Celebrity World Blog

SAN FRANCISCO -- Once upon a time, almost three decades ago, the Texas Rangers' franchise was such a moribund, laughingstock of a baseball organization -- whatever could go wrong did go wrong -- that the team was literally dubbed "The Texas Strangers."
The idea was an offshoot of the more than two-month strike that idled baseball in 1981. With no baseball to fill the sports pages, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram decided to create the "Strangers." Stories and notes columns ran about the fictional team, peopled with odd characters -- many based on real players -- spewing baseball clichés.
It wasn't as though the Rangers, in their first decade in Texas, hadn't already provided plenty of fodder for such an undertaking. By that time such on-field characters as Billy Martin, Mickey Rivers and Dock Ellis had worn a Rangers uniform and even owners like Brad Corbett and Eddie Chiles were bigger-than-life personalities, making headlines at every turn.

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Ever the personality, Dock Ellis' pink hair curlers may have been responsible for Eddie Stanky's one-game tenure as Rangers manager.A despondent Corbett once called his players "dogs, on the field and off." Eddie Stanky took the manager's job in 1977 and left after one game. Some speculated that the sight of Ellis in pink hair curlers in the clubhouse was more than the old-school Stanky could bear.
Chiles once put armed guards at every entrance to old Arlington Stadium to keep the media at bay on an off-day while the players, coaches and manager Don Zimmer, who couldn't help rolling his eyes, went through a day-long management seminar, stressing personal and team goals.
A former Rangers beat man, Mike Shropshire, penned a book about the Rangers' dismal early years and dubbed it "Seasons in Hell." He even 'fessed up to bringing a grocery sack full of weed to camp one spring, becoming the team's unofficial dope supplier.
"Strangers" indeed.
The Star-Telegram parody was done so cleverly -- staffers actually posed as players, wearing baseball uniforms -- the series, which continued for many weeks, garnered attention on national newscasts.
The Rangers were such a sad-sack franchise back then, fans and readers didn't know whether to get mad at the not-quite-gentle ribbing of the home team or simply chuckle along with the rest of the country. It was, after all, an amazingly witty concept.
Now, almost 30 years later, the Rangers stand on the threshold of a world championship, four victories away from the game's highest pinnacle. If they haven't already done it, four more wins should bury the memory of the scruffy "Texas Strangers" once and for all, making it simply another dubious and faded chapter in their colorful history.
The "Strangers" may still live somewhere deep in the hearts of longtime fans, but the new Rangers are on the verge of becoming world champions and changing the perception of this franchise forever.
"If we can win, I think it will put us on the radar screen on how the Rangers are perceived throughout baseball," owner/president Nolan Ryan said. "It could help us by attracting the attention of potential free agents who might not otherwise have taken us seriously."
This is the Rangers' fourth American League West Division championship, but they were previously dismissed from the playoffs so easily and completely by the New York Yankees, going 1-9 in those first three best-of-five playoff series in 1996, '98 and '99, that they gained little credibility from those brief postseason appearances.
Read more:Texas sheds 'Strangers' perception