ARLINGTON, Texas — Each year at spring training, the Rangers mark the dawning of a new season by raising the team flag at their team facility in Surprise, Arizona.
But in 2024, the team flag looks a little different.
It reads “World Series Champions” and the honor of raising it to the skies is an honor that fell to Cal Kost, one of the team’s most loyal and beloved members.
“It was an experience that makes you proud,” Kost said. “To be considered part of the Ranger family.’
Because Kost is not a player, trainer or front office executive. Instead, you can find him in section 118 of Globe Life Field working as an usher. He is there long before each home game begins and well after it is done. Hard work and passion he’s given the team every year since his first season in 1995.
Perhaps, his greatest contribution to the Rangers is his wife, Shirley.
“Tom Grieve named her ‘cookie lady,’” he said. "We will be walking around and someone would yell ‘hey, cookie lady!’”
An appropriate name considering she was known by players, fans, broadcasters and anyone else around the team as the woman who would bring a batch of cookies to games. It is a tradition that started one year at spring training when she made cookies to thank former Ranger John Wetteland for giving her a ride on his motorcycle.
“I spend more money on cookies than I do on tickets,” Shirley told WFAA in 2005 when we visited her at the Kost home to watch her make and bake the signature treats she would share with fans sitting around her.
But when the Rangers finally won the World Series Championship last November, it was a moment Cal Kost found almost too overwhelming.
Because he could not celebrate it with Shirley.
“It is hard to find the words to express,” he said as his eyes began to well. “She was there. I could tell she was part of the crowd.”
Sadly, Shirley passed away in 2021 after a battle with COVID. She was 82 years old. And though he could not celebrate the long-awaited title with her, Cal knows exactly how she would have reacted.
“She would be having a time trying to figure out what new cookie to make as a celebration,” Cal Kost said.
And as Cal begins his 30th season with the team, the honor raising the flag to forever look down upon the franchise meant much more knowing who else was looking down from above.
“Let me tell you, Shirely was there with us,” he told WFAA.
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