"Legends are born in October" is Major League Baseball's postseason marketing slogan this fall.
And it's as fine and true as, well, a Nelson Cruz home run in an edge-of-your chair playoff game.
The Texas Rangers thought they were making history last year when they won their first pennant and the first-ever World Series game on the home field in Arlington.
But this year, they've been birthing multiple legends for the ages.
Their second trip in a row to the biggest show in baseball? As the legendary Yogi Berra might have said, "Who'da thunk it?"
The Rangers, of course -- those guys for whom October won't be complete without the title every ballplayer dreams of.
The new movie Moneyball explores the theory that winning baseball involves evaluating players through complex statistical formulas.
But real life demonstrates that succeeding in the postseason is about craftiness and survival, timing and field smarts, gut checks and pure, wonderful luck.
Managers take calculated risks.
Balls take the craziest bounces.
Pros running on fumes and want-to after more than 170 games in seven months find reserves of adrenalin and grit that are, well, the stuff of legend.
In the American League Championship Series, the one for the pennant, the motor-city teams from Arlington and Detroit gave fans more than their money's worth.
Two 11-inning games.
Twenty home runs between them, including Cruz's walkoff grand-slam in Game 2, something not even the greatest Hall of Famer had done in a playoff.
Leads that almost never were safe in nightly tests of will and skill.
In Game 5, the Tigers' Justin Verlander presented his PowerPoint on how the American League's best pitcher shuts the door when someone weaker-kneed might have let those Texas guys come crashing through.
But on Saturday, in Game 6, the Rangers showed how hitters with a seriously contagious case of momentum can tear apart a pitching staff.
That nine-run third inning punctuated a weather-perfect night at Rangers Ballpark with a "World Series here we come!"
There was Michael Young, who the Rangers almost ran off before the season started, driving in five runs in the pennant-clinching game, including a record four RBIs off two doubles in a single inning.
There was Cruz, whose timing was knocked off by a hurt hamstring in September, hitting a record six homers and driving in 13 runs in the series, more feats never before done in the major leagues.
There was almost everybody in the Texas lineup getting on base Saturday, blunting any damage from Detroit's four home runs.
There was manager Ron Washington, strutting in the dugout with the spirit of confidence that permeated his team.
After last year's World Series loss to the San Francisco Giants, Rangers outfielder David Murphy said they'd "use this terrible feeling we have in our stomachs right now as motivation."
It's clear they're still hungry.
Nobody's safe.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/10/16/3448844/texas-rangers-rewriting-baseball.html
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