I Believe In Baseball Santa

Dear Baseball Santa:

Okay, look - I know people normally drop their letters to you before December 25th, but I have it on good authority that you spend your post-Christmas decompression period in Arizona. This means you’ll be close enough to Surprise to fulfill each of these wish list items for me (Since you didn’t come through on my original wish for my own nuclear silo / bunker complex, you can consider this a “make good,” Herr Jolly.).

As a Rangers’ fan, here’s my wish list:

Pitching. Like every beauty pageant contestant asking for world peace with their one wish, Rangers fans wish for pitching. So, there.

A muzzle for Tom Hicks. It seems like every time Tom Hicks has talked to reporters in the last six years, he’s said something that fans don’t want or need to hear. There’s a yearly mantra of “If you people would come to more games, we would get a higher payroll.” (We know how the economics of it work, Tom, but laying down that gauntlet won’t make anyone happy.) There was the comment of how much better Liverpool football fans were than North Texas hockey or baseball fans. There was the disclosure of how much money he had sitting on the table for Mark Teixeira to return as a Ranger, only to be shunned. Really, Tom, we don’t want to know. (If we can’t get Hicks a muzzle, can we at least get him a handler who stands over his shoulder and whacks him in the back of the head with a rolled up newspaper when he’s preparing to say something stupid? No? Okay, stick with the muzzle.)

Validation for John Daniels’ trade skills. I have defended Daniels to everyone who questioned each big move he’s made. I defended the Chris Young / Adrian Gonzales trade to San Diego, because it brought us Akinori Otsuka. I defended the John Danks trade to Chicago, because the scouts must have seen something in Brandon McCarthy that made him look like he was Danks, one year sooner. Now, I’m having to defend him again in sending Volquez to Cincinnati for Josh Hamilton. Hamilton’s not a pitcher — he’s a centerfielder, and time will tell just how good he is. (Don’t care about the battle back from drug abuse, or about his size 19 feet. If he stays clean and doesn’t step on my cat, I’m fine with him.)

Continued health and happiness for Michael Young. The whole Rangers world revolves around Young these days — which is great. Regardless of the accolades writers and coaches pile on him, I still think Young is one of the most undervalued player in the major leagues. You could start to hear the frustration in Young’s post-game quotes last year, including this gem around the time of the Teixeira trade:

“I’m not trying to guess what I think a rebuilding process is — I know exactly what it is. I’ve been a part of it.”

When Young is firing on all cylinders (which has been every single year he’s been in a Rangers uniform), this team has a better-than-zero chance of winning every game. Whatever it takes to make him happy, this organization need to do it.

A resurgent Hank Blalock. When Ron Washington came on with the Rangers, he said he was taking on Hank Blalock as a project. “Hank Blalock is mine,” Washington said. “I’ve got Hank. I’m going to make Hank better.” No one wants to see that prediction come to pass more than me. Whatever is off in Hank’s game needs to get fixed. If Young is the heart of this team, Blalock was once the soul. That needs to come back.

Real, dominant starting pitching from the farm system. We’ve heard from a lot of baseball writers the Rangers have one of the strongest farm systems in baseball right now. Time to see a good harvest. This does not mean power-hitting infielders, or “role-playing” relievers. It means dominant, hungry starting pitchers who want to come hard-charging out of the dugout and seven solid innings. (This may sound like I’m doubling up from the first item on the list. Sue me, big guy.)

A home post-season win. Okay, I know this may be the hardest thing to get the elves to manufacture, but one of my fondest memories as a Rangers fan was watching the Rangers beat the Yankees at Friday’s Front Row in 1996. Remember how that one win carried baseball fandom in this town for years? Imagine what it would do to see one here in town. (I could ask for more wins, even advancing in the playoffs… but I don’t want to seem greedy. It is, after all, Christmas.)