New construction.
The last time the Rangers transitioned into a new ballpark, they left behind a building and a uniform color scheme and Nolan Ryan.
Ryan’s final Major League Uniform Player’s Contract was replaced with a personal services contract with the organization. Blue was replaced with red. Arlington Stadium was replaced, to the south, by The Ballpark in Arlington.
Nolan threw out the first pitch at the first game (an exhibition, to be exact, on April 1, 1994 against the Mets) in the new confines.
When the turnstiles open up for next building, on April 1, 2021, give or take a few days, I don’t know if the uniforms will have changed.
I also don’t know if the roof will be closed, but only because I don’t know if there’s rain in the forecast.
And I don’t know if Adrian Beltre will trot out to third base and if Colby Lewis will toe the rubber that day, in front of 44,000, facing southwest rather than northwest, but there’s only one reason I can think of not to have Beltre, ball in hand, double-tap his right foot on the bag and fire the ball to the mound with more uncalled-for velocity than Lewis has left in his own tank, and then have Lewis kick and deliver home to Michael Young, painting, after which Lewis meets Young, not halfway, but instead vectored to a point between the mound and dugout, on the way to which Lewis walks slowly, dominantly and almost unnaturally slowly, with baseball glove transfered to the grip of his right hand as his left index finger dutifully sweeps his brow.
And that’s if Colby Lewis’s bionic baseball body is still fully suited up as he lines the first base chalk with his teammates.
Unlikely, but maybe no more so than what he’s doing right now (3-0, 2.75, eight quality starts out of nine, .242/.284/.411) with a repaired elbow and repaired shoulder and re-repaired elbow and uniquely repaired hip.
I don’t have it in me to bet against Adrian, either.
They’re both freaks, and artists.
The new building will be Rougie’s and Nomar’s, and maybe Joey’s and maybe Dillon’s and maybe, we can hope, Yu’s.
It will be Ray and Bob and Neil’s and it will be Banny’s and it will be yours and mine and, in some capacity, it will be Michael’s and Adrian’s and Colby’s.
I don’t know if Colby Lewis’s jersey will look different that day.
Perhaps more to the point, I don’t know whether it will be accompanied by some weathered boots and a pair of Levi’s, or a pair of the home whites worn down to the cleats that, for now, cover one of the last remaining parts of the right-handed warrior’s body that hasn’t been broken and newly constructed, brought back to almost unthinkably steady and unassumingly dominant life.