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Details of Texas Rangers’ World Series tell story 52 years in the making

Corey Seager: “The effort made to tell the stories and bring back memories was fantastic.”

ARLINGTON – Sure, it’s enormous. It’s Texas. Of course, it’s enormous.

The Texas Rangers waited 52 years to slip World Series championship rings on their fingers. You think they were going to go for understated? It has 450 bits and points of diamonds, rubies and sapphires totaling 13 carats of gemstones. It weighs more than a baseball. For crying out loud, it’s got a reversible top, you know, in case you need to match the face of the ring to an outfit. As if anybody is going to wear this outside.

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Mostly, though, what it has are stories. Yes, diamonds are precious. But so are memories. And the rings the Rangers handed out to players and travel party members ahead of Saturday’s 11-2 throttling of the Chicago Cubs were full of nods to 2023. Every ring is meant to tell a story.

Every ring-wearer has one to tell, too.

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About the stories, one sec. First, let us tell you that the 2024 Rangers lineup does, in fact, bear a resemblance to last year’s group of bashers. Corey Seager had four hits on Saturday. New Ranger Jared Walsh, who acknowledged being a big “jealous” watching the ring ceremony from the dugout, had three, including a homer. The Rangers scored six runs in the eighth inning to blow it open.

GM Chris Young’s own story had led him to put together a team dinner and ring reveal Friday. On the day he got his ring with Kansas City in 2016, he was the scheduled starter. Was handed the ring. Went to warm up. Lost the game. And when he went back to his locker afterward to look at it, it was a bit “anti-climactic,” he said. He wanted his players from 2023 to know what the ring symbolized. And there was reason to include the new guys, too.

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“The players deserved an intimate setting to see them and get the stories,” he said. “I wanted to celebrate 2023 and kick-start 2024. I wanted them to get the full story, the explanation and to feel special. I hope it was special for everyone.”

Well, let’s check with Mike Maddux.

The plain-speaking pitching coach, in his 43rd year in professional baseball, finally got a World Series ring of his own. He has made 11 holes in one on the golf course in that time. He now has the same number of World Series rings as his brother, the Hall of Famer.

Among those who received rings Saturday, the unique element to Maddux’s story was this: He’s the only man in uniform who’d also been in uniform for the Rangers’ two near misses in 2010 and, more painfully, 2011. Among this ring’s features: Three diamonds on the side with the recipient’s name that symbolize the Rangers three total trips to the World Series. He’s lived them all.

The ring and the ceremony left Maddux a blubbery mess, so to speak. He found himself momentarily quoting J.D. Salinger and Barry Gibb, neither of whom ever had a fastball to speak of, but one wrote The Catcher in the Rye, the other authored the Bee Gees’ first hit.

“There is a little completeness to this,” Maddux said. “All that grind going on year after year chasing the dream. I always talk about that last out of the season like Holden Caulfield’s sister, Phoebe, in Catcher in the Rye. We get on that carousel and try to grab the ring. That personifies my baseball career up to last year; always chasing that dream and to finally get hold of that ring.”

And of the ring, literal, rather than literate?

“It’s breathtaking,” Maddux said.

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“It kind of mends a broken heart,” he added, harking back to the past. “I think the Bee Gees wrote that song ‘How do you Mend a Broken Heart?’ By winning a championship.”

For Corey Seager and Max Scherzer, two of three returning players to have already won a ring, there was also a level of more completion. Scherzer won in 2019 with Washington, then got his ring in the mail when any pomp having to do with the 2020 season fell to COVID restrictions. Seager won in 2020 when the season was trimmed to 60 games because of COVID.

“It’s the same thing to be the last team standing,” Seager said. “You go through trials and tribulations no matter how long the season is, but being the first one for this organization and the ring being a reason why you came here, that’s special.”

The ring also told a story to Seager. Because he’s blissfully oblivious to just about everything not having to do with the game at hand, he was not aware of one aspect of the symbolism in the Rangers’ ring. He knew the Rangers had won 11 straight road games in the postseason. Just wasn’t aware they were R-O-A-D games.

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The Rangers’ record postseason road winning streak is called out on the ring. When the top is flipped up, it reveals an outline of the USA, complete with the Rangers’ travel path from the final week of the season through clinching the World Series.

The Texas Rangers' 2023 World Series ring. The championship rings were created in...
The Texas Rangers' 2023 World Series ring. The championship rings were created in collaboration with Jason of Beverly Hills.(Courtesy: Texas Rangers)

Across the top of the outline is R-O-A-D, the acronym formed by taking the first letter of the nickname of each club the Rangers beat during the playoffs: Rays, Orioles, Astros and Diamondbacks. For fans, it’s become a well-known factoid in the wake of the postseason. But, for Seager, it was all new.

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“That was really cool,” Seager said. “They did an outstanding job with this. The detail and the stories are amazing. The effort made to tell the stories and bring back memories was fantastic.”

That was his view even before receiving his actual ring.

Two hours later, he was handed one. He stood next to Marcus Semien, a first-time ring-winner, on the infield during the ceremony. They opened the lids to the jewel boxes and stared at them again. And they both smiled. Wide.

“It’s just emotional because of all the hard work that we put in, day in and day out last year,” Semien said. “[Owners] Ray [Davis] and Neil [Leibman] kept telling us how nice they would be. They weren’t lying at all.”

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Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant

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