The 4th of July brought with it this year the usual things. Stirring ceremony at the beginning with a bunch of kids being sworn into the Air Force, those little mini planes behind centerfield, a flyover (which was timed perfectly this year), fireworks, and the Seattle Mariners. My mini plan gave me a ticket to this game, and while I did not stay for the fireworks show, the game was great. I wasn’t expecting much throwing Victor Santos out there against Freddy Garcia, Seattle’s #1 pitcher. However, it turned out better than I thought.
Santos was wild in the first inning, tossing 34 pitches (by my count), and allowing a few runs to score, as well as another in the third. Santos had a total of 5 walks in his 4+ innings of work. However, in the bottom of the fourth we blew the game open – batting around, and scoring 5 runs, powered by a 3 run Juan Gonzalez home run. In fact, the Rangers as a team hit for the cycle that inning. We tacked on two later on on a couple of sac files to make the game 7-3.
Our bullpen threw scoreless baseball, although it got dicey in the ninth when Ron Mahay let a couple of guys get on. Mahay was brilliant in the 8th, striking out the side with some really dominating looking stuff. As was said on the postgame show, our lefthanders this season (Shouse, Mahay, Fultz) have done extremely well, and I remember there being talk of there not having much from the left side this year – a great surprise.
I ended up not staying for the fireworks because up until this year my wife and I have seen just about every fireworks show that the Rangers had over the last 5 years or so. I think it’s safe to say “I’ve seen the show already”. Plus it got me home faster. :)
One last comment. We’ve won two in a row and are now only 20 games back from the Mariners. After winning two in a row, isn’t this the place where we usually lose the next 4?
Game notes here.