One of the all time Ranger greats made a special appearance at Rangers Spring Training camp on Thursday.
Pudge Rodriguez played 21 seasons, 13 with the Texas Rangers. He is a 14-time All-Star and a 13-time Gold Glove winner, arguable the best defensive catcher ever. Nine times during his career, he led the league in throwing out base runners.
The former Ranger said it was unfortunate he couldn’t spend his entire career with the same ball club.
“Yes. That was one of my goals. Unfortunately baseball is a sport where you are with one organization and maybe you never know what is going to happen the following year. It was 13 pretty good years I spent there,” said Rodriguez. “The organization is tremendous. I have to put the other organizations up there. They are all very good organizations and respect me very much. But yeah I was thinking about not moving and staying there for the whole career but it didn’t happen. But I still played 21 years in the big leagues and very proud to play with the Rangers too.”
Now that Rodriguez has been out of the league long enough, he hopes to get that special phone call from Cooperstown..
“I think that is every players dream. You know when you have a long career and wait for five years that’s the call you want to hear. It’s not too far, not too long from now but hopefully it can happen this year. We have to wait. You guys [the media] decide yes or no,” said Rodriguez.
The 2017 Hall of Fame ballot will include other first time candidates such as: Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero and Magglio Ordonez.
