Arlington tailor is on call 24/7 during baseball season

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) - For a quarter century, Aman Li has served as emergency tailor to the Texas Rangers baseball team.

At any time, the owner of Lee's Tailor Couture in Arlington can be called upon to repair rips in a uniform, patch up a glove or personalize a jersey.

"We visit him every day, sometimes multiple times, every day we're at home," said Rangers clubhouse manager Brandon Boyd. "To have someone 24/7 is a luxury."

That professional relationship hasn't created much celebrity for Li, who still works out of the same elfish workshop in the same multicolored, wooden building at 1828 E. Abram St. that he and his family purchased in 1982.

Make note that Li and the Lee in the name of the shop represent the same person. He chose the Western spelling in deference to native English speakers.

"L-e-e is easier," he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (http://bit.ly/1qGWzA3). "Everybody calls me Mr. Lee."

The Rangers buy about 500 ready-to-use jerseys a year from Majestic Athletic, a major supplier of uniforms to professional sports teams. Li gets the "emergency" business that trickles down, such as when a player is traded to the Rangers or called up from the minors.

He receives little notice of the tailoring the Rangers bring his way, and he has to work fast and hold flexible hours. He also provides his tailoring services to visiting teams.

He can sew a new player's name and number on a jersey in about an hour. A decal takes a few minutes.

The longest name Li has stitched on a jersey is Saltalamacchia (Jarrod, former catcher).

The shortest name is Lee (Cliff, former pitcher).

One night after the 9-11 attacks, Li and his sister stitched flag emblems on 300 baseball caps.

"He can pretty much do anything we take to him," Boyd said. "And he basically takes no holidays, no vacation time. He's always there when we need him."

Despite major reconstruction of Abram Street - nowhere more inconvenient than directly in front of his shop - his customers seek him out, their cars creeping through barricades.

"We've been going there many years, going back to about 1990," Jonathan Hernandez Sr. of Grand Prairie said of his family. He had noticed the business while driving by. "The first time I had a need for something, I just went there - and stayed there."

Li, 58, emigrated from Hong Kong in 1982, following his sister, to pursue an industrial engineering degree from the University of Texas at Arlington. His other sister, two brothers and his parents followed Li to North Texas in 1983 and 1986.

Li's college ambitions came under immediate time and financial stress, so he took part-time work as a waiter and busboy at Chinese restaurants in the area, to pay his expenses and help tend to his parents. That included making grocery runs and shuttling his father, formerly a tailor in Shanghai, to and from an alterations shop in Grand Prairie when most of the family lived in Fort Worth.

"And for a few months, you know, well, it's not that easy this way," Li said. Later in 1982, they found and purchased the Abram shop, which in previous lives had housed a church, a grocery store and a trucking dispatch office.

"This is quite a history at this house," Li added.

The family got the patriarch set up with a little tailoring operation. It was a squeeze play, but over the years, the building grew from a suffocating 400 square feet to about 1,500.

Early on, the tailoring business was slim, and it would be 1985 before Li would start working there part-time with his father.

Eventually, Li left college entirely, but he hasn't given up. "I haven't finished yet," he said.

As the shop expanded, it also served as a temporary shelter for other relatives yearning for opportunity - appropriately enough, in what now calls itself the "American Dream City."

"At that time, conditions (were) not that good," he said. "We always had 10 to 15 people staying here. They stayed here until they (found) someplace to go. We helped them find a job, and they moved on."

Among all the reasons Li has worked to improve his English, one was a translation snafu that resulted in a costly phone book advertising mistake.

"I thought it was $200 for the whole year," he recalled. "But it was for a month! That's how bad my English was."

Former slugger Ruben Sierra was the first Ranger to visit the shop. The former right fielder was referred to Lee's in the late 1980s for basic tailoring of his personal clothing, not baseball uniforms.

Li, who knew Sierra only by name, didn't realize he was a professional ballplayer. "We didn't even have Google at that time. It was just like a walk-in. After that, we know because he's driving a Ferrari."

But the Rangers employee who started the relationship with Li was Zack Minasian, who served 22 seasons as the staffer in charge of making certain that uniforms and equipment were flawless for the start of each game.

That's where Li steps in.

Minasian said he was driving around during the 1991 season, checking out tailoring shops near the old Arlington Stadium, when he stopped at Lee's.

"There were clothes laying all over the place and piled up," said Minasian, who gave Li a tryout. "That didn't matter. He did a helluva job for me."

That resulted in the informal arrangement that holds solid to this day. "We have a verbal" agreement, Li said. "We don't need a contract."

Minasian said the first two decades, during which the Rangers often struggled on the field, might have overwhelmed lesser tailors.

Players were often recalled from the minors or sent down to hone their skills.

"And every time you do that," Minasian said, "you have to make eight jerseys" for each player.

In 2014, the Rangers struggled with injuries and used a Major League record 64 players throughout the season. That's a lot of names to be sewed on jerseys.

No problem for Li.

"If you say something from me, say that Li's the best," Minasian said. "He saved my ass many times in being able to get things done and get it done right. There were a lot of tailors who said, 'I don't care if you're the Rangers or the Cowboys. I don't care who you are - it's going to take a day or a day and a half.'"

The Rangers' tailoring needs are a significant part of Li's business during the summer - about one-third of it - he estimated.

"It's not to get (you) rich. You have to use your two hands. You have to work," said Li, who hasn't had the time to start a family but does have a girlfriend.

"I'm OK," he said. "I can't complain. Chinese (are) hardworking - and they don't complain."

___

Information from: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, http://www.star-telegram.com