Ivan Rodriguez retirement

In 1992, I was 8 years old, and playing my first season of little league baseball. After weeks of swinging at pitches and missing, playing only a couple innings a game in right field (a position coaches for young little league teams not so secretly put their worst player, in hope that the ball will never come to them) and threatening to quit everyday along the way. About 4 games in, I finally made contact with a ball (it went foul), a couple games later, I finally hit a ball that went fair up the third baseline. I made it to first in time to be safe, and much to my dad’s delight, the seeds towards my love of baseball, had finally been planted.

Not wanting to waste the momentum my first little league hit carried; my dad took me to the newly opened Charlottesville Toys R Us and brought me a pack of 1992 Topps baseball cards.  I opened the pack in the car, shuffled through them with great indifference, I handed the pack to my dad, who took his time looking through them. About 4 cards in he finally said something “Nolan Ryan.” “Nolan Ryan” I echoed, “I’ve heard of him.” And with that I made the declaration that Nolan Ryan was my favorite player and that his current team, the Texas Rangers, would be my favorite team. Sadly for me, Nolan Ryan’s career would only last 1 more season after 92.*

In 1993, I had become a much better baseball player, and was playing with one of my best friends on a team coached by his dad. Due to how much better defensively I had gotten, I got to play lots of different positions, including pitcher and catcher. I decided I liked catching a lot, and with the knowledge that Nolan Ryan career was soon to be over, I started paying more attention to the Rangers Catcher, a 21 year old All-Star named Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez**. I started collecting Ivan Rodriguez cards, mostly by way of buying packs, but also buying single cards of him, whenever I was at a card store and/or baseball card show, I would also trade with my friends when they got one in a pack.

From his rookie year at the tender age of 19, Pudge dominated the position of catcher, the way very few before him had. By the time he was about 24 he had no peers in the game as far as both offense and defense went, because he played on the Texas Rangers, a historically mediocre team (until the mid to late 90’s) with little fan base outside of the Dallas/Ft.Worth area of Texas and with even less main stream coverage. Most of his greatness went with much less fanfare than that of his only real catcher peer, Mike Piazza, who dazzled fans in L.A. and then Florida and New York with his home runs, and likable personality.

Pudge was one of the main reasons, the Rangers won the AL West in the years 96, 98, and 99 (all of which ended in ALDS losses to the New York Yankees). In 1999, he won the AL MVP with unheard of numbers for a catcher.***

In 2000, Ivan suffered an injury cost him a little less than half a  season, and the Rangers were never near as good without him, he put up more good numbers in 2001, but he was hurt a bit again in 2002, and the Rangers decided he wasn’t worth his free agent asking price, in fact, only one team (the Marlins) though a 32 year old catcher coming off injuries was worth his one year asking price. He thanked them by helping the Marlins young pitching staff win the 2003 World Series; Pudge was named MVP of the ALCS (although that probably should have gone to Steve Bartman, or really the fact that the Chicago Cubs, who at the time had a 3 games to 2 lead in the series, couldn’t recover from one fairly insignificant play)(it was a foul ball, for god sakes)

In 2004, Pudge signed with the Detroit Tigers, who in 2003 were coming off a season in which they had set the record for most losses by an American League team in a single season, by 2006, the Tigers were in the World Series. In 2007 Ivan Rodriguez would play in his last all-star game and win his last Gold Golve (making his total 14 for all-star games and 13 for gold-gloves)

In 2008 Pudge was traded to the Yankees for the second half of the season, then signed with the Houston Astros in 2009, where he played half a season before being traded back to the Texas Rangers for the rest of the season.

After signing a two year deal with the Nats, Ivan was able to catch Stephen Strasburgh’s major league debut game.

In 1997 by the age of 25, Pudge was a 5x all-star and gold glove winner, and outside of a run in with Pete Rose, was clearly heading for Cooperstown. This year is important for me because it was the year that I saw him play live for the first time, it’s also the year I got his autograph. Here’s that story, my dad and I were on are second father/son baseball road trip, in which we went to 5 different ball parks (St. Louis, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee, Chicago Cubs, and Cincinnati) in 10 days. This was the first trip I went on in which I brought baseball cards, hoping to get them autographed by players at the game. I had, had success in St. Louis with Dennis Eckersley (among others), but to me, this was the 2 hours before the game started that mattered most. I stood over the visiting teams dugout at U.S. Cellular field just hoping to get a glimpse of some of my favorite players. The other fans above the dugout and myself were able to successfully get the attention of a few Rangers players, some lobbing baseball towards us and other signing their names or just giving a wave and a hello. With about 20 minutes left before the game, Ivan had yet to show his face, and the ushers were starting to tell fans to go to their seats to get ready for the ball game. I stayed as long as I could just trying to see anything I could. Finally, I gave up and started heading to my seat, when all the sudden, the Chicago skies started to open up and a launch a July shower on us, it was pretty heavy for about ten minutes. After about twenty minutes of heavy rain, the sky started to clear and the umpires and coaches decieded it the game would start in about 25 mintues. About this time, my dad and I started to notice a crowd gather around the Rangers dugout, we started to walk down to investigate and it took me all of about four steps to realize who was causing the brouhaha. I yanked the backpack off my dad’s back and quickly grabbed the album of cards in it, I then raced down towards the crowd, even running through a fans damped sign like a high school football player at a homecoming rally, this caused the fan to throw a curse or two at me, but I didn’t care, I had a autograph to get. I made it to the line in record time and pulled out the first card board picture of Ivan Rodriguez I could find (a 95 score…if I had the time to pick and chose I would have chosen a 93 score all-star card). I held the card under my shirt to keep it dry and writeable as it was still raining a little and just prayed I could get to the front before he went back to the dugout.  Lady luck was on my side that night and I got up to the front, with kids and adults slamming against my back, jockeying for the next position, I told him he was my favorite player and thanked him as I watch him scrawl his name across the card from the bottom left hand corner to the top right hand corner. I thanked him and put the card and pen back in my binder and prepared to fight my way back up against the crowd who hadn’t gotten an autograph from him yet. As anyone who tries to get autographs at stadiums will tell you the worst part of it is battling the crowd, which is more or less a group of kids fighting for the same thing you are knowing that time is not on their side, it is like a mosh-pit of young kids (and some adults). And I have never felt like it wasn’t worth it no matter who the man holding the pen was. I have also been the person who was next to get an autograph when a player had to walk away. After I got to the autograph and walked back up with my dad to the top of the ramp, we stood and watched Pudge sign autographs for a couple more minutes before he had to go back to the dugout.

* This would also be the start of my sports card collecting days, which would last well into my early 20’s. By the end of the summer of 92, my dad and I would go on our first father-son baseball ballpark road trip, going to see games in Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland over the course of a long weekend.

**We also had a big black cat at the time named Ivan, the cat was named after the cat from Peter and The Wolf, we also had his sister, named Sonya (named after the duck in Peter and the Wolf) but she died on Christmas Eve 1991, we found her outside, frozen to death. It’s not really important to this story, just a sad event of my childhood, luckily as a fullblown Jew, Xmas eve didn’t mean anything, it was just an easy memory checkpoint for me.

***Yes, I know he took steroids in that time period. No, I don’t care, nor should it matter for the HOF voters, but sadly it probably will. With or without steroids, he was the best catcher of his generation, and that alone should be able to get you into the Hall of Fame.