The Texas Rangers are an American professional baseball team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Rangers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West Division. The team was founded as the Washington Senators in 1961, an expansion team awarded to Washington, D.C., after its previous team became the Minnesota Twins. The new Senators relocated to Arlington, Texas after the 1971 season and debuted as the Rangers the following spring. In 2020, the Rangers moved to the new Globe Life Field after having played at Globe Life Park (now Choctaw Stadium) from 1994 to 2019. The team’s name is derived from a historic law enforcement agency.
The Rangers have made nine appearances in the MLB postseason, seven following division championships in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2010, 2011, 2015, and 2016 and as a wild card team in both 2012 and 2023. Prior to 2010, the Rangers were the only team in MLB to have never advanced past the first round of the playoffs. In 2010, the Rangers advanced past the Division Series for the first time, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. The team then won their first American League pennant after beating the New York Yankees in six games; league MVP Josh Hamilton won their first ALCS MVP award for a Ranger player. In their first appearance in a World Series, the Rangers fell to the San Francisco Giants in five games. They repeated as American League champions the following year, but lost the 2011 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. The Rangers made it to the 2023 World Series and won their first-ever championship, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games, with Corey Seager being the first Ranger player to win the World Series Most Valuable Player Award.
From 1961 through the end of 2024, the franchise’s overall win–loss record is 4,818–5,302–6 (.476). Since moving to Texas in 1972, the Rangers have an overall win–loss record of 4,078–4,270–5 (.489) through the end of 2024.
When the original Washington Senators announced their move to Minnesota to become the Twins in 1961, Major League Baseball decided to expand a year earlier than planned to stave off the twin threats of competition from the proposed Continental League and loss of its exemption from the Sherman Antitrust Act. As part of the expansion, the American League added two expansion teams for the 1961 season–the Los Angeles Angels and a new Washington Senators team. The new Senators and Angels began to fill their rosters with American League players in an expansion draft. The team played their inaugural season at old Griffith Stadium, then moved to the new District of Columbia Stadium in 1962 under a ten-year lease.
For most of their existence, the new Senators epitomized futility, losing an average of 90 games a season. The team’s struggles led to a twist on a joke about the old Senators: “Washington: first in war, first in peace and still last in the American League.” Frank Howard, an outfielder/first baseman from 1965 to 1972 known for his towering home runs, was the team’s most accomplished player, winning two home run titles.
The concurrent rise of the nearby Baltimore Orioles to regular championship contenders (winning their first World Series in 1966) certainly did not help the Senators draw crowds. Further expansion and re-alignment in 1969 did not do much to help the Senators either, since (unlike the National League) the AL owners elected to align their new divisions strictly based on geography. This arrangement placed both expansion teams (the Seattle Pilots and the Kansas City Royals) in the AL West, while pitting last place Washington against the AL’s five best teams in the AL East. Despite this, the Senators managed a winning season in 1969 (their only winning record in the nation’s capital) when Hall of Famer Ted Williams managed the club to an 86–76 finish, good enough for fourth in the AL East.
Ownership changed hands several times during the franchise’s stay in Washington and was often plagued by poor decision-making and planning. Following their brief success in 1969, owner Bob Short was forced to make many questionable trades to lower the debt he had incurred to pay for the team in late 1968; the purchase price was reported at $9.4 million. By the end of the 1970 campaign, Short had issued an ultimatum: unless someone was willing to buy the Senators for $12 million (by comparison, the New York Yankees were sold in 1973 for $8.8 million), he would not renew the stadium lease and would move the team elsewhere.
At first, it looked like a move to Buffalo, New York, was in the works as at the time, a proposed multi-use stadium was in the cards in either downtown Buffalo where the current KeyBank Center is, or in suburban Lancaster to share with the Buffalo Bills; however, the project went over budget and the Senators started to look elsewhere while the Bills opened up Rich Stadium instead. Short was especially receptive to an offer brought up by Arlington, Texas, mayor Tom Vandergriff, who had been trying to obtain a major league sports team to play in the Metroplex for over a decade. Years earlier, Charles O. Finley, the owner of the Kansas City Athletics, sought to relocate his baseball team to Dallas, but the idea was rebuffed and ultimately declined by the other AL team owners (the A’s ultimately moved to Oakland, California in 1968). Arlington’s hole card was Turnpike Stadium, a 10,000-seat park built in 1965 to house the Double-A Dallas–Fort Worth Spurs of the Texas League. However, it had been built to MLB specifications, and only minor excavations would be necessary to expand the park to accommodate major league crowds.
Vandergriff’s offer of a multimillion-dollar down payment prompted Short to make the move to Arlington. On September 21, 1971, American League owners voted 10–2 to allow the move of the franchise to Arlington for the 1972 season. Senators fans were livid, and enmity came to a head at the club’s last game in Washington on Thursday, September 30. Thousands simply walked in without paying after the security guards left early, swelling the paid attendance of 14,460 to around 25,000, while fans unfurled a “SHORT STINKS” banner. With two outs in the top of the ninth inning and the Senators leading 7–5, several hundred youths stormed the field, raiding it for souvenirs. One man grabbed first base and ran off with it. With no security in sight and only three bases, umpire crew chief Jim Honochick forfeited the game to the New York Yankees.
The nation’s capital went without Major League Baseball for 33 years, until the relocation of the National League’s Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals in 2005.
After moving from Washington, the Senators were renamed after the Texas Rangers, the state-wide investigative law-enforcement agency which was founded by Stephen F. Austin in 1823 when Texas was part of Mexico, and whose mythology led to fictional characters such as The Lone Ranger and Walker, Texas Ranger. But the Rangers also had bouts as vigilante squads, when they abused their authority, including by lynching Hispanics. In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, prominent mainstream voices have shined a light on the historical racism associated with the law-enforcement agency and called for the baseball team to abandon the Rangers name. The baseball team responded by committing to keeping the Rangers name. The team subsequently made a statement clarifying that despite sharing the name, they are not affiliated with the law-enforcement agency and they stand for equality by “condemn[ing] racism, bigotry and discrimination in all forms.
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