HOUSTON — Baseball’s toughest team just reached the game’s ultimate destination on the shoulders of baseball’s toughest guy.

The Texas Rangers proved the former, gritting their teeth when 90 wins weren’t good enough to win their division, when they had to spend two weeks on the road simply to get in the playoffs and survive the first two rounds. When they had the game’s stubborn dynasty on the ropes, only to let victory slip through their hands and be forced to save their season on hostile ground.

Adolis García proved the latter.

Debatable, you say? Well, perhaps he already did: Immigrating from Cuba to pursue the game at its highest level, grinding through an apprenticeship in Japan, unwanted by his first major league team – that’s just a bit more than your average stateside showcase pony might endure through his 20s.

Yet when García was struck by a 98-mph fastball in Game 5 of this American League Championship Series on Friday, angrily reacted to the opponent he thought (perhaps correctly) orchestrated it all, only to become a target for zealous fans when this ALCS returned to Minute Maid Park, it was the truest test any ballplayer could face.

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Games 6 and 7 in Houston would be a proving ground, for both a national audience and even teammates who greatly respected his talent but wondered how he’d react.

Striking out four times in Game 6 only heightened the intrigue.

"You never know," says veteran pitcher Max Scherzer, tasked with starting Game 7 on Monday night for a trip to the World Series. "But it always comes down to the human and how they respond.

"And he responded in a big way."

In a record-breaking, pennant-winning way.

García blasted Game 6 wide open with a grand slam and then, with everything on the line in Game 7, pummeled the Astros, his swagger and his joy and the record books bursting with every swing.

RBI single off the left field wall. Stolen base. Home run. Two-run single. Home run to right field, just for the heck of it.

And when it was over, when the 11-4 pounding of the Astros was complete and the Rangers captured the series 4-3 and punched their ticket home for the World Series, there was little doubting exactly what García exemplifies.

"He’s a bad man," says Rangers shortstop Corey Seager, who jump-started the party with a solo home run in the first inning. "To come into this atmosphere and be booed every at-bat and put together the ABs he had in big moments, it was fun to watch."

Fun? Here’s fun:

∎ Two multi-homer games and at least one homer in four consecutive games.

∎ Fifteen runs batted in, a playoff record – any series, any decade.

∎ Twenty RBI in the first 12 playoff games of his career.

∎ And a very shiny trophy he’ll have forever as MVP of this ALCS.

More important, it showed how he exemplified what the Rangers have done.

‘He’s got the swag to go with it’

After playing 15 of their last 19 games on the road – a stretch that included a seven-game season-ending road trip in which they had to earn playoff qualification – the Rangers might feel in the lap of luxury back in their multi-billion dollar North Texas home.

They will open the World Series Friday at Globe Life Field, able to spectate Tuesday night when the Arizona Diamondbacks and Philadelphia Phillies play Game 7 of the NLCS, for the right to meet the Rangers.

It will be hard to lose their edge, given what they just accomplished.

"You look," manager Bruce Bochy said amid sprays of alcohol in the Rangers’ clubhouse, "at what we had to do: Came in here, we won two. Hoping to do it at home. We get swept.

"Come in here against a great ballclub, and win it how we won it, just show how determined we were to get this done."

Put more simply: The Rangers kicked the Astros’ butts.

"We traveled here and we scored 20 runs in two games," says second baseman Marcus Semien. "That’s what we needed to do to win the series. I told Boch before the game, let’s score nine again.

"We scored 11. We got their best postseason pitcher in (Cristian) Javier and we knocked him out in the first inning. You just don’t see that.

"We worked extremely hard to prepare for him. And it changed the entire game."

It is rather staggering: Javier brought a 0.82 ERA in four playoff starts into the game.

Seager destroyed his fourth pitch for a home run, and the normally reticent shortstop fired up his mates both rounding the bases and in the dugout.

García didn’t need much of a prod.

"When there's a lot of emotions, the fans out there, they are rallying for their team, it fuels me," he said through Rangers translator Wil Nadal. "It's motivation that helps me out when I'm playing."

 So when an amped-up García met Javier, who Astros catcher Martin Maldonado acknowledged did not have his usual slow heartbeat this game, it was no match.

García drove a Javier pitch 110 mph and 375 feet off the high left field wall for a run-scoring single. García admired the arc for so long – barely budging from home plate – that he did not have a chance to try for second.

No matter: He stole the base a couple pitches later and scored on Mitch Garver’s single. It was 3-0 before the Astros could bat.

Perhaps old heads might mutter at a player with such swagger; it was suggested García's deliberate celebration of a Game 5 homer earned him the possibly intentional HBP from Astros reliever Bryan Abreu, which set off this chain of events that cast García at the center of the series.

Yet it’s been nearly a decade since so many of baseball’s "unwritten rules" loosened, and the league even marketed their Cadillacing players to the masses. That was Abreu’s defense, anyway.

And at this point, there’s little García could do to dent the respect of his teammates, who appreciate the person as much as they do the 39 home runs and .836 OPS the two-time All-Star provided this year.

"His bat is just so good right now," says Semien, the club’s leadoff hitter. "He’s dangerous. I just wanna get on base for that guy.

"He’s got the swag to go with it. It’s just so good for younger players to watch him play with confidence and boost up everyone else. A lot of young players could learn from that guy."

García would also like them to learn from his journey.

On to the next

He called his time playing in Japan "a beautiful experience," but playing in the majors was always the endgame. García was 25 when he made a 21-game debut with St. Louis in 2018 and only gained traction by 2021, when he smacked 31 home runs for the Rangers, earning his first All-Star nod.

It was five years but nearly a lifetime since he left Cuba in August 2016.

"And I know everything I had to go through and the struggle just to get where I am today," he says, "so I'm really grateful for that."

Sometimes his intensity and focus can be misinterpreted, or at least not explained. After his stunning turnabout in Game 6 Sunday – booed thunderously, striking out four times, a grand slam to quiet the masses – he declined to speak to the media.

It could have been perceived as a mildly diva move. It was actually an act of self-awareness, so as not to kick up the hornet’s nest with the Astros, their fans, Abreu.

"I was just focused solely on Game 7," he says. "And honestly I didn't want to say something or do anything that would get me off track from being able to perform on a game like tonight."

They are lessons well learned.

"He’s such a special talent. He has so much power," says Scherzer. "But when he stays within himself, he’s even better than what you could even believe.

"I’ve seen this. I knew he was totally capable of dominating these guys and he went out and showed everybody this series."

Particularly the boo-birds. The Rangers ranged from annoyed to bemused to downright angry that García was made the bad guy when it was Abreu who unleashed that pitch.

Now, that affair is just a footnote in what they hope culminates in the Rangers’ first championship in franchise history. And if the club is new to the national stage, casual fans might want to take note of No. 53, who will not shy away from it.

"He lives for the big moment. You got a whole stadium booing you and he just wants to shut those people up," says Semien. "It was great to see. Yesterday the grand slam; tonight, to overcome all the things being yelled at him. Hey, he was the one that got hit. Well, on to the next series."

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