Rangers Bring Back Cardinal Memories

The Texas Rangers will open this year’s World Series at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri. It will mark the first time in franchise history that the Rangers will have played a game on that field. Remarkably, they become the final Major League Baseball team to do so.

So throw away your match up calculators and your sabermetrical slide rules, this one might just be old fashioned baseball. The way the World Series was intended to be. Back before Interleague play and wild cards. When two teams seen each other for the first time and went to battle.

That’s not to say that a few Rangers will not cause some flashbacks for Cardinal fans, however.

A look through the Texas roster reveals a few players the Cardinals know well from their time with other franchises. Guys like Yorvit Torrealba and Adrian Beltre spent their share of time around the National League. Matt Treanor, who started and ended the year in Texas, spent some time in Kansas City this year with our Royals’ fans. But, there are two names that jump off the page.

Darren Oliver
Darren Oliver has played ten seasons for the Rangers over three different stints in his career. That is ten of his total 18. Admist those 18 seasons, he has played in eight different teams’ uniforms. It was on the trading deadline in 1998 that Oliver was traded from the Texas Rangers with Fernando Tatis and a player to be named later (Mark Little) to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for Todd Stottlemyre and Royce Clayton.

He spent the next year and half in a Cardinal uniform as a starting pitcher. The lefty would post a 13-13 record over 40 starts. He was far from dominant but found himself serviceable and consistent. He posted an earned run average of 4.26 the last half of 1998 and remarkably posted the same over the course 1999. He would sign once again with the Texas Rangers before the 2000 season.

Endy Chavez
Endy Chavez has never played for the Cardinals. A defensive stand out when he was younger, he did find himself on the opposite end of a National League Championship Series from the Cardinals in 2006. During the nail biting game seven of that series, with Jim Edmonds on first Scott Rolen drove a ball to deep left field and it was Chavez that, well, did this:

Cardinal fans will see a few familiar faces in the Texas dugout but not many.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
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