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Generally I try to stay of discussions such as this because they are so subversive, but there are a couple of points that have been made in this thread that I'd like to comment on.
First of all, the Rangers are not likely to move anywhere any time soon; the Ballpark is only 15 years old and remains a top-notch major league facility. Its location near every tourist trap in the Metroplex essentially ensures its continued viability.
Second: yes, a lot of memorable events occurred at Texas Stadium, but have you been there lately? It is hard to get to, the parking is bad, and the building itself is a cave. Attending an early season game there is akin to watching the Cowboys play while sitting in a brick pizza oven, with the exception of the fact that I'm certain the oven would have better ventilation. Besides, it does not matter where the Cowboys play, they will continue to disappoint so long as Jerry Jones continues to fancy himself as a "football guy" and refuses to hire a competent general manager.
Lastly, Downtown Dallas is not the center of the entire metroplex; it is the center of Dallas. Commerce is spread all over Dallas and Tarrant counties, and the arts and entertainment districts are, while nice, hardly the center of their respective universes. I personally would take Downtown Fort Worth over Dallas any day; it is more accessible, classier, and much cleaner. Do not get me wrong, I'm not trying to trivialize the central business district of Dallas; I'm just stating that it is not the center of the Metroplex.
kind of an offbeat question here, but i've been wondering about this for a while and was hoping some of you could give me a few thoughts on this matter:
do you guys (dallas-area sports fans) ever wish that your baseball team were named the "dallas rangers" rather than the texas rangers? has there ever been a groundswell of support or a grassroots campaign in the DFW metroplex to officially rebrand the franchise as being from dallas, given that it's the core city of the region?
the reason i ask is because unlike colorado, arizona, or minnesota, the state of texas has multiple large, major league-caliber cities (dallas, houston, san antonio), each with its own distinct identity and culture. and every major league (mlb, nfl, nba, nhl) franchise currently playing in the state identifies with one of the big three cities - except for the rangers.
for whatever reason, i've always found that to be odd. in fact, when i first started following baseball as a little kid in the early '80s, it took me several years to figure out that the rangers represented the dallas area, whereas there was no such problem with the astros. and knowing they were from houston, i always associated them with the oilers, the rockets, the astrodome, and that bad news bears movie. but i could never "place" the rangers in any specific location because the "texas" moniker wasn't specific enough. even after learning that they're a dallas-area team, i still had trouble associating them with the cowboys, mavericks, or (later) the stars.
for me, having a team identified with a specific city is much more meaningful than simply saying it's from texas; after all, texas is a huge state. besides, dallas is a well-known city with a reputation for being upscale, so why not capitalize on the cachet of being a dallas team? the cowboys have long been one of the nfl's glamour franchises, which IMO is at least partly due to the dallas name.
and yet, the cowboys don't even play in the city of dallas; as with the giants, jets, and redskins, they've played in a suburb outside of the city proper for years while retaining the core city/metropolitan area designation in their moniker. even after they move into their new stadium in arlington, the cowboys won't be dropping the "dallas" part of their name, despite being closer to fort worth than dallas. so proximity to one city over the other isn't an issue.
if the 'boys can do this, why don't the rangers consider it as well, considering that they'll be playing next door? would they genuinely offend a large part of their arlington and fort worth fanbase by doing so? because i feel that the benefits of identifying as a dallas team would outweigh the potentially hurt feelings of a few suburban and fort worth residents - but then again, i don't live in texas so i could be totally wrong on this. just my opinion as an outsider.
if the florida marlins can rebrand themselves as the miami marlins, why not the dallas rangers? the dallas area won't be getting a second mlb franchise (a la ny, chicago, la, or dc/baltimore), so it seems to me that the one baseball team in the region should identify with its largest and most famous city. and don't forget, there was a minor league team called the dallas rangers back in the day before the senators moved to town from d.c., so the name has a precedent.
The "Texas Rangers" have one of the best logos in all of sports and it speaks to true Texas roots. Unlike the Astros the Rangers if they can continue to win can markets its brand of baseball not only in the DFW area but statewide. The Rangers problem is winning not location. Now they are winning here in 2009 and attendance is rising at the ball park.
sure, right now the pats are wildly popular and are indisputably the nfl's big ticket team; those are the spoils of being the league's most recent dynasty and having one of the greatest quarterbacks ever. but for much of their history - other than the 1985 season and the bledsoe/brady era - they were largely ignored in the boston area and utterly invisible on the national radar. boston's always been a baseball town first and foremost, with the celtics perennially popular as well and the bruins with a great tradition of their own.
but the pats? they were bumbling, stumbling losers for the most part, and even as their fanbase grew during the bledsoe playoff years, they never reached their current performance and popularity levels until brady came along in 2001. in fact, for many years pro football barely registered on the new england sports landscape. we're talking 40 years of being an afterthought, other than those brief upticks of fairweather popularity.
did you know that the pats very nearly moved to st. louis after the 1993 season? the only reason they didn't relocate is because robert kraft, who at the time owned the stadium but not the franchise, would not let the pats' owner out of his stadium lease, effectively blocking the move. kraft then bought the team and the rest is history. not surprisingly, the franchise has been much more stable and profitable since kraft took over.
there are a lot of new england transplants where i live, and to a man, they've told me how the pats were never, ever this big until 2001. of course, rooting for the pats is the trendy thing to do right now and everyone claims they've been a fan since the bad old days way back when. but the reality is that many of these fans are new to the bandwagon.
moral of the story? i don't think the patriots' identification as a new england team added much, if anything, to their popularity. don't forget, they were called the boston patriots for their first ten seasons (1960-1970), and were ignored both before and for years after their name change due to lousy/mediocre teams. it took good ownership, good drafts, and a little luck (getting brady in the 6th round) to finally become popular.
conversely, had the franchise never renamed itself, i seriously doubt that the moniker "boston patriots" would've hindered attendance, tv ratings, or general bandwagon popularity, during the good years and bad. after all, the entire region from maine to connecticut has absolutely no problem rooting for the red sox, celtics, and bruins despite the fact that they all play in and identify as boston teams. there's no fractionalized sentiment along the lines of, "hey, i'm in rhode island, darnit, so i can't root for boston." boston is clearly the core city of the new england region, so all of new england will pull for boston teams no matter what. new england is very unified in that sense.
i'd even go so far as to say that if the pats changed their name back to "boston patriots", it wouldn't damage their fanbase whatsoever. i'm sure of it, in fact.
As a born and bred New Englander for 30 years (living in Texas for the past 3) I really disgree with a lot of this. While I absolutely agree that the Patriots have gained more fans post-Brady, I would not say they were "largely ignored by the Boston area" for the majority of the past 40 years. It seems you're basing a lot of your opinion on a few New England transplants in your area - have you actually lived in New England during any of these years of which you speak? Again, I agree that they are bigger now than ever (although a LOT of that is due to a national fanbase now, versus the New England fans), and I also agree that the majority of New England has no problem rooting for Boston teams (I'm a former Rhode Islander)...but to say that they were unsupported "bumbling stumbling losers" with little to no fan base until the past decade is offbase, coming from this 30-year native New Englander.
Tracey, I've always heard that the Patriots have long played third fiddle to the Red Sox and Celtics in Boston. I've heard this from multiple people that the Pats really didn't matter at all in the sceme of NE sports until Parcells came along.
But as for the OP, for starters Dallas isn't much of a baseball town--it is and always will be a football town, and the Cowboys are always going to come first even if the Rangers start winning World Series after World Series. A big part of this is because most Dallasites have better things to go than to go sit in a giant heat trap and watch a group of grown men try to hit a ball with a stick.
I'm oversimplfying, of course, but it really is too hot in Dallas for baseball to be a major success without a domed stadium.
As for the name, Dallas was a big city by Texas standards when the Senators moved here in 1972, but it wasn't going to be able to sustain the team on its own, so they emphasized the Ft. Worth connection. The team has always been based in Arlington, halfway between Dallas and Ft. Worth, and they chose the Texas name much like Minnesota chose that name rather than Minneapolis or St. Paul.
The fact that the Texas Rangers are a legendary law enforcement agency is the reason for the name, and it will never become the Dallas Rangers. If it does somehow become the Dallas Rangers, the people of Dallas will continue not to care.
Without a doubt, New England is first and foremost Red Sox Nation. As for the Celtics...eh, that's hard to judge. Certainly when I was growing up in the late 70s and 80s in both MA and RI, Larry Bird was king, but again, I wouldn't say that "no one cared" about the Patriots like the pp suggested.
I just take umbrage as a native New Englander that even New Englanders didn't jump on the Patriots bandwagon until the past decade or so. My friends and I all grew up with our Dads rooting for the Patriots, going to Foxboro, etc. I totally get that the Patriots weren't on the national scene until more recently, but in my opinion, it's false to say that the team had no home support or attention until recently.
Lastly, Downtown Dallas is not the center of the entire metroplex; it is the center of Dallas. Commerce is spread all over Dallas and Tarrant counties, and the arts and entertainment districts are, while nice, hardly the center of their respective universes. I personally would take Downtown Fort Worth over Dallas any day; it is more accessible, classier, and much cleaner. Do not get me wrong, I'm not trying to trivialize the central business district of Dallas; I'm just stating that it is not the center of the Metroplex.
Just my .02
The location of the Ballpark in Arlington is known around the league as one of the worse locations in the nation. There is nothing around it. People aren't going to go to a theme park after the game is over on a nightly basis. Not to mention that's it's too hot to do that. Baseball stadiums belong in urban settings or urban areas. Imagine Wrigley Field without the bars and residential units around it. Same with Camden yards, Fenway, Busch Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, and more. Washington did a great job of building their new stadium in an area win the middle of the metro sitting in an area that is building bars, residential units, clubs, restuarants, and more.
Downtown Dallas or even Downtown Fort Worth would be a much better place to put the Rangers in. Once the lease is up and Dallas downtown continues it's improvement with new parks, a budding and virbant art district, with a sustainable mass transit system, and a virbant uptown right next door with bars itself. How will Arlington compare? How will Arlington pay for it. Dallas would be prime to take them.
Oh and Downtown Dallas is really the population center of the metroplex. Too bad they won't leave for quite some time. Oh and while it's a great stadium. Not having a roof on the stadium was just pure idiocy that I know they regret everytime. No place gets as hot as Dallas in July/August. Arizona has a roof. They dont' count. MLB Road Trip 2001 - Major League Cities
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16. Ballpark in Arlington (223) - A nice stadium, but its location and expensive tickets make being a fan here more difficult than it should be.
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