Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers are a professional baseball team based in Arlington, Texas. The Rangers are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League. From 1994 to the present, the Rangers have played in Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. more...

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The "Rangers" name originates from the famous law enforcement agency of the same name.

An expansion franchise, the club was founded in Washington DC in 1961. Then the Washington Senators (not to be confused with the Washington Senators that left DC after 1960 to become the Minnesota Twins), the team moved to Arlington in 1972 and became the Rangers. The Rangers are one of four teams to have never played in a World Series, having never won a league championship.

Franchise history

Washington Senators

When the original Washington Senators moved to Minnesota in 1960 as the Twins, Major League Baseball decided to expand a year earlier than planned to stave off threats of lifting its antitrust exemption. At the winter meetings that year, it awarded new teams to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.. FAA administrator Elwood Richard Quesada led the 10 man group that bought the Washington franchise. The new team adopted the old Senators name, but was (and still is) considered an expansion team since the Twins retain the old Senators' records and history.

The team played the 1961 season at old Griffith Stadium before moving to District of Columbia Stadium (renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969) on East Capitol Street and the Anacostia River.

For most of their existence, the new Washington Senators were the definition of futility, losing an average of 90 games a season. Frank Howard, known for his towering home runs, was the team's most accomplished player, winning two home run titles.

Quesada knew very little about baseball; he once wondered why he needed to pay players who didn't belong in the majors. He also agreed to a mere 10-year lease at D.C. Stadium--something that would come back to haunt the Senators later. In 1963, Quesada sold his 10% stake in the club and resigned. Washington stockbrokers James Johnson and James Lemon took over as chairman and vice president, respectively; they bought out the remaining owners two years later. Johnson took the team's massive financial losses philosophically. However, he died in 1967, and Lemon sold the team a year later to hotel and trucking executive Bob Short, who outbid a group headed by Bob Hope. Short named himself general manager, and hired Hall of Famer Ted Williams as manager.

This seemed to work at first. Although Williams had never coached--let alone managed--at any level of baseball, he seemed to light a spark under the once-moribund Senators. Williams kept them in contention for most of the season; their 86-76 record was the only winning record in the franchise's first 12 years. What no one knew at the time was that this record would not be approached again until 1977--the franchise's 6th year in Texas. The year also saw the second-best recorded attendance in the history of baseball in Washington; 918,000 fans flocked to RFK Stadium.

Read more at Wikipedia.org