Sad day in Rangerland.
Former Arlington Mayor Tom Vandergriff, the driving force behind getting a major league baseball team to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, died yesterday at the age of 84.
Gerry Fraley has a piece on how Vandergriff's efforts incurred the wrath of President Lyndon Johnson, who told Vandergriff that Texas should only have one team, the Astros, and President Richard Nixon, who was opposed to the Washington Senators leaving Washington.
Strange though it may seem now, Judge Roy Hofheinz, owner of the Houston Astros back in the 60s, was adamant that the entire state of Texas was "his" territory, and fought hard to keep major league ball out of the Metroplex.
Bill Conlin put former Ranger Juan Gonzalez on his HOF ballot, which is interesting because, as T.R. Sullivan points out at BTF, Conlin famously didn't vote for Nolan Ryan for the Hall of Fame, claiming that first ballot elections should only be for the most elite of players.
Which leads one to wonder...does Conlin think Gonzalez is more worthy than Ryan? Or is Gonzalez getting a vote from Conlin in the first year because he's got a good chance of dropping off the ballot after this year?
Or was the non-Ryan vote simply a cynical attention getting ploy?