Recreation
1972 Rangers
Quick Take: Ever see a flannel Texas Rangers jersey before? I’ll bet you haven’t… since their first year was 1972— and they took the field in flashy double knits. How can this be? Read on.
Quick Take: Steve is one of my customers who is a passionate collector of the unusual asked me to make something I had never done before. He wanted a Texas Rangers 1972 Spring Training jersey. So I made him one! Follow along...
Those of us with a sense of baseball-expansion history will recall that the Texas Rangers were the third incarnation of the Washington Senators… a team that barely hung on in the American League for decades, and that even survived being the butt of the joke in the 1955 Broadway production of Damn Yankees. I’ll skip the long story, but if you want to read it, you’ll find it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Senators_(1901%E2%80%931960) The first iteration of the Senators moved the Minnesota to become the Twins in 1961. A new Senators team was formed for 1962, but it lasted only ten seasons before they too were sold as the Texas Rangers in 1972. (Screen shots in this post are pulled form my book The Game Worn Guide to MLB Jerseys 1970-2020 https://gamewornguides.com )
A club with no money does things that today would be unthinkable…. And the new Rangers franchise needed uniforms to go to spring training with, so they stripped the Senators 1971 flannel uniforms and sewed the new Rangers wordmark on the front.
On back the old Senators numbers remained, in the same font and colors as they had been issued in the 1971 season. Today, finding any of these, either as Senators or Rangers flannels is a rarity. They are all in private collections if they have not instead been sent to the rag bin.
The fancy cowboy-themed red and blue wordmark for the 1972 flannel spring training Rangers was nearly flat across… not curved in an arch as it would appear on the Rangers new 1972 regular season double knits. Here, the vector art I created to drive the laser cutter
Here is how the 1972 inaugural season double knit Rangers home jersey looked. Note the modern knit sleeve ends and the arched crest on the chest.
My source to draw the wordmark came from this well preserved example that had been worn by 1971 Senators-1972 Rangers manager Ted Williams! Here, my work order proof, prepared for the client’s approval before we do anything else… an essential step in guaranteeing customer satisfaction.
The tiny hand embroidered white circle with the star in it appeared on a different spot on the spring training issue compared to the regular season uniforms.
Here is the final product! To make this jersey, Steve bought a blank Ebbets Field Flannel cream colored jersey and I did the artwork, laser-cut and stitched the lettering in the proper tackle twill. I like this one enough that I think I want one for myself. It’s a rather inexpensive project and one that you won’t see anywhere else. On to the next fun project.