ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Former Rangers president Tom Schieffer saw the 1995 All-Star Game at their new ballpark as being like a graduation ceremony for the franchise that already had been in Texas for more than two decades.
All of the pomp and circumstance was at The Ballpark in Arlington that had opened the previous season, the one that ended prematurely in August and without a World Series after players went on strike. The Midsummer Classic was Major League Baseball’s first signature event after that.
“The strike had such a devastating impact on baseball the year before, and so ’95 was kind of trying to get things back into a normal All-Star Game,” Schieffer said. “But also I think we really tried to make an effort to celebrate the game as opposed to it just being something just for the Rangers.”
Before opening their retro-style ballpark that featured nods to some historic venues, the Rangers called old Arlington Stadium home. That had been a minor league ballpark before the Washington Senators moved to Texas in 1972.
“Frankly, the Rangers didn’t have a major league ballpark before that,” Schieffer said. “And because of it, people really had a great reaction to it. And I think it changed the perception that the rest of baseball had about the Rangers.”
The club has since moved across the street and is now in the fifth season under the retractable roof at Globe Life Field. The All-Star Game will be held there Tuesday night, after the workout and Home Run Derby the previous day.
Schieffer was an early investor with a group that bought the Rangers in 1989, led by George W. Bush, before he was Texas governor and the 43rd president of the United States.
The following year, Schieffer was put in charge of ballpark development and negotiated a public-private partnership with Arlington that led to the stadium that hosted the first All-Star Game in the Dallas area.
“For the first time, the world really came to Arlington for a big event,” said Chuck Morgan, the team’s public address announcer for all but one season since 1983.
There never was a playoff game at old Arlington Stadium, where the biggest highlights were Nolan Ryan getting his 5,000th career strikeout on Aug. 22, 1989, two years before throwing his seventh no-hitter at age 44. Hall of Fame third baseman George Brett of the Kansas City Royals got the last of his 3,154 career hits in that stadium’s final game on Oct. 3, 1993.
A Super Bowl, an NBA All-Star Game, an NCAA men’s Final Four and the first championship game in college football’s playoff era (2014 season) have since been played nearby at the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys — another retractable roof stadium that opened in 2009.
The Rangers won their first World Series title last season. They also made back-to-back World Series appearances in 2010 and ’11 at their old ballpark that still stands and looks much the same from the outside, even though it can no longer host an MLB game.
After the Rangers’ final game there in 2019, the playing surface was reconfigured primarily for football, including artificial turf throughout and the removal of the visitors dugout and about a dozen rows of seats on what was the third-base side. The UFL’s Dallas Renegades, a Major League Rugby team and a Major League Soccer reserve team call the stadium home now.
MLB is utilizing the old ballpark this week as part of All-Star Village, and Schieffer hopes fans who enter the old park can relive some old memories and “just the love of baseball.” But he hasn’t been in there since the last Rangers game there, and he has no plan to go inside.
Schieffer said someone who visited frequently when it was a baseball stadium told him after the conversion: “Don’t go back. It’ll break your heart.”
“And I don’t want to do that,” Schieffer said. “We consciously built the ballpark so it could not be used as a football field. We didn’t leave enough space for it. When they changed it and made it a football field, they had to take part of it out.”
Schieffer prefers to cherish the memories of what he considered a baseball cathedral.
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