The Texas Rangers Are Finally in the Playoffs and It's All Thanks to ... Creed? Really?!?

Dallas-Fort Worth has been living through a little bit of a professional sports victory drought. That's not to say that our hometown teams are all doing poorly. C'mon. We're not that bad, but there's room for improvement all around.

For starters, none of our four major league teams have taken home the championship trophy in 12 years, since the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Finals. The Mavs made it all the way to the Western Conference finals in 2022, when it seemed like they might be getting back some momentum — until the Golden State Warriors killed the dream.

The Dallas Stars turned in performances we can be proud of with four playoff appearances in the last five years, but the 6-0 blowout against the Vegas Golden Knights physically hurt even if you weren't on the ice.

The Dallas Cowboys ... um, well. The Cowboys, um, have nice, shiny, well-pressed uniforms.

The local team that's turned things around the most is definitely the Texas Rangers, who finally scored their first playoff berth after a long, painful seven years. The news gets even better from there. Las Vegas oddsmakers are betting on the Rangers to win the whole enchilada when the World Series rolls around. According to Sports Illustrated (SI), the Rangers have a payout of +360 to win it all, the lowest payout of any team in the league right now.

Last week, the Rangers won their wild-card series against Tampa Bay, two games to none. Then, on Tuesday night, they finished off the Baltimore Orioles, the team with the best record in the American League, three games to none. Yep, so far our hometown heroes have a 5–0 postseason record, with the American League championship series set to begin on Saturday against either the Minnesota Twins or the Houston Astros (hold your hissing). Things are looking up for us at the ol' ballpark. Yes, sir, nothing's gonna ruin this good news. Even if we don't make it to the World Series victory stand, we'll be primed and ready to take on the next season.

Oh, what's this? Why, it's another story about how our boys in red, white and blue made it to the playoffs. Could this day get any sweeter? It's like the good-luck gods have granted us a week full of wishes.

Uh, oh.

According to SI's FanNation blog Inside the Rangers, the team got through the rocky second half of the season by listening to Creed tunes in the clubhouse.

Yes, THAT Creed. The Scott Stapp Creed. The band who became irrelevant before they even released a hit album. It's the same Creed that's played between announcements at sketchy car auctions on dirt roads and strip clubs with sneeze guard-less breakfast buffets.

The Rangers' Andrew Heaney said in an interview with 105.3 The Fan's Jared Sandler that the team has been playing (shiver) Creed songs as a way to get pumped up before those all-important late season games. They play it in the locker room and on the bus. They even have some kind of secret handshake inspired by Creed's music. 
Man, this is one mixed blessing. On the one hand, the Rangers are kicking ass and are contenders for their first-ever World Series victory. On the other hand, it's all due to the music that Nickelback fans use in their similes and metaphors as something that sucks. It's like finding out that you've won the lottery because Kevin Federline rigged the ball machine.

This isn't just alt-snarkiness. Even manager Bruce Bochy can't explain how Creed ended up becoming the team's fight song band. He probably doesn't know how it could motivate anyone to do anything other than walk over to the thing that's playing their not-good-enough-for-Christian-rock tunes and yank the plug out of the wall hard enough to need new plastering.

This is also not a new concept. Substandard music and pro-sports are as intertwined as the stitching on the ball. Remember “The Super Bowl Shuffle”? The 1985 Chicago Bears were so confident that they’d make the Super Bowl that they wrote and recorded their own song to pump themselves up, and their fans. It may not be the best song ever committed to cassette tape but it worked, according to The Chicagoist. The Bears made it to Super Bowl XX and beat the New England Patriots by a wide margin. The song was a massive hit as well. It peaked at No. 41 on the Billboard charts and it even got a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Performance.

Maybe it's a reverse psychology kind of thing. Maybe the Rangers are playing Creed's music so they'll get more outs on the field and speed up the game so they can get away from the grinding songs that will surely be part of the soundtrack for the live-action remake of the Book of Revelations.

Blasting Creed during practice could even help with the team's hitting and base running. Imagine being at bat and hearing "With Arms Wide Open" blaring out of the PA system all the way from the back of the bleachers. You'd do everything you could to hit the ball right into each one of the speakers and get back to home plate as fast as humanly possible to get away from the musical equivalent of ear mace.

So if it takes an ear-load of Creed to get the Rangers to its first World Series win, then so be it. They can fill the ballpark and bullpen with all the dude-bro-rock they want. Hell, throw in some Limp Bizkit, Puddle of Mudd and 3 Doors Down on a continuous loop and hire Bad Janet from The Bad Place to be the team’s DJ if it’ll improve their fielding percentage by even just half of a point.

You may be turning up or holding your nose now at the team’s hype music, but if this works, you’ll be crying and mouthing the words to “My Sacrifice” by the second week of November — with arms wide open.