Wash bears most of the blame for Rangers’ failure

I always thought the 1961 Texas Longhorn football team was the school’s best, at least until the 1969 National Championship squad. That ‘61 team was far superior to the one that won the national title two years later. It featured three running backs who were the best trio to ever — ever — play for the Horns at the same time: halfbacks James Saxton and Jack Collins along with fullback Ray Poage. The quarterback was Mike Cotten. There were games when all four rushed for more than 100 yards each.

Texas manager Ron Washington

After winning the Southwest Conference, they were scheduled to play Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl. I attended all the practices leading up to that game. I didn’t have much else to do. It was the Christmas break period, but back then that break didn’t come between semesters and most professors loved to give major exams the first class session after the break. Not only that, I really had no place else to go. I was also a sportswriter for the school newspaper, The Daily Texan, which was daily in name only — it published five days a week during the regular school year and not at all during the Christmas break.

Anyway, I was out at one of the practices during the week leading up to the Cotton Bowl game and the offense ran this incredibly complex trick play that actually worked. After the practice, the two or three sportswriters who were there huddled around head coach Darrell Royal and asked him if he was going to use that play or one like it in the bowl game.

"Nah," he drawled. "You gotta dance with who brung ya," meaning the Horns were going to rely on the same dynamic running game that had been successful all season.

Now I immediately recognized that as I great quote and was silently screaming at the gods for not having a place to publish it. But it was published by the others who were there and it immediately became a sports truism and earned a permanent spot in sports lexicon.

I have been thinking a lot about that moment lately because if manager Ron Washington had followed it, the Texas Rangers might be the current reigning major league baseball champions.

For most of the season, reliever Neftali Feliz was the Rangers’ closer. It wasn’t Feliz’s fault that in the ninth inning of Game 6 Nelson Cruz badly misplayed a routine fly ball that allowed the Cardinals to score a pair of runs and send the game into extra innings. But then Josh Hamilton gave the team new life with a two-run homer in the top of the 10^th.

Why wasn’t Feliz on the mound in the bottom of the 10th?

This is the crucial moment in the Series. There is no reason to protect Feliz for a game the next day that should never take place. You think the Yankees’ Joe Giraldi would have pulled Manny Riviera had he been in this situation? Not a chance. You gotta dance with who brung ya.

I have yet to see an explanation from Wash on why he lifted Feliz. I’m not sure anyone has posed the question. I just hope general manager Josh Daniels and majority owner Nolan Ryan bring it up in their post-season interviews with Washington and that they receive an answer that warrants keeping Wash around another year as the Rangers skipper.

Not buying LaRussa’s communications story

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa is blaming this for last night’s World Series loss to the Texas Rangers. Here’s what happened: Right-handed hitting Texas catcher Mike Napoli hit a two-run double in the eighth inning off left-handed reliever Marc Rzepczynski to break a 2-2 tie — the last runs scored in the game.

Mike Napoli

LaRussa claims Rzepczynski shouldn’t have been in the game at the moment, that the bullpen coach warmed up and sent in the wrong pitcher. He said the crowd noise at Rangers Stadium was so intense that the bullpen coach couldn’t hear LaRussa’s instructions over the phone connecting the bullpen with the dugout. (Rangers Stadium is constructed in such a way that you can’t see what’s happening in the visiting team’s bullpen from its dugout, but that’s just one of the reason it’s called "a home field advantage." Another reason is local crowd noise.)

But I digress. There are those who say LaRussa is throwing his bullpen coach under the bus. One St. Louis columnist quoted someone in the Cardinals’ bullpen as saying LaRussa’s account "is not what happened."

But even if I give LaRussa the benefit of the doubt, I’m not buying his story. This is the World Series. This is the time when you wear both a belt and suspenders. The crowd noise/bullpen issue probably wasn’t much of a concern in the blowout Game 3, but I’m betting it was there in Game 4, which the Rangers also won. I have to believe that LaRussa meets with all his coaches after each game to discuss issues/problems and what can be done to address them. If the crowd noise was that much of an issue, it should have been discussed after Game 4 and addressed then.

But back to my "belt and suspenders" comment. Even if the noise wasn’t discussed, LaRussa, if he’s the genius who thinks of all angles like we’ve been led to believe, should have come up with a simple plan, telling his bullpen coach: "When I call you, be sure to repeat what I’ve told you. If you don’t hear anything from me, it means I have hung up because you heard me correctly. If you still hear my voice, that means get out your cell phone because I’m about to text you."

But Napoli did more than hit the crucial double. I thought his signature play was in the ninth inning when Rangers closer Neftali Feliz hit Allen Craig on a 1-2 pitch bringing Albert Pujols, the best hitter in the game today, to the plate as the tying run. But Felix not only struck out Pujols on a 3-2 pitch, but Napoli gunned down Craig trying to advance to second for a double play to empty the bases. (Napoli also threw out Craig in the seventh with Pujols at the plate in what was later described as a botched hit-and-run called by Pujols, not the coaches.)

By the way, has anyone else noticed how the won-loss pattern in this World Series is mirroring the W-L pattern of the NBA championship series? When the Rangers win this Series in six, I can’t see anyone other than Napoli being named the Most Valuable Player.

Little Leppert

In one of its preview stories on the baseball World Series, The New York Times paralleled the cities of Dallas and San Francisco through their contrasting mayors, Tom Leppert of Dallas and (someone I believe has a bright political future) Gavin Newsom of San Francisco. You can read the entire story here, but the editors also came up with pictures of the two in their younger days dressed in baseball uniforms. In Newsom's case, it was a shot from his high school days in Larkspur, Calif. What you see here is the picture the paper ran of Da Mayor.

Here's my favorite paragraph from another one of the paper's Series preview pieces:

"One ballpark sells T-shirts with the team logo superimposed over the symbol of the Grateful Dead. The other sells photos of the team owner wrapping Robin Ventura in a headlock. If you need to be told which is which, you’re probably not interested in this World Series, anyway."