The Forgotten Man of the Elysian Fields

The late Johnny Oates was there spiritually, if not physically, on Saturday night when the Rangers honored the 1996 division championship team. Just about every player had something to say about what their former manager meant to them and Chuck Morgan read a moving letter from his widow Gloria Oates.

Juan Gonzalez?

He was not there physically, spiritually or any other way. If there was anything strange about Saturday's ceremonies - other than so many fans arriving late and missing it - it was there was no mention of the 1996 American League Most Valuable Player and maybe the greatest player to ever wear the Rangers uniform.

It's almost been a Soviet-like expunging of his name from the collective memory of the franchise and there's little doubt the Rangers still seeth over getting very little from his two-year, $24 million ill-conceived return in 2002-2003.

But Gonzalez truly has been banished to baseball Gulag. A two-time MVP who once seemed well on his way to the Hall of Fame, Gonzalez is now playing for the Long Island Ducks in the independent Atlantic League.

That's right, while former teammates Will Clark, Rusty Greer, Mark McLemore and others were taking their bows at Ameriquest Field in Arlington, and while Ivan Rodriguez's Hall of Fame career marches on with the Detroit Tigers, Gonzalez was presumably swinging the bat at Citibank Park in Central Islip, N.Y.

Wait a minute.

Sorry...

The Ducks were on the road Saturday night playing the Camden Riversharks at Campbell's Field across The Delaware River from Philadelphia. Yes, the park is named after the soup company.

Gonzalez was hitting .308 with six home runs and 19 RBI in 29 games and 107 at-bats and the Ducks were tied with Newark for second place in the Northern Division, three games behind the mighty Bluefish of Bridgeport.

In June, Gonzalez sat down with Ryan Dunleavy, a sports writer with the Bridgewater (N.J.) Courier News and gave the following interview, including his reaction to Jose Canseco and his time in Texas:

http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006606180349

Yes, ten years after leading the Rangers to their first division title and winning the first of two American League Most Valuable Player Awards, Juan Gonzalez is playing at a 6,000-seat ballpark somewhere east of New York City and wearing a uniform with the name DUCKS written across it.

Hey, it was only six years ago that he turned down a contract offer from the Detroit Tigers that was rumored to be eight-years and $150 million or something like that.

But make no mistake and never forget, Juan Gonzalez played for the Rangers from 1991-99 and during those nine years, he was one of the best players in the game, an RBI machine who could hit a ball often, hard and very very far.

He had his injuries, he had his rough moments in the field and there were so many times when nobody could quite understand what he was really thinking or what was going on in an extremely complicated but ultra-private personal life.

What is known is he had immense talent, immense pride and the Rangers were more successful with Gonzalez on their team than any other point in their history, and it may have been Johnny Oates' greatest single achievement is he was able to somehow tap into that talent better than anybody.

There was little doubt the two had tremendous respect for each other even if Oates was sometimes baffled by his superstar as much as anybody.

Gonzalez is still the Rangers all-time home run and RBI leader and it's going to be a long-time before anybody catches him, and they'll have to around longer than the minimum six years to do it.

So sometime in the future, when the Rangers do have another Alumni Legacy Weekend, Juan Gonzalez deserves to be remembered by the franchise in some meaningful way.

The best of the best usually deserve that much.