I hate to break it to you, but this is has going on for a few years now. I remember this happening to a group I was with awhile back. Apparently, Rangers games are for the quiet family that bring granny and the kids out for their one Rangers game of the year, not the die-hard, passionate baseball fan. It's a beating to be Rangers fan sometimes.

Similar thing happened to me and a friend a few years ago, I think it was Showalter's last season, and we had commissioner box seats, and at the end of the game there was a blown call on a call-out at first that went against the Rangers and Showalter runs out and turns his cap around and starts barking like a mad dog at the ump. It was a close game, so the crowd was loud. Everybody is standing, jumping, screaming, and this security guard came up to us and told us to calm down! I don't get it. Apparently you're not supposed to get too excited for your team.

What is wrong with the Rangers?

Well to start out, I will tell you that I am going to go on a RantPage here on several fronts.

To begin, the baseball is broken. Fix the baseball and everything will fall into place.

But in the mean time, while we are squandering ballgames due to the fact that we virtually didn’t change or bring in any quality relief to help out the starters AT THE END OF THE GAME and not the middle to late innings.

If my memory is correct, Randy Johnson has been available several time in recent years as a Free Agent. If my memory serves me right, Nolan Ryan was at the end of his career and was able to pitch five quality seasons on top of that and achieved several milestones while in a Rangers uniform and he brought credibility to the face of the franchise.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why we didn’t bring him in for his experience and his service to help these young pitchers the way Nolan did 20 years ago. Oh yeah, Nolan also taught “The Big Unit” a thing or two as well when he was starting out.

Attendance is on a downturn right now. Many will say it is the economy, some will say it is the construction on IH-30 and many agree that the product on the field is to blame as well.

My opinion is that it is the experience at Rangers Ballpark as well as some economic factors.

Remember when we all complained about $5 parking at Arlington Stadium? Well not really, it was only expensive for one person to drop a Lincoln to park and attend a game. When you had a buddy or two or three riding with you, it was no big deal. Today, trying to split $12 between all of the riders in your car is a little more complicated and you come off as an A-hole when you ask your buddy in the 5th or 6th inning for that couple of bucks for parking by asking him to buy you a beer.

What do you have to lose if parking is $5 all the time? Or, even $7 or $10? Seriously? What do you have to lose by getting people into your parking lot to come to a game to drop money in your park?

As far as experience goes, it is hard to get up or excited for a game when there are a bunch of empty seats. Right?

Rangers Ballpark in Arlington is really about 10,000 seats too large for this team and pretty much has been since its opening in 1994. Not to say that the Yankees and Red Sox and Opening Day and July 4th won’t sell those seats out, but is it really necessary to see them empty for 95% of the games just to sell them 5% of the time? Maybe if “The Unit” was here, we could raise that percentage to 10% of the time

One suggestion would be to tear out the club and upper reserved seating in Left Field and put up a State of the Art scoreboard that this ballpark and its fans deserve.

I am pleased to see the improvements made by the Rangers this offseason to the Ballpark, but feel that they went with the lowest bid and have thought to myself, did they really need to spend the money the way they did for what they did to call it an improvement?

The problem before was that the fans in Right Field couldn’t see the replays because the Outdated Video Board was above them on top of the Home Run Porch.

Well from what I have seen so far, they still can’t.

Another problem was that the line score and count boards were flickering more than a tree in Rockafeller Plaza at Christmas.

This problem is essentially the only thing that was improved upon. No more flickering and they are placed on the board thru out the park.

But as a long time fan for more than 30 years, I feel that what made Rangers games a great experience have been watered down or done away with completely.

For starters, the Rangers were the first to sell Ballpark Nachos. Made world famous by then ABC Monday Night Baseball commentator Howard Cosell, he was absolutly amazed at the complimentary dish served to him in the booth one night while ABC was in town for a game.

Today, the chips are thrown into a plastic bowl flat so that if any cheese is put on them, they are only on the chips on the top. Now they are more commonly served with chips and the cheese comes in a portion cup on the side. The last time I checked, this was called chips and queso and not nachos.

Score one for watered down and zero for tradition.

Another thing that was considered a Rangers original is the Dot Race. Other teams followed the creation by having the Chicago City Transit Bus Races at Comiskey Park and more recently, the Sausage Race in Milwaukee with real people in sausage costumes.

The Rangers in their infanite wisdom decided to cave to “marketing wizards” and Ozarka Water by doing virtually the same thing that someone else did to answer “OUR” Dot Race by copying them by putting kids in a costume. Ozarka has put a new spin on “watering down” a Rangers Original and tradition.

I am only going to ask one question on this next topic. Why in the hell would any parent take their kid out to the ballpark only to get as far as the Coca-Cola Wiffle Ball Carnival in center field? Well make that two questions. How is the future Rangers fan supposed to be knowlegable about the team if they are out there begging for money for tokens to hit wiffleballs and throwing their arms out on a speed pitch get up?

I always begged my dad to buy me a shiny new blue Rangers replica batting helmet with a bright white ‘T’ and a red bill. That was still money in the Rangers pocket and I got to advertise the team when I left the park.

It is kind of hard to immitate your favorite player when you can’t see him.

Wiffle Ball is to be played in one place and one place only. That is in the back yard with your friends or even your dad. Not at Rangers Ballpark while professionals are playing the real deal on a real field.

Today, we the paying fans haved to deal with flying plastic balls and have to dodge swinging yellow wiffleball bats in the stands while trying to watch a ballgame.

To my next concern. As far as Traditions and the Rangers brand image or experience goes, for 22 seasons, when the last out of the top of the seventh was made, there were no announcements, there were no directions or instructions, there was no time wasted. The only thing was the sweet sounds of a fiddle and “The Cotton Eyed Joe”.

Fans knew exatly what to do and for the next 90 seconds, longer if there was a pitching change, as a “Hoe Down” swept through out Arlington Stadium with strangers dancing in the aisles and untold friendships made and personal fan traditions created all because they were not told and instructed to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”.

Do I like the song? Sure! But I like it at Wrigley Field or Fenway Park and before the game. Not when it is done like other parks that center their energy around putting their arms around the person next to them and sarcastically sing a song that should be sung before the game or on your way to the game. Much like the writer of the song did on a subway train in New York.

Cotton Eyed Joe is a Rangers experience that kids born after April 11, 1994 have never known. Of course, they wouln’t know about it because they are too busy playing wiffleball and swatting each other with yellow bats while their parents are at their seats watching the game.

Another Rangers Tradition that I miss is hearing the games on “The Voice of the Great Southwest, News Talk 820, WBAP”.

Not until 15 years ago and for a brief time in the first two years of the franchise, the Rangers have been on KRLD. In between, they were on the 50,000 watt voice of the Great Southwest. The station ID is still fresh in my memory, “Rangers Baseball. A Texas Tradition, from the first pitch, to the last out, all season long. News Talk 820 WBAP. Fort Worth, Dallas.”

That voice carried straight through cinder block walls and downtown skyscrapers and under bridges and, well just about everywhere a radio could be tuned through out the Greater 48 States, LITTERALLY.

To help that effort out, they had the Rangers Radio Network that carried games to New Mexico, Arizona and Utah to the west and Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi to the east and Oklahoma to the north. Today, if each one of those states represented one radio station today, they would make up 1/6 of the stations that now carry them, IN ONE STATE!

This has greatly hampared the loyal listeners and followers of the Rangers not only across the United States, but right here in the Rangers own back yard.

I love listening to the games in stereo on KRLD 105.3 The Fan, but that isn’t going to help anyone in Utah, Arkansas or Mississippi or even 50 miles outside of the Metroplex.

Remember growing up and going to the game with your Mom and Dad, just your dad or your buddies at the Old Arlington Stadium? Remember how fun it was to just drop a few bucks for parking and a bleacher ticket? Getting cheese on your fingers and licking it off or maybe your girlfriend letting you lick it off of her fingers? Remember getting up and making a fool of yourself during the Cotton Eyed Joe but you didn’t care because everyone around you was doing the same thing and the guys in the TV truck made sure that the audience at home saw you doing it? Remember hearing the sweet clear sounds of Dick Risenhoover, Mark Holtz and Eric Nadel on your back porch, in the back yard, at the Little League Park watching your kids or riding in your dad’s Oldsmobile?

That is Rangers Tradition. That is the Rangers Experinece that no longer exists today with the Fair Weather fan that thinks nachos are chips and cheese in a cup, paying a pretty penny to take their kid to a park inside of a park, ONLY TO SPEND MORE MONEY to take home a plastic bat that they could easily get at any Wal-Mart.

Bucky Nance- Fort Worth, TX

Read what I had to say about it on Tuesday.

http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=324&f=2068&t=4222634