I try to post either at the beginning of each baseball season or at the end. So I'll close out Baseball 2009 with a recent picture of Michael Young (my middle daughter's favorite player) tagging out the Angels' Erick Aybar at third:

...and a suggestion to Vehige about adding this to our reading list: