T.R.'s Memoirs: Best shape of your life? Out of an abundance of caution, read these Texas Rangers spring tales
A major-league spring training takes too long and forces players and writers to find their own fun.
Editor’s note: T.R. Sullivan covered the Texas Rangers over 32 years for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and MLB.com and is sharing his “memoirs” with this newsletter. Spring training is upon us and T.R. shares a few memories of spring training. Just a few. There are many, many more.
A crime wave swept over Sarasota County on Friday.
Crockett and Tubbs weren’t called in, but a deputy sheriff was on the ball to arrest Texas Rangers pitchers Mike Jeffcoat and John Barfield for trespassing while fishing.
Those were the lead paragraphs to the first story I ever filed from spring training. This was back in 1989, when the Rangers were still in Port Charlotte, Fla., and I was in my first year as a Rangers beat writer.
I was the backup to Tony DeMarco, who kindly let me do the police beat my first day in camp.
You see, Jeffcoat and Barfield decided to do a little fishing on a six-acre lake just off I-75 north of Port Charlotte. Unbeknownst to the two Arkansas natives, the lake was on private property.
That’s when Barney Fife showed up. Crockett and Tubbs were Miami Vice.
“I figured they’d give us a scare, fine us $50 and let us go,” Barfield said. “But they frisked us, fingerprinted us, took our picture, the whole thing. That’s a hardened criminal, when you get busted for fishing.”
Actually, the big story of the day was Nolan Ryan. He made his first start of the spring against the Pirates and was pulled after one inning with tightness in his left hamstring. Ryan was supposed to pitch four innings, but the hamstring had bothered him at the end of the ’88 season when he was still with the Astros.
The Rangers decided to play it safe.
“I don’t look at it as a setback,” said Ryan, who had signed with the Rangers as a free agent that winter. “I came out before I did anything bad to it.”
The Rangers wanted to error on the side of caution.
Or they wanted to use an abundance of caution.