Road Warriors
Texas 5, Arizona 0
Let’s talk for just a moment about how incredible, how absurd, how spectacular, and how unlikely it was for the Texas Rangers to do what they did. I don’t exactly mean win the first World Series in their history.
I mean, instead: Win 11 postseason road games in a row.
Eleven-game road win streaks happen every now and again. They’re rare, sure, but they happen. Early this year, in fact, the Phillies won 13 consecutive road games, matching the all-time team record and matching the 15th-longest road win streak in baseball history.*
*The longest, by the way, belongs to the 1983-84 Tigers — mostly the 1984 Tigers. The 1983 Tigers won their last four road games, highlighted by a three-game sweep in Baltimore. But then the ’84 Tigers, you might remember the incredible start they had that year, won their first SEVENTEEN road games, a crazy thing that had not been seen in baseball since the 1916 Giants of Fred Merkle and John McGraw. The funny thing about that Giants streak: They literally won them all in a row; they went on a TWENTY-ONE game road trip in May and won the first 17.
But an 11-game road win streak in the postseason? Unheard of. Ridiculous. Impossible. Here you are playing (presumably) the best teams in the game, and you’re playing in front of bananas crowds and uninhibited energy and …
Well, OK, that’s not how it started. The Rangers won their first two road games in Tampa Bay, where for any number of reasons the place was half full and the energy gauge was probably a quarter full. The Rangers breezed in both games, and there really isn’t much more to say about that.
Game 1: Texas 4, Tampa Bay 0
Game 2: Texas 7, Tampa Bay 1
But then the Rangers went to play in Baltimore, a city that had been waiting for an Orioles team like this for very, very long time. The Orioles had won 100 games for the first time since Earl Weaver was manager, and they’re young and exciting, and I don’t know that Camden Yards had been quite as electrified as it was since Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s streak.