Home-field advantage benched at Globe Life
ARLINGTON — Mickey Mantle hit the first home run ever in the Houston Astrodome, which, granted, if the honors had to go to a Yankee instead of an Astro, at least it wasn’t Phil Linz. Even so, it set a tone, if not a curse: The Astros would never advance past the league championship series as long as they called the Dome home turf. Now, you might blame Spec Richardson, the general manager who wouldn’t know a star with a telescope, and, to a degree, you’d get no argument here. But mostly I blame Mickey Mantle.
Good news: Joey Gallo, you might recall, whacked the first homer at Globe Life Field.
Bad news: Corey Seager, who plays for the Dodgers, is the all-time HR leader at GLF.
Frankly, the karma wasn’t good when it opened last year, and it’s been one thing after another ever since, right up to Sunday’s 2-0 loss to the Padres to give San Diego a sweep of the weekend.
This all started last year with the delay of GLF’S much-anticipated debut because of COVID-19. The season played out to an abbreviated schedule before a cast of creepy cardboard cutouts, denying the owners their anticipated millions and overheated locals a place to weather the summer. Meanwhile, the Rangers weren’t even kings of their new castle. That honor belonged to the Dodgers, who celebrated a World Series title here.
The Rangers came in behind not only the Dodgers at home but the Padres, too. San Diego turned around its season in Arlington, and this weekend’s sweep proved the Padres still own the Rangers.
The Dodgers broke a 32-year-old drought by winning the first World Series at GLF, then Joe Musgrove took its center stage to throw the first no-hitter in the 53-year-history of the Padres.
Here’s a rule of thumb for you kids out there: Never make someone else’s history for them.
Rangers hitters weren’t much better Sunday than they were Friday, even after the Padres’ starter, Adrian Morejon, lasted just 16 pitches before leaving with a strained forearm. A half-dozen relievers held the Rangers to five hits over 81⁄3 innings, ruining a superlative effort by Mike Foltynewicz in his second start.
Folty bounced back from a four-inning, fourrun effort against Toronto to give up just one run on two hits and three walks over seven innings Sunday. To give you an idea of what the Rangers wasted, Folty became only the third pitcher in club history to take a loss after posting those kinds of numbers.
“You shouldn’t lose a game like that,” Chris Woodward said.
But crazy things happen to the Rangers these days. After starting the season with loud bats and lousy pitching, they’ve flip-flopped. In three games against San Diego, they were shut out twice and managed a total of 12 hits, pretty much an average night’s work across the street.
Speaking of which: Do you think all this bad karma could have anything to do with the fact that the Rangers’ spurned history still peeks over its shoulder? Even after a year, it’s still a little disconcerting to look out across left field and see Globe Life Park, in all its former glory. Like I wrote in GLF’S debut, the view seemed an odd feature of the new digs. Like hanging a portrait of your ex-wife in the living room.
Not that I have any complaints about GLF in general. I mean, other than the fact that it looks like a gas grill from overhead. Like your mother always said, it’s not what’s on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
Once you get past the fake grass and the birds’ nest of beams hanging overhead, it’s a great place to watch a ballgame. Or a rodeo.
Or a Weezer concert. Maybe the fact that it’s more of a special events center than a true-blue baseball mecca messed with the karma. They don’t call baseball stadiums “cathedrals” for nothing. You can stage whatever craven event you want in a football stadium and no one cares. Look what Jerry Jones has been doing in Jerryworld all these years.
Or maybe the problem is because the Rangers packed the house for the opener in the middle of a pandemic and keep packing them in. Sunday’s matinee crowd of 26,723 came in just under the average of 27,309 for the six-game homestand. The sight of 38,238 at Monday’s home opener, largest at any sporting event since the pandemic hit, most seemingly maskless, made national headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The Rangers touted their state-of-the-art ventilation system and the fact that they would open the roof when conditions allowed, hoping the assurances would mitigate concerns about the risks. Yet on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, they closed the roof because temperatures were projected to reach 85 degrees, like that’s unbearable here.
Considering everything that keeps happening — did I mention the governor jilted the Rangers in another headline grabber — does GLF seem like home sweet home?
“A hundred percent,” Isiah Kiner-falefa said. “We’re lucky to have a full stadium. It’s a cool opportunity for us and it’s making us better. “We’re very lucky.” Probably best to keep telling yourself that, IKF. Better than calling a curse a curse.
“We’ve got to keep playing. We’ve got to keep grinding,” Woodward said. “We just constantly talk about the game and what we’re doing, how we’re doing, And how do we improve.”