G43: Rangers sweep Orioles with 6-5 victory

Well, my wife is out of town visiting her parents, and since I was sitting around the house all day Sunday anyway, I decided that since I had nothing else to do that I’d head out to the Ballpark. Bought a $5 ticket, and sat in the first row of Section 344 – and you know what? These seats, while obviously not as good as the ones down below near the dugout aren’t as bad as people would have you believe they are. For some reason, when I sit here, I get more of an “old time pure baseball feel” than any other place I sit in the park. I don’t know, maybe it’s something about walking up to the ticket booth, buying a cheap seat ticket, and scoring the game while listening to the radio broadcast. :)
Anyway, yet another comeback for this team, that’s what, about 100% of our wins this season? This time, we came back from a 5-0 deficit. Darren Oliver didn’t have it from the start (giving up another 1st inning home run), and seemed to labor with just about every pitch. However, we were knocking the ball around a lot, but getting virtually no results early. However, we hung around long enough to pick up the win, doing all our scoring starting in the 6th, and the Orioles got no more once we started scoring. Two long balls in the game, one by Lamb (his first as a Ranger at the Ballpark), and another by Palmeiro who seems to be coming together again, after a dry spell. However, the real fun was in the bottom of the 7th, when we “small balled” ourselves back into a tie, and in the bottom of the 8th, our “Mr. hit” Frank Catalanotto singled in the winning run, after coming in as a pinch hitter to thunderous applause. Was an awesome game to be sitting and watching – it’s really great that we’re starting to come together finally.
Jason McDonald committed a throwing error early, but made up for it with two outfield assists. One was pure, tossing out a runner at the plate, and the other was an “assist”, where he missed a cutoff, and the ball went all the way to Pudge, who then threw out the runner at first, who strayed too far off. McDonald leads all major league outfielders with assists at this point.
Two sweeps in a row, giving us a 6-0 homestand (the fourth or fifth time that’s happened in team history). We next head to Kansas City, where we should pick up a few wins, but KC has the best home winning record, and we got blown away there last September.