The whole.

Football’s final stand of the season was half over, two quarters of clock time away from two shoehorned beer endorsements by the winning quarterback, when the broadcast went to commercial and a man holding center stage — in a moment that was as authentic as Peyton Manning’s double-dipped Budweiser tribute wasn’t — said to a room full of men he shared a uniform with: “You showed up every day. We ain’t done yet. . . . I love every one of you. Keep it going. I told you: You let us hang around, they’d be pissed off. Well, ya know what? THEY’RE PISSED OFF.”

(In case you missed it last night — or even if you didn’t — here you go.)

In that room, in the current estimation of MLB Network, were none of the top 10 starting pitchers in baseball and none of the top 10 relief pitchers in baseball and none of the top 10 catchers in baseball and none of the top 10 first basemen in baseball and none of the top 10 second basemen in baseball and none of the top 10 shortstops in baseball and none of the top 10 left fielders in baseball and none of the top 10 center fielders in baseball and none of the top 10 right fielders in baseball. (The game’s number three third baseman was there.)

CBS Sports didn’t stop at recognizing 10 players at each position, stretching instead recently to 15, and in its rankings the third baseman that heard the speech shown last night at halftime had ranked company at second base and designated hitter (plus the number 17 and number 25 starting pitchers, as CBS went even deeper there). Still, not just a whole lot of baseball’s best on an individual level, at least according to some who hold forth on a national level.

And yet that team, the team that showed up every day and hung around and ticked off a lot of people on the other side of the field, was one of the final eight standing in 2015, and really should have been among the final four.

And is, today, in the evaluation of at least one national columnist, one of the five best teams in baseball (featuring, he argues, the game’s second-strongest lineup).

Aristotle (likely dissed in MLB Network’s ranking of B.C. philosopher-scientists) apparently threw down the idea that, in certain instances, a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts — the word “synergy” came around a couple thousand years later, a good bit earlier than the sabermetric set that tends to dismiss it — though nowadays it’s in sports where we hear it invoked most often.

That unmathematical concept is one of the things that stuck in my mind as that Texas Rangers ad aired locally at halftime last night.

And the four times I saw Pearce Theatre crush it the last two weeks as it performed “Singin’ In the Rain” in a high school auditorium that needed every one of its seats to to hold crowds of as many as 1,400.

There are lots of players wearing the Texas uniform who it can be argued are under-appreciated when it comes to (meaningless) individual league rankings.

But at the same time, there aren’t are a whole lot of people who say the Rangers overachieved in 2015, unless it’s in the context of all the injuries the club overcame. This team is widely considered a favorite to repeat atop the division in 2016.

Because of the whole.

There’s an awesome culture (a synergy, maybe) that leaders cultivate — not only coaches but also the leaders who count among those parts. That third baseman, for example.

You can bet when a theater group or a high school baseball team or a World Series club gets back together 20 years down the road, it’s more than just memories that get shared. There’s that bond, too, the bond that may get tucked away but never expires. There’s no formula for that. No math.

It’s been awesome to see that develop for Erica with Pearce Theatre, and for Max with the Pelicans, and I saw it resonate in that 30-second spot between football halves last night, on clear display between a manager and his baseball players, and it raised the hair on my arms and got me to doing some countdown math in my head.

Heather Biddle. Mike Tovar. Jeff Banister.

Jake Griffin and Kenadi Paredes. Ty Holt and A.J. Haley. Adrian Beltre and Rougned Odor.

The parts are impressive.

The whole, even better.

I’m a Theater Dad, something I was no closer to saying a year and a half ago than Josh Morgan was to saying, “I’m a catcher.”

I’m a Theater Dad, and a really proud one.

A year and a half ago, Erica wasn’t yet in theater, Banny wasn’t yet in Texas, and the Rangers were 25 games out of first, about to lose another 23 out of 32.

All those things seem like an eternity ago.

Pitchers & Catchers in 10 sleeps, as the parts begin to reassemble to form the whole of the defending AL West champs, and in a way that seems like an eternity away, like it can’t get here soon enough.

Especially since halftime last night.