Dallas/Fort Worth: Globe Life Field
Here's where the strings come in...
While the family on my mom’s side was close-knit if chaotic, the family on my dad’s side was loyal if dysfunctional. My parents divorced when I was very young, introducing a schism into the way I thought about my newly bifurcated family. My mom got primary custody of me, an only child, while my dad got visitation once every two weekends. When I would be with my dad, we were often over at my grandma’s house, where my uncle, aunt and twin cousins — also children of divorce and living in joint custody — would often be around as well.
Only children tend to gravitate toward “chosen family” in adolescence and adulthood and I’m no exception. I’ve certainly not done the work of keeping up solid connections with my blood relatives, instead leaning hard on the people whom I’ve gravitated toward over the past 30-ish years. However, growing up, my cousins on both sides of the family were my surrogate siblings, even if we only got to see each other a few days a month.
When I was in the first grade, my dad moved from Ohio to Arizona in search of a fresh start. My “every other weekend” became a few weeks in the summer and every other Christmas for just under a decade. I’d still occasionally get to see my cousins if grandma was having the whole family over or when my dad came back to visit, but I was basically cut off from them until I was in high school and my dad came back from the desert. As a result, we ended up not being as close as we could have been, even though we could’ve used the support as the three of us were all trying to make the best of a challenging childhood.
Mellisse and Samantha have always been close, which I guess makes sense for twins.1 Both ended up at the University of Toledo,2 both chose paths of service — Mel in the military and medicine, Sam as an educator — both found their ways Texas, both married with sons roughly the same age and daughters a few years younger, who have the benefit of growing up with their own cousins as pseudo-siblings.
With the distance between us, we saw each other only on the rarest of occasions: weddings, funerals and the odd holiday. However, I always felt a closer kinship with them than our intermittent past would seem likely to foster. I hadn’t visited either of them in Texas for over a decade, since the last time the band played in San Antonio.3 I had this date circled in red on the calendar and made sure to schedule some extra time to catch up.
We rolled down from Tulsa on Wednesday morning after spending the night there to break up the eight hour drive from Kansas City. From here until the west coast, they’re all long drives: four hours to Houston, eight hours to Midland, six hours to Albuquerque, seven hours to Phoenix, six hours to San Diego. If you’ve never driven across the western U.S., it’s breathtaking and relentless at the same time. Take the breaks where and when you can get them.
First cousin Mel wasn’t home when we pulled up to the house, but first cousins once removed Philip and Alyna were there to let us in. It’s such an odd thing to see my late uncle’s face on his grandson’s body, but the Hemminger family resemblance is strong and inevitable if you carry the Y chromosome. If I shaved my beard — and lost 100 pounds — Philip and I would look shockingly similar.
Once Mel got home from work, we caught up over dinner prep — smoked chicken, baked potatoes and salad — until her sister Sam came over. All three of us have recently taken steps to deal with burnout and prioritize our own well being. I’m not a professional and I’m definitely speaking only from my own experience, but I feel like it’s harder for children of divorce to recognize happiness and contentment when they have it. You spend many of your formative years in flux between two parents,4 navigating multiple sets of rules and expectations, sometimes a pawn in a power struggle, or worse, allowed to slip through the cracks. Occasionally an unsupportive or abusive stepparent enters the picture, further complicating the precarious balance. It can be so difficult to know what accomplishment is supposed to feel like if you’re laden with years of trauma, anxiety and uncertainty.
Listen, the whole visit wasn’t about dredging up the dark parts of our past and how they’ve influenced our present. Mel and Sam know how to have fun, and when you get four people from Ohio together, it’s understood that a euchre game is eventually going to break out at some point after pleasantries are exchanged. I *do* know what accomplishment feels like in the context of the game, and I’m more than accustomed to the sensation.5
The Texas Rangers game on Thursday was a 1:35 p.m. start, so we rendezvoused at Sam’s in the morning to carpool down to Arlington from the northern suburbs. It takes between 45 minutes to an hour to get from the north edges of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex to the entertainment and convention district in Arlington, where you’ll find Globe Life Field, AT&T Stadium — home of the Dallas Cowboys — Six Flags Over Texas and Choctaw Stadium, formerly known as The Ballpark in Arlington, retrofitted to host football, soccer and rugby. The city operates no public transit, so everyone drives to the games. As a consequence, the parking lot operators charge premium prices from $20–50 per car. I pre-purchased a $20 pass in a lot a little over a half mile from the ballpark, not thinking that it would certainly be sweltering hot and humid at midday in Texas in July. Whoops.
The defending world champs are celebrating their title by giving away replica World Series rings at select home games, and offering limited edition “enhanced” versions of said rings for sale as a $10 ticket upcharge available to only 2,000 fans. Our game featured the enhanced ring option, so I signed us up for three: one for me, one for Mel and one for Sam. Once I picked up our rings, I was carrying them around the concourse and was asked by two people how much I wanted for one. Just to exercise my American right to conduct capitalism, I asked “how much you got?” No one would offer me cash and the trades proposed were lackluster, so I held onto my ring. They’re going for $140-180 on eBay right now. I made an early trip to the team store just so I could hide my faux-diamond encrusted treasures in a nondescript bag away from the ravenous eyes of Ranger fans who may have been tempted to pilfer them.6
Globe Life Field is the newest ballpark in Major League Baseball, opened in the COVID-shortened 2020 season when fans were not permitted to attend games in person. The park hosted the first and only neutral site World Series that year, won by the Los Angeles Dodgers for games to two against the Tampa Bay Rays. The World Series returned to Globe Life Field in 2023 as the Rangers bested the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games, and the park also hosted the 2024 All-Star Game just a week or so prior to my visit. It’s a thoroughly modern park, complete with retractable roof — closed for our game due to the Texas heat — and three levels of luxury suites, including one at field level spanning from foul pole to foul pole, interrupted only by the dugouts and camera wells. I entertained the idea of taking the escalator down to the extra posh lower concourse, but was put off by the facility staff stationed at the top seemingly checking tickets to keep out the poors.
We found our seats in section 207, called the Corner Pavilion to make people think they’re getting something better than upper deck box seats, and joined up with Mel, Sam, Philip and Sam’s son Brandon just before first pitch. Taking the mound for the Rangers was Max Scherzer, a favorite pitcher of mine dating back to his time with the Detroit Tigers where he won his first Cy Young Award in 2013. Pitching just two days before his 40th birthday, Mad Max embarrassed the hapless Chicago White Sox for six innings, giving up just one run on three hits and striking out nine batters, bringing his career total to 3,400, passing his former Tigers and Mets teammate Justin Verlander for 10th all-time in Major League history.
The Rangers would eke out just two runs: a home run by second baseman Marcus Semien in the third and a run scoring fielder’s choice by Leody Taveras in the fourth. I’m developing a knack for conjuring home runs for the home teams by getting up to go to the restroom. It’s happened at least three times on the trip so far and will most assuredly happen again.
The two runs were enough for Texas to dispatch the White Sox by a final of 2-1, sending nearly 33,000 fans home happy.7 Also, I ate this ridiculous footlong hot dog, sending me home happy.
We spent a little time after the game at Texas Live!, the bar and restaurant complex just north of Globe Life Field, in hopes that traffic would thin out a bit before we headed out. The outdoor Revolver Brewing beer garden — a brand owned by MolsonCoors — was bumping post-game, and we whiled away the time with a beer, a few rounds of cornhole8 and some people watching. The nouveau cowboy and cowgirl set seemed to be out in full force and in greater proportions than we witnessed inside the park. Turns out former mullet enthusiast and offhand racist Morgan Wallen was performing the first of two sold out shows at neighboring AT&T Stadium that night. So much for trying to wait out traffic.
It took a little over an hour to get back up to the northern suburbs, where we hit the Frisco location of Babe’s Chicken Dinner House. A southern family-style restaurant, you get your choice of protein — fried chicken, fried tenders, chicken-fried steak, fried catfish or smoked chicken — served alongside sides of mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, green beans, salad and biscuits. The sides are OK, but the chicken is the star of the show here: crispy, juicy, savory and succulent. The six of us left for Sam’s house stuffed to the wattles and suddenly sapped of the energy to do anything else at all.
Scott and I said our goodbyes Friday morning after a crucial breakfast taco drop from Fuzzy’s. I don’t know if we could have crammed more fun into a 40 hour session than we had kicking it with my cousins. Texas always seemed so terribly far from Ohio, but it suddenly feels a whole lot closer.
I have no siblings, so how am I supposed to know what’s normal or makes sense?
Which makes no sense to this Bowling Green Falcon, but whatever.
2008? 2010? All I really remember from that stop was that we played a show with Japanther, we went out for some damn good tacos, and the apartment where we stayed that evening was the grossest place I’ve ever fallen asleep.
If you’re lucky.
What I’m trying to say, in an obtuse way, is that I will kick your ass at euchre, just like Sam and I wiped the floor with Mel and Scott.
You will say that I’m being paranoid, but at the game we went to in Cleveland, two fans sitting next to our group stole a Josh Naylor bobblehead from under my friend’s chair. I didn’t realize it at the time that they left, clutching bobbleheads under each arm, as I joked to them that they could make a killing selling those on the internet. Their forced chuckles and brisk scurrying down the aisle toward the exit tells me they already knew that.
Hey hey! You can call two in a row a win streak! Home teams are now 7-12 on my trip.
Again, we’re from Ohio. This is just going to happen.
All of Justin’s cousins are THE BEST. Makes me wish you had a sibling, Justy!
Not sure about the euchre ne Juckespiel but I reckon I can give you a decent game in Cornhole.