ARLINGTON - Here’s the thing about PR guys: They create and curate team Halls of Fame, they don’t populate them.
Then again, John Blake has always been one of a kind.
For nearly 40 years in Arlington - usually a bit disheveled, occasionally gruff, always prepared and exceptionally loyal to the franchise - it would be hard to argue that anybody has had a bigger hand in how the Rangers’ brand has matured. As the public relations man, then executive vice president for communications and lately public affairs, he has overseen the casting of virtually every story involving the team. He didn’t make the stories, but he spun them into myths when possible and managed them with honesty when crises arose (which was often).
He helped create a sense of history for a franchise that had none, establishing the club’s Hall of Fame in 2003 and entering it as an inductee 21 years later.
“I don’t know that there has been anyone in our organization who has worked harder, invested more time and put more heart and soul into the team than John Blake,” said no one less than Mr. Ranger himself, Tom Grieve. “And that includes players, coaches and executives.”
Which is why it’s hard to imagine that on Sunday the Rangers will honor Blake as he prepares to “retire from full-time employment,” on Nov. 1 after 46 years in baseball, 36 of which have been with the Rangers. Blake is expected to step back into a part-time and consulting role, though nobody around the club can quite find a way to put Blake, 69, and “part-time” into the same sentence.
As the club’s unofficial historian, he will continue to help build the team’s legacy initiatives, conduct a series of popular ballpark tours, oversee team publications and consult, particularly in crisis management (of which there has never been a shortage).
Blake did not comment for this story, because to do so, would have forced himself to become part of the story. And his working credo has always been to put the club first. That even applied to the kids. His kids. He was in Toronto in 1989, when his first son, Chris, was born six weeks early and in days before cell phones, he couldn’t get back. He was, however, at the appropriate movie, “Parenthood,” at the moment. When doctors were getting ready to let Chris go home, Blake first consulted how it would conflict with Nolan Ryan approaching his 5,000th strikeout.
When his daughter, Becky, was born three years later, he was sure to be there. It’s just that the C-Section was scheduled around the Rangers’ precursor to FanFest.
(Full disclosure: We’ve worked alongside Blake for most of the last 28 years, consider him a friend, his wife of 46 years, Harriet, an unofficial saint of the Greek Orthodox Church, and the kids family).
It’s hard to put into words the sense of duty he feels to the Rangers, but allow us to try. After 20 years with the Rangers, he was exiled by a GM and manager when he lobbied for more transparency and accountability and fell into the dream job for a New England-born, prep-school reared baseball fan as a vice president with the Red Sox. Won a World Series there, too. Then, a year later, when Ryan became the Rangers president, his first call was to Blake, asking him to return. And he did.
“Working at Fenway was always a dream for him,” Harriet said this week. “But it wasn’t meant to be. The Rangers have had their ups and downs, but he loved working for the Rangers. He adores them.”
We should stop here to mention that Harriet, a former editor at The Dallas Morning News, met Blake when they were both students working at campus newspapers at Georgetown in the 1970s. At the time, Blake had also been a manager for the Georgetown football team, covered high schools for The Washington Post, worked in the press box for the Baltimore Orioles and was studying to be an international diplomat (his degree is International Politics).
Perhaps the only thing that stopped him from a career of mediating international disputes was mediating the equivalent of one on the Georgetown campus. After a banner with a vile racial epithet was hung in the Georgetown gym directed at new basketball coach John Thompson, Blake wrote a column defending the new coach.
Not soon after, Thompson was recruiting Blake to run the school’s sports information department and help on the radio broadcasts. Worked out OK. The Hoyas won a national championship while he was there. Though Blake may be one of the only color analysts in NCAA history to pick up a technical for shouting at the referee. His trademark call: “Break out the raincoats! Here comes the hose job!”
The Georgetown gig became part-time when he landed with the Orioles. He’d go from basketball season, into spring training where he occasionally had to round up wayward Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver, who could drink into the night and argue into the morning. He spent six years with the Orioles. Won his first World Series ring, too. He was well-entrenched in the “Oriole Way,” when the Rangers called the then 29-year-old about becoming the second PR director in the club’s history.
He got a quick course in what to expect. On the day he arrived for his interview, he picked up a paper to read a report that the Rangers were about to fire GM Joe Klein, one of the people with whom he was supposed to work. Went through the interview anyway. He was offered the job the same morning the Rangers announced Klein’s firing. And he still accepted the offer. Came back three weeks later to look for housing and get a feel for the environment. Still not yet on the payroll, with Blake in attendance, California’s Mike Witt finished off the season by throwing a perfect game at the Rangers.
Blake leaned over to then-Dallas Morning News beat man Tim Kurkjian and asked: “Are all the games here like this?”
And he still took the job. The Rangers became a better organization for it.
“We were a major league team,” said fellow executive vice president Chuck Morgan, one of a handful of employees who have been with the club as long as Blake. “But we became a little more major when he got here. He’s got an unmatched work ethic and a passion for the game that is even better than mine. He reveres the game.”
“There was an emphasis on doing things right,” said radio broadcaster Eric Nadel, who preceded Blake by five years and became a Hall of Fame broadcaster thanks in part to Blake’s belief in him and loyalty to him. “You know that when he is in charge, everything was going to be done with the utmost efficiency. When he came here, he saw it as a challenge to bring things up to big league caliber. It became a labor of love to build that and then maintain it.”
He oversaw the arrival and ascent of Nolan Ryan from mere mortal to pitching god (helped, of course, by two no-hitters after the age of 40 and the all-time strikeout record). He helped create excitement about not one, but two, new stadiums and hyped, not one, but two All-Star Games, as well.
On the crisis front, there was always something to manage. Just consider this run from 2009-14: An All-Star recovering alcoholic who showed up in photos at a local bar, licking whipped cream off a woman; a manager acknowledging drug use to his team; a pair of internal power struggles; and the sudden resignation of the same manager for infidelity. And all of the principles involved end up still beloved by Rangers fans. Pretty impressive crisis management.
“There is nobody better in a time of crisis,” said former Rangers GM Jon Daniels, who didn’t work with Blake until three seasons into his own tenure and still spent more time with him in a GM-PR relationship than anybody else. “He was such a stable resource of good judgment and understanding and how things would play.
“He loves the game, loves the community and what is in the best interests of the team. The first day of spring training, he’d introduce his staff to the team and say: ‘We are here for you.’ And it was true and authentic. He earned the trust of everybody around. He truly has the organization and your best interests at heart.”
At times, that meant getting combative with media.
“My second favorite John Blake story is after every postseason win we had, just seeing the pride he had in the job and the organization; it made us know how invested he was in us,” said Michael Young. “My favorite was anytime he’d blow somebody up. We’d all laugh hysterically. We knew it was out of loyalty.”
About the Blake dustups, there were many. And they could be directed at the performance on the field, too. Nobody took losses harder. Grieve remembers an occasion in his first year as GM when he was sitting next to Blake in the press box, where emotions of any kind are generally frowned upon, and the Rangers blew a late lead. Grieve sat in silence as the game ended. Until Blake slammed his fists on the counter.
“It was hard enough that my arms flew up off the table,” Grieve said. “It told me how much he was invested.”
His loud voice became a drop on The Ticket, when he’d finish off interviews with Yu Darvish, shouting “questions in Japanese?” His “cut” motion became a meme after TV cameras caught him delivering one to play-by-play man Dave Raymond when an in-booth interview with just-retired Adrián Beltré went too long.
Drops and memes. The modern way to immortalize funny, awkward moments.
“Beyond a distinctive exterior, John has used his extreme intelligence, savvy and PR acumen to elevate the Rangers for decades,” said Rich Rice, his patient, long-time assistant who has succeeded him atop the Rangers communications department. “He has made this his life’s work, and his contributions to the club are immeasurable. There will never be another John Blake.”
Well-said. Or, as Blake himself, would put it: “ANY MORE QUESTIONS!”
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