Seasons Where History was Made

Sports fans in this area this year can relate to a line in a Rolling Stones song. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you'll find, you get what you need". Fans of the cowboys and rangers before the year the baseball and football seasons started were seeing visions of the first time ever of a team (the cowboys of course) playing at their home stadium in the superbowl and were wondering if the Rangers would ever be sold to Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenburg and doubting the Ranger motto this year "It's time". This year showed why sports is better than the movies or television. What happened to both the Rangers and Cowboys this year could not have been imagined or scripted. In both good and bad ways, fans saw history being made.
First the bad. The Dallas Cowboys at this point in the season are a pathetic 1 and 7. They have given up more than 30 points in the last 3 games. Not since the cowboys expansion team of 1960 has this ever happened. In the history of the NFL, or any other sport for that matter, I cannot think of one team that had such high expectations that performed this poorly. There are so many reasons for this disastrous season and you could write a book the size of "War and Peace" if you wanted to list all of them but the primary one is that their owner/general manager and players bought into the delusion that wearing the star on your helmet makes you a privileged team that is above all other teams in the NFL regardless of commitment and character. The cowboys have already quit on this season so that's enough about these colossal failures, lets move now to the good.
The Texas Rangers for the first time in their franchise history made it to the world series. It would have been great if they would have won but unfortuntately ran into a San Francisco Giant team with a brilliant pitching staff. Great pitching once again beat great hitting but it will not take away the great memories the Rangers provided to their fans this season. The Rangers had the pitching and hitting needed to make it to the world series but the reason they did is because they played like a team. Watching every game this season, you knew no player was interested in his individual statistics or accomplishments. What mattered most was what the final score said and the Rangers made all the sacrifices necessary to get as many wins as they could. Every player had another player's back and was ready to pick someone up when they were down. The main reason the rangers were a great team is the decision Nolan Ryan and Jon Daniel made before the season started in keeping Manager Ron Washington. After Washington admitted to testing positive for cocaine last year most people (myself included) thought the Rangers front office was making a huge mistake in not accepting Washington's resignation and thought he would be a heavy burden on the team. Thankfully, the Ranger front office saw something in Washington that the rest of us saw as the season went along. Washington may not be the best strategic manager in baseball just yet but he has a quality that most other managers would give their right arm for. He gets his players to play their best for him. There are many managers whose players say they like him but Washington's players go a step further. They don't just say they like him, they say that they appreciate his honesty and that he always without failure has their back. This quality resonated throughout the Rangers this season and it was easy to see that the players weren't playing for themselves but for their team and all their fans. After watching the Rangers defeat the Yankees and win the American League Championship series, I felt that the Rangers did not just like their manager but would give their life for him and that he would do the same for any member of his team. Ranger fans like me will be feeling a great deal of gratitude to this year's Rangers team for a long time. We didn't get everything we wanted but we got what we needed and more than we've ever had.