Baseball Show and Tell: My Texas Rangers Pins

Greetings, baseball nerds! The second half of the 2026 Major League Baseball season has arrived. With the All-Star Game behind us, many teams have Postseason aspirations on the line. What you see is my Texas Rangers backpack. I bought this for myself as a late birthday/early Christmas gift in 2023, soon after the team won their first World Series title. Back in March, I decided that I wanted to add some pins onto my backpack to go with my patches, which I need to buy more of. I'll go over each one and let me know in the comments if you customize your backpack with baseball-related pins.

The Father of Baseball in Arlington

The late Tom Vandergriff was responsible for pushing Arlington to have an MLB team to the city. He served as Arlington's mayor for nearly 30 years and then served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 1985 and then following up with serving as a County Judge of Tarrant County for nearly 20 years until he officially retired in 2007 at the age of 80. Vandergriff passed away at the age of 84 in December 2010. He was inducted in the Texas Rangers Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004, six years before his passing. On the patch, his name is in blue text and one of the Rangers logos underneath it.

The Legendary Rusty Greer

If you were a Rangers fan in the 90s, chances are that you loved Rusty Greer. He spent all nine seasons with one team, which was the Rangers, of course. The retired left fielder was always exciting to watch. Thurman Clyde "Rusty" Greer III was born in January 1969 in Alabama. As of 2026, he's 57 years old and currently resides in Colleyville, a suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Greer has three children and as of 2023, he's the head baseball coach at Fort Worth Christian School in North Richland Hills. In 2007, he was inducted in the Texas Rangers Baseball Hall of Fame. It has his name, jersey number, and the year he was inducted.

Don't Touch His Head...Or Face!

Adrián Beltré was the life of the party during his time with the Rangers. The Baseball Hall of Famer and four-time All-Star played 21 seasons with four different teams. He and Elvis Andrus had a great friendship and were joined at the hip. Andrus would pull pranks on Beltré, which included the one thing Adrián hated the most: getting his head touched. I never knew why he detested it so much, but teammates from the teams he was on would mess with him by doing just that. In November 2018, Beltré announced his retirement from Major League Baseball. One year later, his number 29 was retired by the Rangers and was inducted into the Texas Rangers Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2024, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. During his speech, David Ortíz snuck up on him and touched his head, which was hilarious. In his mind, Adrián wanted to smack Big Papi. However, he kept his cool and played it off. As for this pin, I bought this from the Rangers Grand Slam Team Store back in February after the premium stadium tour I took part in concluded. It displayed some of his stats and his retired number 29.

The 1990s Texas Rangers

The final entry of this list is a pin that caught my attention on eBay that I had to buy it. The Texas Rangers Baseball Club logo was displayed on the sleeve of two of their uniforms from 1994 to 2000. There's something about that logo that I liked. It just stands out so well.

The pins in the first, second, and fourth entries were from eBay. Just purchase a backpack of your favorite team of any size and put as many pins on them as your heart desires.