ARLINGTON STADIUM

'Arlington Stadium' was a baseball stadium located in Arlington, Texas, located between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. It served as the home for the Texas Rangers (MLB) from 1972 until 1993, when the team moved into The Ballpark in Arlington (now Rangers Ballpark in Arlington).

Contents

History

History

The stadium was built in 1965 as 'Turnpike Stadium', a minor league ballpark seating 10,000 people. The Fort Worth Cats of the Texas League moved there as the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, and played there for the next seven years, setting many Texas League attendance records, especially after it expanded to 20,500 seats in 1970.
However, the stadium's real purpose was to attract a major league team to the Metroplex. It had been built to major league specifications; due to its location in a natural bowl, expanding it to big-league size would require only minimal renovations (such as connecting dugouts directly to the clubhouses). The Metroplex had been mentioned as a possible expansion site since the 1950s, and Arlington Mayor Tom Vandergriff figured that Arlington, halfway between the two cities, would be the best site for a prospective major league team.
In 1971, the struggling Washington Senators announced their intentions to move to the Metroplex as the Texas Rangers. The stadium was expanded to seat over 35,700 people, and was renamed "Arlington Stadium." It was the third former minor league park converted for use by a major-league team (not counting instances where minor-league parks served as temporary homes, after Metropolitan Stadium in Minnesota and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.
The park had a skeletal, jerry-built feel, and it was obvious that it had once been minor-league. An upper deck wasn't built until 1979; until then, fans entered at the very top of the stadium. It had the largest bleacher section in baseball, stretching from foul pole to foul pole. Unlike most stadiums built during this time, there were very few bad seats due to the field being 40 feet below street level.
However, it was by no means an ideal baseball facility. There was no roof, meaning that with the natural-bowl design, there was virtually no protection from the oppressive Texas heat. Other than nearby Six Flags over Texas, there was no neighborhood around the park. In his book ''Storied Stadiums,'' Curt Smith described it as "small, (but) not intimate."
The scoreboard in the Rangers' early days was shaped like the state of Texas, though was eventually replaced with a generic rectangle.
The stadium, though, had two advantages. First, before installation of a wrap-around scoreboard, the predominant gusty winds from the south would kill many fly balls that would otherwise have been home runs. Second, the large number of metal bleacher seats would come in handy on Bat Night, the promotional game where children under age 12 would receive (in most years) a real bat that could be pounded on the bleachers. As Bat Night would (in some years) be the only sell-out for the usually poor Rangers squads, the spectacle of 10,000-15,000 kids banging their bats all at once would create a deafening sound.

The stadium eventually began to show its age and inadequacy, and the City of Arlington approved the construction of a new stadium for the Rangers. The last game was played in Arlington Stadium on October 3, 1993, resulting in a 4-1 win by the visiting Kansas City Royals, witnessed by 41,039 fans. Following the 1993 season, the Texas Rangers moved to the nearby Ballpark in Arlington and Arlington Stadium was demolished in 1994. The foul poles and home plate from Arlington Stadium were moved to the new stadium, along with some of the bleacher seating. The bleachers are currently painted green, but their original blue color is occasionally visible in spots where the green paint has chipped. The Home plate was inserted into place At the Ballpark in Arlington by Richard Greene (then mayor of Arlington), Elzie Odom (then Postmaster General And later mayor of Arlington), And George W. Bush (then Governer of Texas And later president of United States). The location of the former stadium is now the farthest north parking lot of the current stadium.
Arlington Stadium never saw a playoff game or an All-Star Game, but was host to several of Nolan Ryan's greatest moments, including his 5,000th strikeout and his seventh no-hitter. Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. and Oddibe McDowell, were the only two players to hit for the cycle in Arlington Stadium.