Monday, August 19, 1996

Rangers have been trying to avoid the heat this season
By Dave Caldwell
The Dallas Morning News

ARLINGTON, Texas (KRT) - The Texas Rangers don't even bother trying to beat the heat. They know the Texas sun will be hanging there in July and August, as relentless and merciless as a blast furnace, and it will get cooler only when it is good and ready.

The Rangers don't try to ignore the heat, either. That would be a risk, and baseball players don't like taking risks. Pretending that a 100-degree night is basically the same as an 80-degree night is asking for big trouble, not to mention cramps and dehydration.

Maybe it is no coincidence that these Rangers have reached mid-August with a club-record seven-game lead in the AL West. They have tried more than ever this year to come up with ways to outlast the withering Texas summer heat. The best way to not get overcome by the heat, they have found, is simply to stay out of it as much as they can.

They also have come up with a surprising number of ways to keep themselves from collapsing, literally and figuratively. This is not merely a psychological battle. It is physical.

"Oh, it's a little bit psychological," pitcher Bobby Witt said. "But when you're out there, and it's 103 or 104 degrees on the field, there's nothing psychological about that."

It is hotter here than in any other major league city, whether looking at air temperature or heat index, which combines temperature and humidity. The average highest daily temperature in July and August in Dallas-Fort Worth over the past 30 years according to WeatherData is 98 degrees. The average high in Miami and St. Louis is 89, in Atlanta is 88.

Figuring in the humidity, that 98 degrees in Texas feels like 109.

That compares with 100 in Miami, 97 in Atlanta and 95 in St. Louis.

Witt returned to the Rangers last season after playing for the Florida Marlins. He said it is less comfortable playing here than it is in humid Miami.

"When I came back over here, I remember sitting in the dugout, and I'd just break out in a sweat for absolutely no reason," he said.

Kathleen Delaney, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said that playing in high humidity rather than a drier heat has its drawbacks. The evaporation of sweat is the body's way of cooling itself. When the weather is too humid, sweat does little to help cool off.

The Rangers play almost exclusively at night. Of the 10 scheduled home day games, five are played in April or September. They don't play a day game at home between June 12 and Sept. 1, but it is still hot enough when the first pitch is thrown.

The Rangers have played 22 home games since July 1. The game-time temperature has been 85 degrees or higher at all but one of those games - Monday night, when it was a downright pleasant 82. It has been 95 or higher at eight of those games. It was 100 degrees when the Rangers played Seattle on Independence Day, with a relatively early starting time of 6:35 p.m.

There has been a widespread theory that the heat has drained the Rangers in July and August - and has helped prevent them from winning a division title. Only nine times in their previous 24 seasons in Texas have the Rangers had a better record after the All-Star break, when the weather is the hottest, than before.

Manager Johnny Oates does not believe in that theory. He does not like talking about the heat, especially the effects of the heat on his players. As far as he is concerned, talent wins pennants, and the Rangers have not had enough in the past to win it. The heat is a cop-out to him.

But now that the Rangers have assembled a powerful team with plenty of talent, Oates is not taking any chances - not even with the heat.

The Rangers have cut down on batting practice, fielding practice and stretching before games. The idea is for the Rangers to get loose for a game - not for them to stay in tip-top shape.

"It's not basic training," Oates says. "If we're not in shape now, we're in deep trouble."

But the Rangers are not in trouble, and the measures they have taken to combat the heat might have something to do with that. They have actually extended their lead in the American League West from four games at the All-Star break to the current seven.

Oates would tell you their staying power is mostly because of talent. The team's training regimen might have something to do with their performance, too.

The heat used to be a lot worse at Arlington Stadium. Or so it used to seem to most baseball people.
"This ballpark is a lot cooler than that one was," said Oates, who played, coached and managed as a visitor there.

Arlington Stadium, where the Rangers played from 1972 through '93, was not as large as The Ballpark in Arlington, nor did it have as many tiers of seats. That meant the sun beat down on the field for a lot longer. More games started at 7:05 p.m. then. It tends to be hotter at 7:05 p.m. than 7:35 p.m.

Arlington Stadium also had a thermometer on the signs behind the right-field bleachers - which just happened to be in direct view of the third-base dugout, where the visiting teams would sit.

"Other teams would come in here, walk out on the field, look up at the temperature and see it was 105 degrees," says Danny Wheat, the team's trainer. "And they'd say, 'MAN, HOW DO Y'ALL DO IT?' "

High readings on that thermometer also used to scare away ticket-buying fans. When the Rangers moved to The Ballpark, they got rid of the thermometer. If you did not hear what the temperature was before you walked into the park, it is doubtful you will hear it after the game starts.

"I'd be in favor of it," Oates says, smiling, "but I'd think the fans would be against it."

Studies of military recruits, according to UT-Southwestern's Delaney, have demonstrated that teams like the Rangers may actually benefit from regular exposure to such heat. The body can adjust completely to exercising in the heat after three to six weeks. For example, although the adjustments can't protect against heatstroke in very hot weather, they can help the body keep the right salt balance on a normal summer evening.

Rather than affecting Texas players who are used to the heat, teams from more moderate climates who play here are more likely to be at a disadvantage, she said.

"People who come from cooler environments are not acclimatized," Delaney said. For them, the heat might strain their concentration and physical ability.

Players who join the Rangers learn very fast what they can and can't do during the day before a game. Watching "SportsCenter" in your air-conditioned den is good. Playing golf is not so good.

"The guys who've been around know they can't play golf from ten in the morning to two or three in the afternoon, then play a game that night," trainer Wheat says. "They might get away with it one time, but they can't do it on a consistent basis."

Center fielder Darryl Hamilton loves to play golf, but not on game days. He is a native of Baton Rouge, La., which gets soupy and swampy in the summer, so he is used to heat. He also says he likes playing in the Texas heat more than cool, damp Milwaukee. But he knows he can push himself only so far.

"It's a whole lot tougher playing in the cold weather than hot," Hamilton says. "But you have to get smart. You definitely have to get smart."

In mid-June, for the second consecutive year, Oates announced that he would trim batting practice from one hour to 40 minutes. The team's mandatory daily stretch was pushed back from 4:50 p.m. to 5:10 p.m.

Players' individual batting practice times were trimmed from 15 to 10 minutes, but Oates said that anyone who wanted or needed more work could hit in the Rangers' indoor batting cages.

The secret is to learn HOW to get ready for a game, as opposed to HOW MUCH. When Buddy Bell, now the Detroit Tigers' manager, played for the Rangers from 1979 to '85, he tried to curb what he did before the game.

"I just made sure what I did before the game was quality," Bell said last week. "It was quality over quantity."

On some nights, the players won't stretch on the field before the game. They will stretch in the air-conditioned clubhouse instead. On Tuesday, the Rangers posed for their team photo in the sun, and the ozone level was high, so stretching that day was held inside.

Tim Lang, the Rangers' conditioning coach, said he sometimes will cut the stretching routine in half. The Rangers will do one set of repetitions one day, another set the next.

Some players won't take batting practice every day - or might cut a few minutes off their 10-minute batting-practice shift, then go into the clubhouse and cool off. Juan Gonzalez rarely goes outside for batting practice when the Rangers are at home.

"If I don't take batting practice for five extra minutes, that means I'm not in the sun for five extra minutes," second baseman Mark McLemore says.

Some nights, McLemore won't take ground balls. Some nights, Oates won't hold pre-game infield practice. The players who want or need to field ground balls can do so during batting practice, he says.

Witt says he tries not to exert himself at all before the game on the nights he pitches. He also says he might walk out to the bullpen later and take fewer warmup pitches - simply because it takes him less time to get warmed up on a hot night.

"I get loose, but it doesn't take as much time to get loose," he said.

Oates figures that, on average, a player is on the field - and in the late-afternoon sun - only about 20-25 minutes of the total time the Rangers are out for batting practice. Squeezing 20 minutes out of batting practice might not sound like a big deal, but it might give them more energy in September.
"We hope we benefit from it," Oates said.

After batting practice, the Rangers get more water than the outfield grass. The Rangers will get as much to drink as they want - and then some.

"Hydrating," Lang calls it. "They need to drink even when they're not thirsty."

After batting practice, Lang said, about 15-20 Rangers have a special fruit drink made of orange juice, bananas and strawberries. Plenty of fresh fruit, such as melons, also is available in the team cafeteria, and Lang said the fruit goes a lot faster than, say, the hot dogs. The fruit-and-drink concoction replenishes their fluids and minerals in one shot.

The Rangers then spend about an hour and a half in the clubhouse before the game, cooling off, as their opponents take batting practice. When they come out to the field for the start of the game, the dugout has been prepared to be as comfortable as possible.

Earlier this year, giant fans were installed at each end of the Rangers' dugout. A large air-conditioning unit was placed in the warmup room behind the dugout. Two large coolers are filled - one with ice water, the other with a sports drink. There is a water fountain behind the dugout.

The giant fans alone are a big help. John Conway, the team's physician, recommended them, and the players appreciate them. Otherwise, the players say, the dugout would be a sweat box.

As the game progresses, the trainers try to hand the players water as they come off the field. The idea is to get each player to drink eight to nine eight-ounce cups per game, though players say they will drink what they need.

And then there is The Bucket.

On particularly hot nights, Wheat said he will fill a bucket of ice water. Then he will put in just a touch of aromatic ammonia and a couple of towels. A player will take a wet towel and wipe his face.
"It cools you down," Hamilton says, "cools you down and gets you ready."

"It kind of perks 'em up," Wheat said. "The ammonia's diluted enough, so it doesn't shock 'em."

Wheat and Lang said players rarely complain about the heat. And Wheat and Lang said they don't lecture the Rangers on what they need to do to avoid being conquered by the heat. Wheat weighs every player before each Sunday home game, and the trainers keep an eye on players who seem lethargic.

But the Rangers are a team of veterans, and veterans generally know what to do. (Although Lang did tell of one veteran, unnamed, who persisted in taking a sauna - and wondered why he got severe cramps.)

"Usually, they'll let you know when it's hot," Wheat said. "They'll come in and say, 'Hey. You got any ammonia made tonight?' "

And that will be his cue.

The Rangers have carefully tried to create what Lang calls a "mindset." Chances are, the other team is simply trying to get through three or four hot nights in Texas.

"I don't buy into that heat theory," Wheat says. "I'd think the visiting team would be a lot more affected than the home team."

He smiles. Slyly.