BOCA CHICA, Dominican Republic -- Edinson Volquez lived under a stadium. Jose Leclerc bounced between upper and lower bunks in a gray barracks-style bedroom. The living conditions were so crowded, Ronald Guzman recalls, that if one guy got sick, the whole team got sick.

These are the tales of the past at Rangers academies in the Dominican Republic.

On Friday, under the shade provided in the “Plazaleta” of the Rangers’ new $12.5 million academy, which is clad in brilliant coralina stone and rich Brazilian wood, they told their stories with a laugh as they gawked at the club’s new, first wholly-owned Latin American facility.

The academy, a project that took more than three years from the time the 24-acre parcel of land was purchased, officially opened Friday with a ribbon-cutting. Outgoing Dominican President Danilo Medina attended. So did U.S. Ambassador Robin Bernstein, Adrian Beltre’s parents and a crowd of 400. They all sat under the open-air, 10,000 square foot batting cage. Despite the crowd, there was plenty of room to spare. Also, it was blessed with holy water by a priest.

“My memories aren’t very good ones,” Leclerc said of the old academy, which the Rangers leased. “We had food, we had beds. It wasn’t very good, but I don’t want to say it was really bad.”

A ribbon-cutting ceremony is hosted at the opening of the Texas Rangers' new $12.5 million baseball academy located in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic. (Kelly Gavin/Texas Rangers Baseball Club) (Kelly Gavin)

OK, then. Kellie Fischer, the team’s CFO who helped oversee the project, will.

“It was the poorest facility in the league when we moved out,” she said. “We wanted this to be as comfortable and functional as possible.”

More on the academy itself in a moment. But first: This project is part of a bigger effort by the Rangers organization. They have long said they wanted to be an organization known for treating its people well. Their recent construction projects reinforce that.

In January, the Rangers will open a 60-bed, 68,000-square foot dorm along with a 13,000-foot “Performance Center” adjacent to their spring training facility in Surprise, Ariz. They now also own their two Class-A teams and have sunk approximately $5 million into upgrading clubhouses and batting cages there. And, oh yeah, there is that $1.2 billion retractable-roof stadium -- with cutting-edge technology, particularly in facilities dedicated to biomechanics -- coming online in March.

Call it the new Rangers Way. If the Rangers want to find a way to separate themselves from the competition, they aren’t going to do it by spending like the Boston Red Sox have done in the past. They don’t have the tradition of St. Louis. They can’t offer the glitz of major-market lifestyles like New York and Los Angeles. What they must do: Create a championship culture and be known for that.

It starts from the ground up. Literally. With first-class facilities. It ends with accountability. No excuses.

That’s what manager Chris Woodward told a dugout full of Latin American teen prospects Friday after touring the academy.

“I told them that this is all for them,” Woodward said. “We want to give them the tools to make them better. But there is responsibility that comes with that. We are upgrading in a lot of places, now it’s up to us to make things better on the field, too.”

A look inside the weight room in the Texas Rangers' new $12.5 million baseball academy located in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic. (Kelly Gavin/Texas Rangers Baseball Club)(Kelly Gavin) (Kelly Gavin)

“We make a commitment to a young player and his family,” general manager Jon Daniels said. “To have facilities match our best intentions, it really is nice.”

About the facility: The Rangers have been vagabonds in the Dominican Republic for more than 20 years. At the time they signed Volquez in 2001, they were housing players in what had been a utility warehouse underneath the stands of Estadio Francisco A. Micheli in La Romana. The players worked out at the stadium and in a field hand-hacked out of sugarcane by a local farmer who went by the name of Plutarco.

Five years later, they were leasing what was then a state-of-the art facility from former player Solomon Torres. But that deal went south and the team ended up leasing another facility in Boca Chica in what was supposed to be a short-term solution. The facility was among a row of facilities popping up along Highway 3, with each one leaving them a step further behind. This is the academy where Leclerc spent two summers playing and where Guzman spent his winters.

By the time the Rangers found a piece of land for sale -- ironically, it was the plot of land immediately south of their facility -- and completed the deal, it was 2016. The facility was supposed to open in 2018 and cost $10 million. But an endless string of permits and delays ran the cost up by another $2.5 million and 18 months.

It was also supposed to be about 55,000 square feet of usable space with living quarters for 70 players plus staff. It grew to more than 60,000 square feet and room for up to 94 players. Most rooms hold a pair of bunk beds; some have three.

The two-story dorm sits on the easternmost part of the property. It flows down through an open staircase with seating at the bottom that forms the “Plazaleta” looking out on Field 29, the main playing field. There are not 29 fields here. There are only three (though one is still under construction). It is Field 29 in honor of Adrian Beltre.

Everything faces the fields. The fields are the focus of everything.

One of the fields at the Texas Rangers' new $12.5 million baseball academy located in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic. (Kelly Gavin/Texas Rangers Baseball Club) (Kelly Gavin)

“Most people think of a ‘front door’ as the entrance,” Fischer said. “We wanted our ‘front door’ though to be the fields.”

The 90-seat dining hall faces the fields. The two second-floor classrooms. All the offices in the adjacent office building. The 2,500-square foot weight room. All of these flow into one another with functionality, but there is a sense of separation that makes it clear space is dedicated to a purpose.

One room in particular, that belonging to a “life coach,” stands out. The life coach will be provided by Dallas-based non-profit Buckner International. It is the first time a team has partnered with a non-profit to “serve its student-athletes in a holistic manner.” In other words, the Rangers’ baseball people like director of minor-league operations Paul Kruger and assistant general manager Mike Daly, the other spearhead on this project, won’t have to split time between scouting, administrating and social work. The social workers are full-timers.

“We’ve seen guys be able to overcome and those were the guys who had the most success,” Kruger said. “We wanted to make sure we provided the best ability to do that for everybody. It’s been a long time in coming. We’ve done a lot with a little here. We feel like we can take it a step further now. We can not only build the player, but the person.”

And a championship culture.

No excuses.