This is a story about how fast the baseball world turns over. It is a story of how what’s down goes up faster than ever.
About how a team can lose 94 games one year and win the pennant the next.
About how a team that just coughed up control of a series with a monumental collapse can blow the doors off the defending world champs in their own building. Twice.
About how an outfielder with a head shaped like a light bulb, who was designated for assignment twice within two years and was the subject of booing like he had never heard before, can have the greatest Game 7 hitting performance in the 64-game history of Game 7s.
About how a pitch that—now it can be admitted—was not intentional can turn the American League Championship Series upside down.
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Champagne and beer were flying in the Rangers’ clubhouse after they thrashed Houston in ALCS Game 7 Monday, 11–4, but none reached the top of the head of 6'10" general manager Chris Young, the turnaround expert behind this surprising pennant. He’s also the same wizard who cut outfielder Adolis García just two years ago, leaving him free for any of the other 29 clubs to pick up for just about nothing.
In Game 7, García rang up a record-10 total bases on two homers and two singles that produced five runs batted in, boosting his series total to a record-15 RBIs.
“He loves the big moment,” Young said. “And he’s just an unbelievable person. Talk to anybody in here; they’ll talk to you about what a great teammate he is, what a great person he is, the work ethic ... he’s made himself into the player he is.
“We're not here without him. In the biggest moment, he stepped up. That’s Doli.”
Back in 1965, Gordon Moore, an engineer working in research and development at Fairchild Semiconductor, postulated that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years. He was so accurate with his observation that it became an industry-accepted standard known as Moore’s Law.
Call what has happened to Texas—and Arizona, should the Diamondbacks flip the Phillies one more time—Bombi’s Law, in honor of José Adolis “El Bombi” García, who was bestowed the childhood nickname by his neighborhood buddies in Cuba. They decided his head was shaped like una bombi, or a light bulb.
Bombi’s Law holds that baseball teams can do an about-face in two years or less—the Rangers lost 102 games two years ago, the D-Backs 110—and that playoff series can turn on a dime, or at least the most misunderstood wayward pitch in years. It also holds that a guy can be put on the baseball street twice and be the ALCS MVP two years later.
García left Cuba and played in Japan before the Cardinals signed him in February 2017, just before he turned 24. García posted an OPS over .800 in three seasons in the St. Louis system. In spring training, he roomed with fellow Cuban Randy Arozarena.
When the Cardinals wanted a roster spot after the 2019 season for what would be the forgettable pitcher Kwang Hyun Kim, they chose García as the guy to dump. He was strikeout prone, and St. Louis thought it had a surplus of outfielders. They designated him for assignment. The Rangers acquired him simply for cash considerations.
The COVID-19 season of 2020 saw Garcia get only six hitless at bats. Young was hired after that season to rebuild Texas. A few months later, he needed a roster spot for Mike Foltynewicz, who would go 2–12 in what was his final major league season. Young chose to put García on waivers and give his spot to Foltynewicz.
“We loved the player,” Young said. “We just felt like there were some holes in the game that we still needed to improve. We were hopeful that he would stay and not be claimed.”
For three days, the length of the waiver period, Young and his staff sweated it out. During that time Garcia began to doubt whether he had the ability to be a major leaguer. He spoke with first baseman Carlos Santana, a friend and workout partner.
“I think I may have to go back and play in Japan,” García told him. “They don’t think I’m good enough. I don’t know.”
Santana told him, “You can do it. But first you must believe that you can play in the big leagues.”
Three days passed. No team claimed García. He returned to the Rangers. Since then, he is one of only three players with 90 homers and 50 stolen bases. The others are teammate Marcus Semien and Shohei Ohtani.
“Those were three long days,” Young said. “I never want our guys to get claimed. It’s one of the hardest decisions to make as a general manager. And I hate saying that, but sometimes it’s part of the business. And I can’t say that we always make the smartest decisions.
“But sometimes luck works in your favor. And in that case, it did. And we’re not here without him.”
Playing in his first postseason, García is showcasing his skills with flair and joy, just as Arozarena did in 2020.
“You can’t really deny that October has that type of emotion,” he said.
García was at the epicenter of the potshot heard ’round the world, or so the Rangers and umpires would have you believe. It was Game 5 when Astros pitcher Bryan Abreu hit García with an up-and-in fastball. Abreu already had one runner on base with no outs in the eighth in trying to hold the Houston deficit to 4–2.
Umpire James Hoye and his crew ruled that Abreu hit García on purpose just because Garcia had hit a three-run homer his previous time up, ignoring the obvious fact that any team, especially the playoff-hardened Astros with the top of their order coming around, would not place a petty disagreement over trying to win the swing game of an LCS.
Or that the Houston bench had called for a slide step for Abreu with speedster Evan Carter at first, the first time this season the coaches had instructed Abreu to use the quickened delivery.
Or that Abreu and García are casual friends. Abreu even asked for and received an autographed baseball from García earlier this year.
It simply didn’t add up. What the umpires reacted to was García’s reaction. He immediately slammed his bat and yelled at Houston catcher Martín Maldonado. A source close to García said García simply was tired of ongoing irritation from Maldonado, who likes to talk during games. García and Semien had jostled with Maldonado during a game in July with plenty of trash talking.
“Nothing was directed at Abreu,” the source said. “It was all about Maldonado. He just had enough of the guy. There’s a history, and it just reached a breaking point. It wasn’t about being thrown at on purpose. Listen, he knows you don’t do that in that game situation.”
García was so incensed at Maldonado his actions emptied both benches. The half inning took 25 minutes. It iced Rangers closer José Leclerc long enough to lose the game, hanging a cookie of a changeup to Jose Altuve, who hit a game-winning three-run homer.
If García, after his initial outburst, defiantly walks to first base instead of further provoking Maldonado, the game proceeds on its steady trajectory toward a Texas win. The umpires do nothing. Instead, the delay cooled Leclerc and allowed Astros pitching coach Josh Miller to talk manager Dusty Baker into using his closer, Ryan Pressly, to replace Abreu rather than J.P. France, who had been warming. García’s overreactions triggered all that, not to mention his new notoriety in Houston.
García was booed fiercely in Game 6. He struck out his first four times up after Pitchgate.
“He’s never been booed like that before,” said Michael Young, a special assistant to Chris Young. “I’ve never heard booing like that, although I’m sure something like Yankees–Red Sox back in the day was worse. You could see he was trying to do too much.”
García was swinging out of his calico shoes to try to respond to the boos. Finally, with the bases loaded in the ninth with a 5–2 lead, García sent a vicious drive into the left field seats for a grand slam.
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“One of the coolest moments I’ve seen in my baseball career was last night when he hit that home run,” Chris Young said. “Why? Just everything that he had been through ... getting drilled like that, the fans all over him, punching out four times when he was getting caught up there in the moment ... and then changing the trajectory of this series ... and with an exclamation mark. It was awesome.”
The air changed. The Astros were not coming back again, not the way they did in Game 5. The Rangers knew it. Their postgame clubhouse was alive knowing they had just forced a cold-hitting Houston team (at least at home) to play a game it did not want to play. García, however, skedaddled without talking to the media.
“I was just focused solely on Game 7,” García said after Game 7, explaining his absence. “Yesterday, after the game, that was all that was on my mind. And honestly, I didn’t want to say something or do anything that would get me off track from being able to perform in a game like tonight.”
It wasn’t yet apparent, but the ALCS was effectively over. It was obvious the next day when Michael Young walked through the Texas clubhouse before Game 7. Country music blared from giant floor speakers. More telling, the room buzzed with a confidence Michael Young could not miss.
“Here it is before a Game 7 on the road against a really good team,” he says. “And I’m telling you, the talk was not just, ‘Let’s win the game.’ It was, ‘Let’s bury these guys. We’re going to put a hurting on them.’ That’s what they were saying.”
And so, they did. After only 20 pitches from the previously unhittable Cristian Javier, the Rangers led 3–0. It was never much of a game. García had two run-scoring singles to left (the first of which smacked off the wall in left as he inexcusably posed as if the ball was well into the seats), a solo opposite field homer and a solo big fly to left.
“I definitely think that the atmosphere and the type of game fuels us out there,” he said. “I take all that in, and it just helps me perform to the best of my ability.”
The Rangers are a fast-break basketball team of an offense. They score in bunches quickly, a style made possible by far more lineup depth than Houston possessed. Down three games to two, Houston marched into Minute Maid Park and outscored the Astros over two games, 20–6.
Texas lost 94 games last season. But since then, Young hired Bruce Bochy to manage and added pitchers Nathan Eovaldi and Andrew Heaney through free agency and Aroldis Chapman, Jordan Montgomery, Max Scherzer and Chris Stratton through midseason trades. (They also spent big on Jacob deGrom, who broke down with another blown-out elbow.) Those six new pitchers accounted for 65% of Texas’s innings in the ALCS. Eovaldi and Montgomery, who came out of the bullpen in Game 7, took care of all four wins.
The Rangers are rolling, riding the momentum of an eight-game postseason road winning streak, the emergence of talented and über-cool rookie Carter, who looks like the slope-shouldered, wiry strong copy of a young Don Mattingly (only faster), the reliability of Eovaldi and Montgomery and the steady hand of Bochy and his experienced and expert coaching staff. (The game plan, for instance, to get on top of Javier’s magic fastball was a tour de force of in-series adjustments.)
Most obviously, Texas is a fully confident, dangerous team because García is responding to the limelight with his best baseball. This postseason he is hitting .327 in 12 games with 20 RBIs and a 1.102 OPS. Already he is just one RBI short of the postseason record of David Freese, who needed 18 games for his 21 RBIs in 2011. Garcia has seven home runs this postseason, three short of the record of his former roommate, Arozarena.
The same guy who defected from Cuba, who hit .234 in Japan one year and who lost major league 40-man roster spots to Kim and Foltynewicz, is having a historic October.
“It really means a lot,” he said. “Personally, I know the struggle that I went through. The struggles that we go through when we’re trying to leave, play outside baseball. ... And I know everything I had to go through and the struggle just to get where I am today. So, I’m really grateful for that.”
Said Chris Young, “He just worked his way into a great major leaguer. And that's what the best ones do.”
Things happen fast in this game. Just ask the Astros, who were riding the high of Altuve’s homer only to get boat-raced out of the postseason inside 48 hours. Ask the 29 teams who had García sitting there for the taking and passed. Ask the scouts of the Phillies and Diamondbacks, who suddenly must game-plan specifically to hold down one of the hottest hitters in postseason history. Ask the Rangers, who blew the division title by getting shut out on the last day of the season and haven’t lost a road game since.
And ask García, the very definition of Bombi’s Law at work.
