T.R. Sullivan is a retired beat writer who covered the Texas Rangers from 1989 to 2020. He was inducted into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005. His new book The Texas Rangers and Me: A Baseball Writer’s Thirty-Two Years in Arlington (Nebraska, 2026) was published in July.

Since the team was established in 1971, the Texas Rangers have built a rich history and identity that makes them unique among MLB teams. The Texas Rangers and Me takes readers on a journey through the incredible highs and lows and the unforgettable moments that have shaped the franchise through the eyes of beat reporter T.R. Sullivan, who covered the team for thirty-two years, longer than any reporter in franchise history. Sullivan attended thirty-two spring trainings, covered some four thousand regular season games, traveled the country over many post-season Octobers, and spent thousands of hours in the clubhouse and press box.

Sullivan portrays the heart and soul of a team that embodies the spirit of Texas itself: gritty, determined, and always fighting for glory. With firsthand stories from players, coaches, and fans alike, Sullivan brings the history of the Texas Rangers to life in a way that honors the team’s unique legacy and their dedicated following.

“The Bay Bridge has collapsed.”

Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Jim Reeves blurted out those words while sitting next to me in the upper deck of Candlestick Park on October 17, 1989.

I will never forget those words.

As Revo spoke them, a distant column of smoke could be seen beyond center field, rising high in the sky.

We would find out later the smoke came from a collapsed and life-crushing Oakland freeway.

I was still trying to comprehend what Revo said while watching his battery-powered portable television in the auxiliary press box set up for the overflow of media covering the 1989 World Series. My nerves were jangling after the massive shaking from the San Andreas Fault deep below the surface of Northern California.

Indeed, I will never forget those words. Or that day, in a city where I had spent four years at the University of San Francisco from 1977 to 1981. Or my first World Series in the first of thirty-two seasons of covering the Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and MLB.com.

I wrote the page one story for the Star-Telegram’s next morning edition. “The nation’s second-deadliest earthquake ravaged the Bay Area yesterday, killing at least 250 people—most of them in the collapse of a half-mile-long section of a double-decker highway in Oakland.

“It was 15 seconds of terror.”

The earthquake had also brought the World Series to a halt. All this took place in my “adopted” hometown and in a ballpark ridiculed by almost everybody but revered by me because I had attended my first MLB game there eighteen years earlier.

Oh yeah . . . I never forgot that either, at the age of twelve, walking into Candlestick Park for the first time to watch the Giants play the Pirates in Game 1 of the 1971 National League Championship Series.

There was a golden autumn tinge to the air above a sea of green. It truly felt like walking into the Emerald City in the Land of Oz.

Candlestick was not always like that during my four years at the University of San Francisco. There were many nights during the “summer” when I sat freezing in Candlestick with the fog rolling in and the wind whipping through the place.

But October 17, 1989, was another beautiful day in San Francisco. Ask Revo.

He, Phil Rogers of the Dallas Times Herald, and a few other reporters staying across the bay at the Berkeley Marina did not drive to the game. Instead, they somehow hooked up with a guy who owned a boat for charter.

Armed with beer and ample food, they sailed across the bay with the plan to take the same boat back after the game.

Rather than driving to the game on a freeway that would buckle, they sailed under a bridge that would soon “collapse.” Revo couldn’t stop bragging about his water taxi. Me? I was staying just down the 101 freeway at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. At least I had a car.

The Star-Telegram sent four staff members to the World Series that year. Tony DeMarco was our lead Rangers writer and was sitting in the football press box down the left-field line. Steve Campbell was with Revo and me in the auxiliary press box in the upper deck above home plate.

The auxiliary press box meant temporary worktables, power outlets, and television monitors installed in what normally would be part of the upper deck. When I was in college, those seats sold for four dollars each.

Bryan French and Jennifer Briggs-French were also there as fans. They were our good friends who worked at the Star-Telegram, Bryan as a copyeditor and Jennifer as a sports reporter (she had created the once-famous Betty Ann Stout wrestling persona).

The last big earthquake in San Francisco had occurred eighty-three years earlier, and only a small and dwindling number of people were left to remember it.

We were all about to get firsthand experience about how devastating an earthquake can be.

The Giants had lost the first two games in Oakland. After the second game, Giants first baseman Will Clark vowed Game Three would be different. The series was switching to Candlestick Park, Clark said, and Giants fans would be ready.

They would be loud.

I remembered Clark’s words as I sat with Revo, Campbell, and many others in the upper deck. The game was supposed to start a few minutes after 5:00 once the television pregame commentary was completed. As the clock slipped past five, we were ready for first pitch.

Then I heard the rumble. . . .