It might seem like a surprise that it didn’t happen sooner, but Mike Hargrove is pleased that it’s happened at all.
At halftime of Friday night’s football game against Lubbock Estacado, Hargrove, Perryton’s favorite son, became the inaugural inductee into the Ranger and Rangerette Hall of Fame.
As arguably the most famous person Perryton has ever produced, Hargrove seems like an obvious first selection for the honor, recognizing a professional baseball career as a player, manager and executive which has now spanned five decades.
In his typical unassuming fashion, Hargrove appreciates the timing of the honor, if nothing else.
“They had to pick somebody so I’m glad they picked me,” said Hargrove of literally being in a class by himself, at least for now. “I feel extremely honored to be chosen as the first one in. I don’t know how to express how that makes me feel but I really am kind of stunned and honored at the same time.”
While Hargrove’s name is recognized in Perryton and Texas Panhandle athletic lore over a long period, he’s being honored because of a new face in his hometown. In his first year as Perryton’s coach and athletic director, Josh Hernandez wanted to establish something honoring athletic tradition on campus.
Hernandez made a suggestion which was eventually embraced by Perryton’s administration.
“When I first got here I kind of threw around some things and Perryton didn’t have a hall of fame,” Hernandez said. “There were things throughout our school which recognized certain individuals, but we hadn’t really wrapped it all together as an athletic department. This was something I presented to our superintendent Greg Brown and he was really open to the idea.”
Hargrove’s name seemed perfectly natural to be the first one on any wall honoring past Perryton athletes. He had over 1,600 hits and batted .290 for the Texas Rangers, San Diego Padres and Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) in a 12-year major league career, and as a manager with the Indians, he led the club to the World Series in 1995 and 1997.
In 16 seasons with Cleveland, the Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Mariners, Hargrove won 1,188 games and is now a special advisor to the president with the Guardians.
“I’m really humbled by it to tell you the truth,” Hargrove said. “Some great athletes come through Perryton High School, both women and men. To be the first inductee to the hall of fame is to me a real singular honor and one that I look at with a lot of excitement. Any time your hometown and the people who know you best honor you like that it’s as good as it gets.”
That Hargrove, a 1968 Perryton graduate, is the first inductee shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone from Perryton who’s paid attention to his career.
“I wouldn’t say it was a no-brainer but he was a really, really good choice,” Hernandez said. “There’s a lot of different candidates we could have gone with. There are going to be a lot of different names put into the hall, but just for the start and what this means to the community this was kind of the way it leans based on the achievements he had after he left Perryton High School.”
The irony of Hargrove’s athletic career is that when he was growing up in Perryton, baseball was actually his third sport. He played safety on the football team and also played basketball, the sport he actually attended Northwest Oklahoma State University to play.
Hargrove didn’t play baseball at Perryton High for a simple reason: The school didn’t have a team. He played some American Legion baseball in the summers and fast pitch softball along with his father Dudley, who was an aspiring baseball player when he was younger.
It was Hargrove’s father who got him to give baseball a crack while in college. Making it a professional career wasn’t on his radar.
“It didn’t even enter my mind,” Hargrove said. “I went to school on a basketball scholarship and played two years there. I walked on to the baseball team my freshman year at the insistence of my dad. I’m glad I listened to him.”
What seemed like a last option turned into a half-century devoted to the national pastime. Hargrove found out fairly quickly where his athletic future was.
“I saw some scouts in the stands and the thought kind of started germinating then and it ended up coming to fruition,” Hargrove said. “I don’t know that it was accidental. I’d played basketball from late August to the middle of February, and I was tired. All my friends were going out and having a good time and I wanted to do that too.”
Thus began a journey which took him far from Perryton yet back home again to be honored by his hometown for his diamond accomplishments, including the 1974 American League Rookie of the Year and an All-Star Game appearance with the Rangers.
In the dugout for Cleveland, he managed the team to five straight AL Central championships from 1995-99, the only manager in franchise history to make five straight postseason appearances.
The induction ceremony is convenient for Hargrove and his wife Sharon from a travel perspective, since Perryton is on the way from Cleveland, where Hargrove spent the baseball season, to Tucson, Ariz., where they live in the offseason. Perryton is always a reminder of what helped shape him.
“I think it gave a good solid foundation to live my life on,” Hargrove said. “Perryton was a good place to grow up. Obviously, there’s not a lot going on there to get yourself into trouble, but some kids can find trouble anywhere. You knew pretty much everybody in town and everybody in town knew you. If you did something wrong, it didn’t take long to get back to your folks.”
It’s only natural that if Perryton wants to start a new athletic tradition that Hargrove is there for it. Hernandez said that the ceremony will be an annual event and will be limited to one inductee per year.
The coach is also hoping to create an alumni association which will vote on who gets inducted into the hall each year.
“I think this is still really, really new,” Hernandez said. “I don’t know if people really know what to expect yet. Once people see how we put this together, I think it’s going to take on a life of its own as we induct new members and bring some of our alumni back to town for the presentation.”
The most notable of those alums were in town for the first presentation to honor him.
Hargrove has skipped the Guardians appearance in the American League Championship series against the New York Yankees to return home for some recognition and thinks his presence will serve better in Perryton than Cleveland or New York, noting that certain ways he could contribute are long gone.
“(The Guardians) haven’t needed me physically to play all year, so I don’t think they do now,” Hargrove said.