ST. LOUIS -- So here they are. After 50 title-free seasons, those Texas Rangers are one win away.

But one win away from what? That's the question.

Look, we know they're one win away from winning the World Series. That's the easy part. That's the part we could see with our own eyes in the next 24 hours, now that the raindrops have stopped splattering and the Rangers and Cardinals can finally play Game 6 on Thursday night.

But if the Rangers win this World Series, it will unleash ripple effects that extend well beyond baseball. You get that, right?

This is a franchise that has been around for 51 seasons now. And until lately, it's safe to say it hasn't ever been confused with the Yankees.

Fans in Texas love the Rangers, but the team's fan base still doesn't quite rival that of the Cowboys. AP Photo/Matt Slocum

We're talking about a franchise that took 36 seasons just to win a postseason game, if you count its 11 seasons disguised as the Washington Senators.

We're talking about a franchise that took 50 seasons -- and four trips to October -- just to win a postseason series.

We're talking about a franchise that has lost more games (4,270) since its first year of existence, in 1961, than any other team in baseball -- and would be 704 games behind the Yankees in the standings if this last half-century had been one giant season.

So what is now within the Rangers' reach is something far more momentous than most of the continent seems to have grasped. After all, did you know that

• Not a single franchise in baseball has been in existence as long as this one without winning at least one championship?

• Only one other franchise in any major North American professional sport -- the Minnesota Vikings -- has been in existence as long as this franchise without winning at least one championship? (The Vikings, coincidentally enough, have also been around for 51 years -- but are not one win away.)

• There are only two other franchises in baseball that have staggered through a longer title drought than this one? That would be -- guess who? -- the Cubs (14 or 15 centuries and counting) and the Indians (64 seasons and counting).

So this is big, big stuff. Yet as the Rangers have closed in on the end of this bumpy road, you might have noticed something.

In Texas, this run has been a good ol' time, a tremendous excuse for a party and a thoroughly joyful experience for hundreds of thousands of people. But

Unlike, say, when the Red Sox won (for the first time in 86 years) or the White Sox won (for the first time in 88 years) or the Giants won (for the first time since moving to San Francisco), no Doris Kearns Goodwin types have arisen to try to speak poetically for the masses and put this triumph into monumental historical context.