Admit it, you'd give anything to have a model of Tiger Stadium like this

Dallas-area hobbyist is a model Texas Rangers fan

Reginald Rutledge built a model of the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in his backyard. He got his start on the hobby as a kid building a model of the Dallas Cowboys' old Texas Stadium. His current projects are the stadiums of the San Francisco 49ers and the New England Patriots.


People show their enthusiasm for these Texas Rangers in different ways.

Reginald Rutledge did it by building an amazing, eye-popping replica of Rangers Ballpark inside his Arlington garage.

Now if only we could get a roof over the real thing.

Reginald, 50, describes himself as a “laid-off engineer.” But in his sideline as a sports nut, he works overtime.

And this has been going on a long time. Growing up in Memphis, Tenn., he got hooked on electric football, the old-school game where little players vibrate around on a buzzing field.

Reginald is still playing electric football — or miniature football, as it’s now called.

In fact, he’s the founder and commissioner of a new league, the College Bowl Series of Miniature Football. He recently presided over the league championship in Las Vegas.

And he operates an Internet-based business devoted to miniature football, footballfigure.net.

As part of that business, Reginald builds replica stadiums to go around the electric football fields. And that goes back to his youth, too.

As a kid, he was watching a Dallas Cowboys game on TV one Sunday. “Texas Stadium was still pretty new then, and I really liked the domed look of it. I started building a cardboard stadium of my own,” he said.

“It was real rough, but that was the genesis of everything.”

He has since sold model stadiums to customers all over the world. In his garage workshop, he’s now completing models of the New England Patriots’ and San Francisco 49ers’ stadiums.

But his masterpiece stands on the other side of the garage — the 6-by-7-foot Rangers Ballpark.

“I always wanted to have a piece of Ranger history, even if I had to create it,” he said.

He was suffering heart problems last year during the Rangers’ championship run. Since he couldn’t go to games, he channeled his enthusiasm into building the model stadium.

Banks of tiny LED stadium lights illuminate the field. He can route radio play-by-play of games through stadium speakers. And he plans to add a real video screen to the right-field scoreboard.

The model is highly detailed — right down to manager Ron Washington standing at the dugout. But it’s not meant to be architecturally exact.

“I don’t spend time scaling it or anything. I just start to build,” he said.

Reginald really got excited when I asked: Can you put a roof on it?

“Absolutely,” he said. “Rose and I are always talking about doing that.”

He and his wife, Rosemary, were regulars at games this year. And that meant a lot of suffering.

“It was so frustrating being out in all that heat,” he said. “It was miserable, just miserable.”

Amen to that. I was at two games this season with starting temperatures of 105 degrees.

As an engineer (aerospace and electrical), Reginald has spent a lot of time pondering his model, thinking about ways of adding a retractable roof to the real park. His judgment is painful to hear.

“There’s a way to do it,” he said, “but it’s probably cheaper to just start all over on the stadium.”

Demolishing the ballpark seems unimaginable. I still think of it as our “new” stadium, although it opened in 1994.

The Rangers have investigated the possibility of retrofitting the ballpark with a roof or even some sort of light shade structure, but the costs have been too high.

And Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said Wednesday that he’s heard no mention of building a new stadium.

“It does get hot at times,” he said. “But I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that.”

Reginald predicts more and more discussion of building an air-conditioned, retractable-roof park. And he’s all for it, even if it means building a new model.

“I want a roof,” he said. “It’s hot out there.”