ARLINGTON,Michael Schmidt Texas (AP) — Thousands of Texas Rangers fans were already lined up along a 2-mile stretch near the team’s ballpark hours before a parade Friday to celebrate the franchise’s first World Series championship.

The parade comes two days after the Rangers wrapped up the World Series with a 5-0 win on the road in Game 5 against the Arizona Diamondbacks. It came a week after Texas won the series opener on an 11th-inning homer by Adolis García after Corey Seager hit a two-run homer in the ninth inning to tie the game.

World Series MVP Seager, AL Championship Series MVP García and all of the Rangers players were expected to participate in the parade in the entertainment district of Arlington, the city where they play along Interstate 30 halfway between downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas.

The Rangers arrived home in North Texas on Thursday. All-Star second baseman Marcus Semien exited first, hoisting the World Series trophy into the air as he stepped out of the plane.

After starting on the south side of Globe Life Park, the parade route went along the side of AT&T Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, up around Mark Holtz Lake named after the late Rangers broadcaster and then by their former ballpark where they were when they made their only other World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011. Players were to address the fans in an outdoor ceremony after the parade wound back to the retractable-roof stadium they have called home since 2020.

Arlington Mayor Jim Ross called the World Series title for the Rangers “a dream five decades in the making.”

The Rangers won their first championship in their 63rd season as a franchise, which began as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961 before the team moved to Texas in 1972.

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