Well, after last night’s game against the Yankees that I missed, I figured I’d miss the best offensive game of the season. Wrong.
I was at this game, and boy, was it fun to watch as a Rangers fan. I was actually looking forward to seeing former Ranger John Burkett pitch, as he’s done pretty well since leaving the Rangers a couple of years ago (that sounds familiar). Anyway, he plunked the first two batters of teh game, and that pretty much set the tone. Carl Everett jacked a three run home run to cap off the scoring – 6 runs in all in the first frame. Actually, I thought it was gonna be bad as Johnny Damon hit a solo home run on the second pitch of the game, but that was pretty much it for Boston for awhile.
However, that wasn’t it for us in the second. We scored another 6 runs, capped off by a grand slam by Carl Everett – 7 RBI’s in the first two innings – a total of 12 runs for us after the second (and we were up 13-1 after the third). We picked up 6 more elsewhere, but the first three innings were the story of the game. Carl Everett also missed two MORE home runs, both by a foot or two – both were caught at the fence. Big night for him. He said in the press the fact it was against Boston meant nothing to him, but I have a hard time believing he didn’t feel ANYTHING special over that. :)
Todd Hollandsworth made a nice first impression – with a double, a home run and 4 RBI’s as well as a nice running catch in center. The popular opinion is that he probably won’t be here next year, but it was nice to see someone be able to play center field and hit as well. I really liked Ruben Rivera, Jason Romano, Ryan Ludwick, & Calvin Murray out there, but Hollandsworth appears to be able to run balls down and hit too, which is something we haven’t had from any of our centerfielders so far this year.
Chan Ho Park was great until he developed a blister, and then headed south in a big hurry. However, he had a big fan section out in right field – a group of folks who had some Korean signs out there where whooping it up like the drum guys in Oakland do. Any time Park did anything good, they made a nice noise out there. I really really loved seeing that, as for the most part this town doesn’t have any regular fans like that, except for Zonk at games. I really wished I was back in my original season tickets that I had from 1997-1999 in Section 39, as they were in Section 40 making all this noise. :) Don’t know if anyone in that group would read this, but if you did, I really enjoyed that – hope y’all come back.
By far the best game I’ve been to this year.
Additional game commentary here.