The Texas Rangers broke out of their two game World Series slump, defeating the San Francisco Giants 4-2 in Arlington, Texas on Saturday. The win came on the arm of Colby Lewis, who threw nearly eight innings of five hit ball, giving up only two runs and striking out six. McCovey fans always fear the return of “the torture” — a sudden inability to hit good pitching, and it happened on Saturday. San Francisco fans also got an eyeful from rookie closer Neftali Perez, who struck out two in the San Francisco 9th to notch the save, hitting 99 mph on the gun and setting the suddenly whiff-prone McCoveys down in order. The big blow in the game came from Mitch Moreland, the Rangers’ 2007 17th round draft pick (and Mississippi State afterthought), who is solidifying his spot as a first base regular. After fouling off two Jonathan Sanchez change-ups and two more sliders (and working Sanchez into a tizzy of nine total pitches), Moreland launched a fastball into the right field seats, putting the Rangers up 3-0. It was all Texas would need.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: We’re struggling to come up with a good baseball nickname for the Rangers, and for good reason. After all, it’s not as if the Rangers have a storied history. After moving from D.C. in time for the 1972 season, the Rangers regularly struggled to find pitching. Their best years were ’98 and ’99, under Johnny Oates, when they sported a hit-heavy line-up (Ivan Rodriguez, Will Clark and Juan Gonzalez) and pitchers who could throw well for a year — but not much more. We could call them the Ryans, or even the Hamiltons, but that seems almost too easy. Then too, Ryan pitched for Houston and the Halos for a lot longer than he ever pitched for the Rangers. His best year with Texas was ’89, when he was 16-10. Oddly, the Rangers had trouble hitting in ’89: one of the few years that that has ever happened. After bursting out of the gate in the early-going, the Rangers faded, falling into fourth place and finishing well back in the A.L. West. Their best player was Ruben Sierra, then in the fourth year of a semi-distinguished career . . . and we’re certainly not going to call them the Sierras.

Of course, there’s the old stand-bys: the Lone Stars (ugh), the Gunslingers (ick), or the Cowpokes. The internet is bereft of anything approaching a suggestion — as all the old baseball nicknames (Mutuals, Red Stockings, Eckfords, Knickerbockers and the like) have solid histories associated with established teams. Of course, we could call them the Morons: a name that comes to mind anytime a Washingtonian decides to read a Dallas newspaper (which, admittedly, isn’t that often). Steve Blow’s Dallas Morning News piece on why the Rangers deserve to win the Series, is a case in point. Blow goes on about how the Rangers are a bunch of “regular Joes,” while the Giants are long-haired hand-holders. Or, as he says: “Giants fans sip hot chocolate and wear coats and jackets to games all summer long” (he’s got a point), while the Rangers tough-it-out in “a sweat lodge.”

Blow isn’t kidding — he writes that the Rangers are real Americans (they wear red, white and blue), while the Giants wear “Halloween colors.” He goes on to write that San Francisco’s mayor “reeks of effete.” Blow also puts in a plug for Republican Congressman Joe Barton, while “Madame Pelosi” represents The City by the Bay. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to inject politics into baseball,” Blow writes. “But it’s hard to imagine two places more different facing each other in the World Series – one right, one left.” The response has been viral — the article was posted on Facebook and has occasioned endless responses. And while one Texas reader responds that Blow is writing tongue-in-cheek (“calm down and take your medication”), there’s a tangible sense that Blow speaks for a lot of Rangers’ fans, who view their all-American team as . . . well . . . all-American. Giants fans have responded in kind: “Hey Hopalong Dufus, your article is like everything else in Texas; high hat, tall boots, no cattle” or (better yet): “Things that are bigger in Texas: “Waistlines, execution rates, strip malls, racism, postseason ERA’s.” Actually, Cowpokes isn’t all that bad.

Bob Costas had Bob Feller on his baseball show last week and “the Heater from Van Meter” was as outspoken and irascible as always. And fascinating. Feller, the former Cleveland great is now 90, knows how to turn a phrase, loves baseball — and has little modesty when it comes to dropping names of the great and near-great. He spent time with the Babe (“he was the best to ever play the game,” he said) and Gehrig. The three of them would head out to the bars in New York and Ruth “would bend an elbow” and Gehrig would be drinking water and not saying very much. “We never talked about baseball,” Feller told Costas. Feller thought Ruth was a fascinating man and much beloved and never had a bad word to say about anyone.

Feller was proud that in that last great picture of Ruth (the one where he’s leaning on a bat with his head down and the crowd is around him), the bat he used was Feller’s. The Indians were playing the Yankees that day and Ruth grabbed a bat from the Cleveland dugout to steady himself and he stood there and he waved his hat and then he listened to the cheers come down and he leaned on Feller’s bat. Feller took the bat and saved it and it’s now in his museum, just off of I-81 in Van Meter, Iowa. “The Babe was a very sick man,” Feller said. “He was dead in five months.”

Like Ruth, Feller doesn’t give the impression of being very modest, but he knows the game and loves it and he has decided opinions on pitchers and hitters. He’s an admirer of Nolan Ryan (“he’s a very close friend of mine,” he told Costas) and believes Sandy Koufax (I tilted an ear to hear this and think I got it right) was the best lefty he’d ever seen and “for five years” the best pitcher in baseball. Feller should know, I suppose, but vaulting Koufax to the top of the lefty list puts him ahead of Warren Spahn and Lefty Gomez. Feller talked about his own vaunted speed, saying that he had been clocked at 107 mph — an amazing feat if true. But no one was faster than Johnson, he said. He talked about World War Two, with Costas noting that Feller’s three years off to fight the war probably cost him 300 wins — and perhaps as many as 350-360. Feller says he has no regrets. “That was one we had to win,” he said. “Studio 42″ (the Costas program) showed Feller in the Navy. Feller was a part of “The Great Mariana Turkey Shoot” in the Philippine Sea in June of 1944.  “If you were killed you were a hero,” Feller said. “If you didn’t you were a survivor.”  

Feller said that the champion 1948 Indians team (on which he played) was a good team, but not nearly as good as the 1954 team that lost four straight to the New York Giants. In ’48, Feller lost a first game nail biter to Braves’ pitcher Johnny Sain and then an 11-5 blow-out to Warren Spahn. Satchell Paige relieved Feller in the blow-out and Feller talked about him. “He was 44 at the time,” he said. “He claimed he was 42 but he was 44,” and then went on to talk about the barnstorming white teams that he had put together to play the Negro Leaguers prior to baseball’s integration. Paige, he said, had a wicked fastball “but not much of a curve.” The 1954 series, a 4-0 New York Giants sweep. Feller cited Willie Mays’ catch in the first game and Giants’ pitcher Johnny Antonelli’s pitching as the reasons for the sweep. “Antonelli never pitched better in his life,” he said.

Feller’s most interesting comments, however, had to do with hitters. He was particularly outspoken — blunt really — when talking about his success against great hitters. “Gehrig couldn’t hit me,” he said, “not at all.” During the last games of 1938, Feller recounted, he put Greenberg down in order to kill whatever chance the Detroit first sacker had of breaking Ruth’s home run record. Greenberg had 58 round-trippers that year, in addition to 146 RBIs. He walked 119 times. But he couldn’t solve Feller, who issued one of the best baseball one-liners I’ve ever heard: “Hank Greenberg couldn’t hit me with an ironing board,” he said. Rapid Robert’s answer to Costa’s question about who hit him well came as something of a surprise: “Tommy Henrich,” he said, and there was an edge of defiance in his voice. The great ones couldn’t hit Feller — one of the few who mastered Gehrig — but Tommy Henrich sprayed him to all fields.

Tommy Henrich is one of those Yankees who played in the shadow of Gehrig and Ruth and DiMaggio — but he was beloved by his teammates: in part because he seemed to play harder when the Yankees were behind. He had four World Series rings with a lifetime batting average of .282 with 183 home runs. Like Feller, he took three years away from baseball during World War II. He hit .308 with 25 HRs and 100 RBI in 1948, arguably his best season. But “Old Reliable” is probably best known for his heads-up play in the 1941 Series that might have saved the series for the Yankees. With Brooklyn set to tie the series at two games apiece and leading 4-3 with two outs in the ninth, Henrich came to the plate. With the count at 3-2 he swung at strike three. But Trolley catcher Mickey Owen couldn’t handle the ball and Henrich was safe at first. Joe DiMaggio then singled, and Charlie Keller doubled to score both runners and take the lead. Joe Gordon later doubled to bring in two more runs, and the Yankees had a 7-4 victory and a 3-1 Series lead. And the Yankees went on to win the series.

Henrich was a fine ball player and a good man. He was known for his glove in the outfield, his mentoring of younger players, his deep voice and good sense of humor — and his ability to hit the heck out of Bob Feller. Feller still can’t figure it out. “It’s just one of those things.” Oddly, a mere two weeks before the Costas-Feller interview was aired, Henrich died in Dayton, Ohio. He was 96. 

There were two miracles in 1969: Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and the New York Mets won the World Series. But it’s worth remembering that on this date — when Armstrong landed the “Eagle” at “Tranquility Base – the Mets were nowhere near being a playoff team, while the Chicago Cubs were in first place in the NL East and running away with the division. By early August the Cubs led the Mets in their division by nearly nine games. The North Siders had an almost perfect squad — a mix of power and speed with one of the strongest starting pitching staffs in the majors. The front four of Ferguson Jenkins, Bill Hands, Ken Holtzman and Dick Selma terrorized the National League, accumulating 68 of the team’s 92 wins. The Cubs closer, Phil Regan, accounted for another twelve. Which is to say: in 1969, five Cubs pitchers accounted for 80 of the team’s 92 wins.

The Cubs were assembled by clever design, though baseball experts and onlookers scoffed at a front office that had always proven inept. The key trade brought prospects Ferguson Jenkins and Adolfo Phillips from Philadelphia (two decades later the Phillies traded another prospect to Chicago — Ryne Sandberg) for aging starters Bob Buhl and Larry Jackson. A second, though just as important trade (in 1965) had brought catcher Randy Hundley and starter Bill Hands to Chicago for outfielder Don Landrum and fading reliever Lindy McDaniel. Sports Illustrated howled with laughter — how could the Cubs trade one of the league’s best relief pitchers for two unknowns? The Cubs had a great team of hitters (with Ernie Banks, Ron Santo and Billy Williams the keys), but the Cubs of ’69 could not have won without the trades they swung to build their starting rotation. 

The Mets, on the other hand, were almost exclusively assembled from within. Future Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver was in his third year (as was Jerry Koosman), Gary Gentry was a rookie and no one in the starting nine was over 30. The unlikely linchpin of this group might well have been Ed “Steady Eddie” Kranepool, an otherwise light-hitting first baseman who swung the bat like Joe Dimaggio from August on out. From mid-August until late September, the Mets went on a tear, while the Cubs faded fast. The Mets won 38 of their final 49 games, while the Cubs suffered a mid-September eight game losing streak that saw them sink into second place. They finished with 92 wins, but it wasn’t enough. The Mets took the division flag, with 100. The difference between the two teams was a swing of a startling 17 games over a period of two months: a swoon that Cubs fans have never forgotten.

The Cubs-Mets pennant race of 1969 is a model of how to build contenders. The Cubs spent nearly half-a-decade ridding themselves of aging pitchers (Buhl and Jackson, but also McDaniel), trading them for well-scouted prospects, like Hands and Jenkins. The staff was supplemented by a gaggle of home grown greats: Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ernie Banks — but also double play combo Glenn Beckert and Don Kessinger. The Mets rejected the blockbuster trade and stayed patient, being satisfied with developing hard throwing youngsters and very good (but not great) position players. Cleon Jones was homegrown, as was Kranepool, Bud Harrelson, Ken Boswell and slick-fielding-no-hit third sacker Wayne Garrett. While 1969 preceded the era of free agency, it’s still astonishing how the pieces the Mets developed clicked into place in one season.

Fifty years later, the Mets seem to have forgotten the lesson taught by the ’69 Amazin’s. The New York Metropolitans of 2009 are a patchwork of free agents and aging stars — with few homegrown talents that can carry the team. Every major position player except for Daniel Murphy and David Wright is over 30 and the team’s biggest bopper, Gary Sheffield, is 40. Alex Cora and Luis Castillo are 33, Brian Schneider is 32,  The pitching staff is not manned by young rising arms, but by a veritable line-up of sieves. There is one great pitcher on the staff, Johan Santana, but he’s from somewhere else. Livan Hernandez is 34. The one home grown asset, Mike Pelfrey, has a plus-5 ERA and the number five starter is Tim Redding — who is on the verge of changing residences. In 1969, the Mets’ number five starter was 22-year-old Nolan Ryan. Mets’ faithful complain of the baffling injuries suffered by the team, but what’s the big surprise? Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado are 32 and 37 respectively.

This hobbled, aging and choatic group come into Nats Park tonight to face-off against our Anacostia Boys. It’ll be a test for them — they need to win the series to stay in contention. My bet is that that won’t happen and that the fading Mets will fade further as the summer wanes. Of course, the Mets have been counted out before, as they were in 1969. But this team is not the “Miracle Mets” — it’s the wing-and-a-prayer Mets. For them to end up in the post-season would take a miracle even greater than Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.