A Chevy Citation, a Cow, and the Texas Rangers

Confessions of a Gen-X Mind switches gears a little in this episode.

No corporate collapses. No white-collar fraud. No deep dives into childhood trauma. Just a summer night in 1985, a Texas Rangers game at old Arlington Stadium, and a ten-year-old kid who needed the world to slow down for nine innings. 
 After a long week that included late-night construction cleanup with my mom, a battered Chevy Citation, and a close call on a dark country road, a night at the ballpark became something more than entertainment. It became relief. Order. Calm. 

With Charlie Hough on the mound, legends like Buddy Bell and Oddibe McDowell on the field, and an unforgettable moment involving two Major League game balls, this episode is about the small, human moments that stick with us. It’s a story about work ethic, quiet resilience, and how sometimes the most meaningful memories aren’t dramatic at all. Just a good night for baseball.  

Transcript

George TenEyck: 0:00

I was ten years old in the summer of 1985, and like a lot of kids growing up in North Texas, some of my favorite nights happened under the lights at old Arlington Stadium. That old concrete bowl baked in the heat all day, it smelled like beer and popcorn, grass, Dr. Pepper, and hot dogs by night. My uncle had season tickets right behind the Ranger's dugout. Not metaphorically close, actually close. Close enough to set your drinks on the roof of the dugout, close enough to prop your feet up when you were a kid and nobody yelled at you. Nachos, ballpark hot dogs, Dr. Pepper, and the holy grail of childhood desserts, the ice cream sundae served in a mini batting helmet. Now that was livin'. But this game in particular hit differently. Earlier that week, my mom and I had been out late on FM 1220, better known as Boat Club Road if you live in Northwest Tarrant County. Back then, it's nothing like it is now. Two lanes, rolling hills, almost no lighting, barely paved. We're talking real country. Northwest Tarrant County before subdivisions, before stoplights, and before anyone imagined how crowded it would eventually become. We were driving home in our very compact and much maligned Chevy citation. Navy blue, underpowered, widely mocked. But we were a General Motors family, and that's what we had. It ran, and that's all that mattered. That night we had been out late working. My dad was overseeing new duplex construction down in Lake Worth, and my mom did the make ready cleaning. Late nights, brand new units, scraping windows and vacuuming construction dust, cleaning up debris so the places could be leased. I tagged along. That's where I learned my work ethic from my mom. I loved it. I loved running the industrial vacuum. I loved using a razor scraper to get paint overspray off of brand new windows. There was something deeply satisfying about taking a mess and making it clean. Order from chaos. You could see the progress immediately. Other 10-year-olds were out playing with Transformers and playing with Teddy Ruxpin. I was hanging out on construction sites late at night doing manual labor with my mom, and honestly, I loved it. We finished late, loaded back into the citation and headed home. We crested one of those hills, and there it was. A yearling, a young cow standing in the middle of the road. There was no time to react. The impact came fast and violent. The point of contact on the windshield was just inches from my nose on the passenger side. Close enough that I can still picture it. The safety glass held, it didn't cave in, it didn't shatter inward. Instead, the windshield bowed toward me with a deep two-foot indentation like some would have punched the glass from the outside. And then there was the smell. If you've ever been in a serious accident, you know exactly what I mean. That sharp, sterile smell of stressed safety glass. Not smoke, not blood, but something chemical and metallic and wrong. Maybe part of the tempering process, I don't know. I just know I've never forgotten it. The car was beat up pretty badly. I can't remember if it was totaled or not. The yearling got up and ran off into the darkness. We never saw that cow again. We sat right there on the side of the road, shaken but unhurt, headlights washing over the citation, that smell lingering in the air. That was my first real encounter with shock. Not the dramatic kind, but the quiet kind where your body is fine, but your brain just hasn't caught up yet. So a few nights later, when my dad and granddad took me to a Rangers game, it wasn't just baseball, it was relief. It was order. It was nine innings where the world made sense again. That night, the Rangers were playing the Detroit Tigers, my hometown team from before we moved to Texas. Charlie Huff was on the mound for the Rangers that night, the sidearm knuckleball magician who never seemed to age, he's a legend. The lineup was pure mid-1980s Rangers. Pete O'Brien, Buddy Bell, Toby Hera, Steve Bouchel, Gino Petrolli behind the plate, and Odo B. McDowell. With the weirdest batting stance any of us had ever seen. Every kid in Little League tried to imitate Odo B. McDowell's batting. Early in the game, Bobby Valentine, the Rangers' brand new manager at that time, popped his head out of the dugout and looked right at me. Hey kid, he said. Throw me your glove. I froze. Was he really talking to me? I threw him my mitt. He disappeared for about a minute and came back and tossed it back to me. Inside was a major league game ball, just sitting there casual, like this happened every day. It was already the best game of my life. Then Charlie Huff went the distance. All nine innings, Rangers win. As he walked off the field, Huff looked up, nodded at me, and tossed me the game ball. The actual final outball. Two Major League game balls and one night. I didn't fully understand it then, but that night did something to me. I'd grown up watching the Pistons and the Lions play at the Pontiac Silverdome. I'd been to Tigers games before we moved to Texas, but I'd never been that close. I never interacted with the manager, never locked eyes with the player, never felt the gravity of professional sports from just ten feet away. That was my first real brush with Pro Sports greatness, and it lit a spark. That spark eventually led me into sports photography, then to working behind the scenes and sports talk radio at the ticket, then to sports streaming with Yahoo Sports. DFW was a hell of a sports town to grow up in. Cowboys, Mavericks, stars, Rangers. Everything but another Super Bowl win in our lifetime. It's been 30 years, Jerry. But that night in July of 1985 stayed with me. Not just because of baseball, it stayed with me because I was 10 years old, riding home in a beat-up Chevy citation, still shaken from something I didn't have the words for yet. And somehow a baseball game a few days later reminded me that even after something scary, the world can still feel steady again. Under the lights, inside the lines, nine innings were things made sense. And when I think about that right now, years later, it's not just the game that sticks with me. It's the work. Scraping paint off the windows with a razor blade, running an industrial vacuum late at night while my mom cleaned brand new duplexes so they could be leased the next morning. Learning without anyone ever spelling it out that showing up mattered, that doing the job right mattered, that there was dignity in the work nobody clapped for. That lesson followed me everywhere, into sports photography, into radio control rooms, into streaming platforms and virtual studios, always behind the scenes, always making sure things worked, always fixing problems so someone else could step into the spotlight. I thought I wanted fame when I was younger, I really did. But somewhere along the way that changed. What I actually wanted was the feeling that I was ready, that I could be trusted, that when the lights came on, I knew what I was doing. That night taught me something else too. After fear, after chaos, after a windshield nearly caving in, there's still places where order exists, where rules apply, where effort matters, where nine innings can put the world back into shape. I learned that on a construction site with my mom. I learned it again at a baseball game. And I've been chasing that feeling ever since. Not the applause, not the spotlight, just the quiet satisfaction of a job done right. This is Confessions of a Gen X Mind. If you like what you've heard so far, check out all of our other episodes on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcast. I'm George Tenike. Chat with you soon.