"...And I Was THERE!" - Kenny Rogers' Perfect Game

July 28, 1994 is a date I will never forget.  It was a few weeks short of the beginning of the strike that wiped out the baseball post-season that year.  It was just over a month before my 13th birthday.  It was Will Clark road jersey give away night at the Ballpark.  But the reason I'll never forget that day is because it was my first connection with baseball history, and quite possibly the foundation for the Rangers fan that I am today.

That day, my mom took me and my friend Mitch to the game.  We were excited to get the t-shirt give aways that night.  We had seats in left field, near the foul pole, just behind Rogers' right shoulder in the picture above.  I remember looking in the newspaper to see who was pitching for the Rangers that night, seeing Kenny's name, and thinking we had a pretty good chance to see the Rangers win with him on the mound.  Massive understatement.

As the game got underway, Jose Canseco hit two homeruns.  This excited me because I had just been to a game a few weeks before with my parents in which Canseco hit three homeruns, one of which hit the back wall of the visitors bullpen and was measured at over 480 ft.  I thought these homeruns he hit might be another sign of something cool like that about to happen.  Again, massive understatement.

We began to notice that Rogers wasn't having much trouble mowing down the Angels lineup that consisted of quality hitters like Chad Curtis, Jim Edmonds, Bo Jackson, Chili Davis, and JT Snow.  Even Spike Owen, who was from my hometown of Cleburne, was in the game that night.  Nobody was getting on base, and Rogers was in control.

The Rangers offense managed to score four runs, two on the Canseco blasts, one on another homer from Pudge Rodriguez, and the other RBI belonged to Dean Palmer.  The offense took the pressure of getting the win off of Rogers, and now the only pressure was what Rogers was placing on himself.

Like most people, I don't remember much about the actual game until the top of the ninth.  There was a skinny rookie centerfielder that nobody knew much about before that night who would kick off his legacy in team history.  As Kenny Rogers pitched to Rex Hudler leading off the ninth, Hudler hit a blooper to short right-center field which looked like the end of the perfect game for sure.  In raced Rusty Greer, who dove head-first and plucked the ball out of the air just before it hit the ground.  Everyone has seen the clip of that catch from the centerfield camera on Rangers TV, but I remember it from the angle I had a few rows up from the pole in left.  It was an unbelievable catch, but it turned out that Greer was just giving us a glimpse of what he was capable of in the field.  He made more acrobatic plays later in his Rangers career, but never a bigger catch than that one, which put him on the average Rangers fan's radar, and saved the perfect game for Rogers.

The last out of the ninth was a line drive right at Greer off the bat of Gary DiSarcina.  Greer slightly misjudged it and had to make a small hop in the air to snag the last out of the game.  As he did, everyone mobbed Rogers on the mound for having just pitched the best game in team history.  I've never heard the stadium that loud, before or since, but I wasn't at Game Six of the ALCS, so it may have been trumped.

We went home that night and Mitch stayed at our house overnight.  We got home about an hour or so after the game ended and turned on the TV to see that they were re-airing the game, so we watched the last few innings again before bed.  It was a fun end to an awesome day.

That game fueled my love for baseball, even through the strike hit in August and lasted until early in the 1995 season.  While many turned their backs against baseball, I hurt for more.  My other favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys, had been winning Super Bowls and making history, but had also let me down by being indecent jerks off of the field.  I was put off by that kind of stuff, and baseball was where my attention was turned.  The 1996, 1998, and 1999 teams made the playoffs, and I was all in.  Baseball, and the Rangers, defined who I was and people associated me with the team.  It never wore off.

I kept the ticket stub and I would take it with me to games to try to get Rogers to sign it.  Years later, I finally got it signed by Rogers and also Rusty Greer.  It's still my favorite piece in my baseball collection.

The funny thing is, as years went by, I would run into other people who I'd find out had been at that game.  Of the 46,581 in attendance that night included a 12-year-old girl from Crowley, who I married 10 years and 10 days after that night's game. 

Pretty good catch, huh, Rusty?