Fort Worth Nuns Who Follow Team Religiously Say This Is the Year
FORT WORTH, Texas—Talk about true believers.
Roman Catholic nuns Maggie Hession and Frances Evans have been faithful fans of the perennially laggard Texas Rangers since the team played its first baseball game in nearby Arlington in 1972. (more after the break)
The nuns have had season tickets every year since—long, blistering hot, woeful seasons that earned the Rangers the dubious distinction of being the only active franchise in Major League Baseball never to win a playoff series. Until this year. With their beloved team at long last playing in the World Series, the nuns, members of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, say they always believed it would happen. "We just didn't know it would take this long," Sister Frances says. The nuns say their faith in the Rangers never faltered during the 39 years that they attended games, listening to the play-by-play on their transistor radios and beating a drum they inherited from another fan. For decades, the Rangers lurched between mediocre and poor, with losses sometimes topping 100 games in a 162-game season. Between the team's lackluster performance and Texas's oppressive summer heat, tickets to the baseball games weren't hard to come by. But the nuns' devotion to the hapless team earned them some fringe benefits. They have parking space No. 1 at the stadium. For many years, friends they made at the games flew the sisters to Florida for spring training, where the sisters watched the games by day and placed modest bets at a racetrack at night. The nuns have become so close to the Rangers precisely because they've been such devout fans. Former Ranger star pitcher Nolan Ryan recalled the time he had a hand problem and went to see a specialist and when he got out of the appointment, the sisters were in the waiting room praying over his hand. "They're as loyal a fan as we have and as caring a people as you want," says Mr. Ryan, now the team's president and part-owner. In 1996, 1998 and 1999, the Rangers took the nuns to New York to watch the team battle in playoff series against the Yankees. The sisters stayed at the same hotel as the players did, rode the bus with them to Yankee Stadium and, at one game, even sat in the dugout. The nuns stopped in at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue every day to say a special prayer for the team. The Rangers lost anyway. So, when the Rangers clinched the American League pennant Oct. 22, finally defeating the Yankees, victory was particularly thrilling for the nuns. "What a game! I jumped up and down and yelled," says Sister Frances.
She is a tiny, stoop-shouldered 84-year-old, who describes herself as "still ornery—the renegade." Sister Maggie, who was born in Galway, Ireland, and recently turned 82, refers to herself as "the sweet one." With early morning mass and Bible study, among other daily duties, Sister Frances says their lives are pretty busy. "We don't just sit around and swing our rosary beads all day." Still, the sisters plan to carve out plenty of time to attend every Rangers World Series home game against the San Francisco Giants, sitting in their 14th-row seats behind home plate. And they are following the away games on TV, with the sound off, so they can listen to the play-by-play on the radio. "You hear a lot of tidbits you don't get from those TV announcers," Sister Frances says. The sisters worked for decades at the former St. Joseph Hospital in Fort Worth. Sister Frances was head of social services; Sister Maggie was a member of the surgical nursing staff. At the time, all the nuns lived in a convent on the hospital grounds. The first season, they saved their money for tickets, but, after that, benefactors, including past Rangers owners and local businessmen, picked up the tab. "We like to say, 'God provides,' " Sister Maggie says. These days, they share a duplex in Fort Worth, 25 miles from Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. It is a shrine to their devotions, decorated with religious figurines, crosses, refrigerator magnets of past players and three dozen signed baseballs, each enclosed in plexiglass. There is also a framed portrait of the sisters in Rangers uniforms, taken when they attended Texas Rangers Baseball Fantasy Camp in the early '90s. Mr. Ryan remembers the nerve-wracking experience of having to pitch to them during camp. The previous year Sister Frances was hit by a ball and broke her thumb. "I was quite nervous," recalls Mr. Ryan. "But they both hit the ball and ran to first base and were very happy." When Tom Schieffer was president of the Rangers from 1991 to 1999, the nuns were never shy about giving him advice about how to run his team, he says, and which player "needed to pay attention to his personal life." Sister Frances is no fan of former owner Tom Hicks, and was none too pleased when, in 2000, he signed Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year-deal worth $252 million. Hicks Sports Group was forced to sell the team in bankruptcy court this past summer. "He didn't know beans from bull foot about baseball," Sister Frances says of Mr. Hicks. Mr. Hicks doesn't disagree about Alex Rodriguez. "I do hope Sister Frances understands that I know I made errors, but they were all done because I was trying to deliver a winning team to Rangers fans," he said in a statement. "Prayerfully, I hope Sister Frances can forgive and forget my past errors, especially as she is watching the Rangers in the 2010 World Series." The nuns are delighted that Mr. Ryan became one of the team's owners in the summer; Sister Frances has been telling him for years he ought to buy the team. She also leaves messages for him with coaching tips. Her latest: "If those guys would stay loose and have fun playing the game, they will play well." Despite the Rangers' losses in the first two games of the Series, the nuns feel strongly that this year's Rangers team can win it. "God's time frame and mine are never the same," Sister Frances says, "but I really believe this is the year, this is the team."
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