Texas Rangers Looking Ahead to Globe Life Field
The Texas Rangers are preparing to open their second new home in Arlington, Texas in just over a quarter-century.
After taking a badly needed day off, the Texas Rangers get set for more inter-league play against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. This team needed a break after dropping three straight games against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim, California.
In the meantime, let’s look ahead just a few seasons to what comes next for the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas.
As a matter of fact, the Rangers will be getting a good look at life in the future when they take the field in Phoenix for a quick, two-game series.
Chase Field resembles the upcoming Globe Life Field in one critical way. It features a retractable roof that makes playing baseball in the swealtering heat of the summer possible. No, Dallas-Ft. Worth doesn’t get nearly as hot as the desert of Arizona, but its heavy humidity makes its mid-90s to 100-plus degree temperatures a respectable challenger, especially where the fan experience is concerned.
Having grown up in the Metroplex, I saw a few dozen games at the now-vanished Arlington Stadium and actually worked at a Dallas-Ft. Worth radio station housed in left-center field at The Ballpark in Arlington back in the mid-1990s.
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Let’s just say the heat in this part of the country delivers the same kind of sticky misery that hotter temperatures in Las Vegas can deliver.
The new Globe Life Field will finally end all of that.
A smaller capacity than the current Globe Life Stadium in Arlington might make for a more energetic environment than the spacious atmosphere going right now. Add in the fact that people won’t be leaving games early in July, August and September just to get hydrated in the shade and it’s a pretty safe bet that a different environment awaits in the future.
This had better be the case, given the expected price tag of just over $1 billion that’s going into this seemingly premature project.
I remember like yesterday watching the Rangers first game at the current Globe Life on television, never knowing I’d be working there in less than a year. It was the first year Nolan Ryan was not dressing with the team since sunset arrival in 1989. As you might expect, the Rangers lost to the Milwaukee Brewers and some guy named Dave Nilsson hit the first home run in the new park.
It was about as anticlimactic as highly anticipated baseball games go – remember that this was more than 15 years before Game 6 of the 2011 World Series in St. Louis.
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So, it’s always good to take a break to lament the past, but don’t forget to look at that horizon for the possibility of new things, especially when you know they are coming.
The new Globe Life Field is set to open in time for the 2021 baseball season.
- Published on 04/09/2019 at 13:00 PM
- Last updated at 04/09/2019 at 12:51 PM