ARLINGTON -- This is a story about horse sense.

By now, you are probably aware that it was a pair of quarter horses, a mare and her two-week old foal, that ultimately closed the negotiations on a six-year contract extension between the Rangers and Rougned Odor. This may be Texas and all, but it's not every day a deal gets done because of a little old-fashioned horse-trading. And that's exactly what happened.

"It was a fun negotiation," general manager Jon Daniels said.

We'll tell the story, but first the point of the whole exercise, which is to further illustrate what you already thought you knew about Odor: Some things are more important than mere dollars to him, especially when they feed his passions.

In this case, it fed two: Horses and his family.

Passion was the word Odor used Thursday -- in Spanish and English -- when asked about the horse story. Then he explained what the six-year, $49.5 million contract really means to him. The deal, by the way, can go to $60 million if the Rangers pick up the $13.5 million option for 2023.

These are in fact the horses that sealed the Odor deal. This is not a joke pic.twitter.com/O0Ka03RXRb — Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) March 30, 2017

It means Odor can build a ranch in North Texas and move his parents and little sister out of the troubled environment that is modern-day Venezuela with its crippling economic hardships and its terrifying violent crime.

"I always wanted to bring my family here," he said. "They love it. And I can see them every day. It's good to be able to be around them. It's hard when you don't get to see your family except for a couple of weeks during the season and maybe a month during the offseason. It will be good to have them here."

Being able to move them was a big part of why Odor ultimately agreed to a deal that is probably about $3 million below market value based on deals signed by Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis in 2014 and Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier earlier in the month.

The Rangers' desire to keep the deal below $50 million for the first six seasons and the comparable contracts for Kipnis and Kiermaier put the sides at an impasse. That is when Rangers Managing Partner Ray Davis, who raises quarter horses on ranches in Denison and Colorado, got creative.

Smokey, a 4-year old ranch-bred mare whose registered name is "Smokin' Hancock Drift," had just delivered a foal on March 9. Davis has often talked about horses with Odor. He sent Daniels a photo of the pair together and said he'd be willing to throw them into the deal.

"I slid my phone across with a picture of the horses on it, and he said 'hey, can you send that to me?'" Daniels related Thursday about the final turn in the negotiations. "His eyes lit up, and I thought 'alright, maybe we have a chance.'"

It's a good thing Daniels didn't have to go much further on the horse talk. He's lived in Texas a dozen years, but, hey, he's still a New Yorker. For example, he was asked Thursday what kind of horses were involved.

His response: "A, um, brown one and a white one."

Daniels deals in horsehide in the figurative sense, not the literal one.

What he knows, though, he knows pretty well. He got a player whose hitting skill the Rangers have salivated over since he was 16, so much so they would not include a teenaged Odor in a deal for Justin Upton.

He got a player who reached the majors as a 20-year-old in 2014 and became the shining moment in a slag heap of a disastrous season. They got a player who took a demotion a year later and was the first player on the field on his first day after being sent down. They got a player who is drawn to core veterans and to whom those core veterans are drawn to, as well.

They got a player who says this when asked about what he needs to do to improve: "I don't think really about myself. I think more about my team and how I can make the team better. It's not what about I can do individually, but what we can do."

Some horse sense led to Daniels making the deal with Odor, the GM's first involving livestock.

It will probably be the last, too, because very few players are wired like Odor.

Which makes the Rangers fortunate.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant

*club option with $3 million buyout