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Swing onAs it turns out, it was June 20, 1991. I remember it fondly because of two facts: Rodriguez was 19 years old, which is young for a Major-League debut, naturally.
Also, I don't know if it was planned or sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing, but he got married that same day. Got hitched, jumped on a plane and was in Arlington by first pitch.
Things I didn't know: That 19 was really, really young to get to the bigs and that Rodriguez was one of the few players to jump from Double A to the Majors without a stint in Triple A. He hit .264 with 16 doubles, a lot of strikeouts and just five walks.
He went on to catch in 88 of the remaining 110 games in 1991. And never left.
Rodriguez, finding no team was interested in signing him, announced he would retire last week. Tonight, the Rangers will have a pre-game ceremony honoring arguably the greatest player in franchise history.
My first thought: Instant Hall of Famer. He's probably the best player the Rangers have ever had and he is no doubt the best catcher in professional baseball in the 1990s and maybe ever.
My second thought: I wonder if there's clips online of Pudge throwing out runners.
It's hard to quantify why Rodriguez was such a popular entity so quickly for largely doing something so boring. We used to just hope that the Rangers pitchers would allow a hit or walk (they often would) just to see if they would try to run off Pudge or take a long lead off first.
It would not be unlike us focusing our attention on the offensive line for the Dallas Cowboys or screens set by Dallas Mavericks centers. It was a facet of baseball that we never paid much mind (chicks do dig the long ball) because we had no reason to. Don Slaught, Mike Stanley and Geno Petralli were mustard compared to Pudge's salsa.
Nine times Rodriguez was first in caught stealing percentage and three other times he was in the top four. He won 13 Gold Gloves at catcher. Only Greg Maddux (18, pitcher) and Brooks Robinson (16, third base) had more. He has three more than Johnny Bench, and he's not going to get caught at least for a very long time (Yadier Molina has four).
Needless to say, it would be a dream to see Pudge play on these modern Rangers teams ... with this pitching.
What drove his popularity into the outer atmosphere was his ability to hit. It was not long that the strike outs dwindled and the average and power jumped. He is a career .296 hitter, which would've been higher had he hung them up in 2008 or so. He was stopped at 2,844 hits and 572 doubles.
He went to 14 All-Star games and won the MVP award in 1999 hitting 35 homers, stealing 25 bases, driving in 113 and posting a 1.042 OPS. As a Ranger, he was lynchpin for the franchise's first three visits to the post-season.
Afterwards, his production dwindled. He missed a lot of the 2000 season with a broken thumb. Between 2001-02, he played in just 118 games and missed quite a bit of time due to a herniated disk. That last year, he was a free agent.
This is when it got messy. Fans wanted Pudge back, to retire a Texas Ranger. The Rangers countered that Rodriguez's injuries would mount, that signing him long-term was not a good idea (Pudge was 30) and that -- something that proved erroneous -- he didn't work well with pitchers.
The next year, he signed with the Florida Marlins for a one-year, $10 million deal and won a World Series. He played in 144 games, drove in 85 and hit .297. He had 10 RBI in the NLCS, where he was named most valuable player.
Pudge played for another nine seasons jumping from team to team, whoever needed a backstop, with stints in New York (Yankees), Detroit, Houston, Washington and back to Texas. He went to another World Series in 2006 with the Detroit Tigers, where he was beaten by the St. Louis Cardinals, which sounds oddly familiar.
In 2007, Pudge had his last good year. He hit .281 with 31 doubles with his final All-Star appearance and Gold Glove. At this point, he struck out 96 times and walked nine times. He was 35.
It will be good to send Rodriguez off into immortality tonight and in a few years when he's inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
More so, I think this is a turning point for the Rangers. Pudge is the first player -- the first true Ranger -- to sort of move on into a true post-career mode. Nolan Ryan wasn't really a Texas Ranger as much as he was a California Angel or Houston Astro. Johnny Oates was a good manager, but he also came into town when the team had three MVP candidates and a pretty salty offense.
Pudge should be, soon, the first real Ranger number to be retired. The No. 7. Sorry, David Murphy. It needs to go up and it needs to go up soon.
And the Rangers also need to make amends for the 1990s teams. We celebrate the modern incarnations as if the Rangers have never had a winning season. Those 1990s were fun, too. I realize that the stink of steroids is rampant. However, tucking those players away like dirty socks is no way to move forward.
Time to start acting like a baseball town.
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