Although the Washington Senators relocated to Texas for the 1972 baseball season, the team continued to conduct spring training in Pompano Beach through 1986.

Sports writer Mike Shropshire does not put on his rose-colored glasses as he recounts his memories of spring training here:

The Texas Rangers had moved to Arlington in 1972, and conducted spring training at Pompano Beach, Fla. The team headquarters was the Surf Rider, a dive that resembled a minimum-security halfway house. It was right on the beach, though, and therefore heavenly.

The spring training of my experience was not a family scene. The schedule for the Major League Baseball beat writer went as follows: Get up, gargle with English Leather, and stroll the beach. Then I'd return to my room at the Surf Rider with its mildewed walls and do an hour's worth of research for the work day ahead. That amounted to studying the racing form to handicap the first five races at Gulfstream. After returning from the track, I'd report to Pompano Stadium, making sure to arrive late enough that the game would be over, and get a copy of the box score.

Next, I would locate Whitey Herzog, the manager, who by 5 p.m. would be located at the Surf Rider bar, actively anesthetizing his brain from the troubling occupational circumstances that confronted him.

Whitey had reason to be troubled. In his single season of managing the club, the Rangers won only 57 games against 105 losses, the worst record in the major leagues that year.