Gastonia Rangers

The Gastonia Rangers were a class A minor league baseball team located in Gastonia, North Carolina. The team played first as the Rangers in the Western Carolinas League (1973-1974), then later in the same league renamed as the South Atlantic League (1987-1992), and were affiliated with the Texas Rangers. Their home stadium was Sims Legion Park.

The team underwent numerous team name changes [http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Gastonia%2C_NC] as the Comers, Pirates, Rangers, Cardinals, Expos, Jets, Tigers, then finally the Rangers again in 1987 through 1992. This last known statistical link [http://minors.baseball-reference.com/teams.cgi?yid=1992&lid=SAL&tid=GST] reveals nothing of the closure of the Gastonia Rangers baseball club, but lack of any further information on the web fairly confirms it. While Gastonia, NC no longer has a team in the South Atlantic League it has since 2002 has been home to the Gastonia Grizzlies of the collegiate Coastal Plain League.

The independent source openchecklist.com [http://www.openchecklist.com/oc_browse.php?pagetype=set&subpage=setcards&objectkey=08LB] lists the following as team members during 1989 who went on to careers in the MLB:
Jeff Frye, José Hernández, Robb Nen, Darren Oliver & Iván Rodríguez, to name a few.

References

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Gastonia%2C_NC
http://minors.baseball-reference.com/teams.cgi?yid=1992&lid=SAL&tid=GST
http://www.openchecklist.com/oc_browse.php?pagetype=set&subpage=setcards&objectkey=08LB