It’s opening day. That’s always a fun day. I started the morning at my wife’s doctor for our next appointment for the baby checkup. We were there a little longer than anticipated, so I didn’t get to spend as much time walking around the park checking out the new things as I usually do. I did make a pass around the ballpark. Some of the things I saw that were changed were..z
1) Covers on the top most part of the escalators going into the third deck. I asked Chuck Morgan, and he said Texas state law made them do that. I think it should have been done ages ago, it’s much safer I think, and if you’re coming up into rain or sun, it’s just better.
2) The big hot dog stand. I didn’t have one, but I did see the new giant hot dog. There’s a whole article about the hot dog in the Dallas Morning News today, too! It certainly looked pretty large. It better be for $8.
3) The maintenance door in left field which used to say Armitron for years now says Reliant Energy. Additionally, there’s a new Borden Milk sign in the bullpen, and a Comcast ad in right field. Speaking of Comcast, it looked like all the TVs in the concourse had Comcast ads underneath them now.
4) Several new player banners in the concourse – Richard Hidalgo was one, saw a new one for Rudy Jaramillo.
5) The Rangers score was finally taken off the left field scoreboard, so we can get all of the out of town scores on there now. Since the Devil Rays & Diamondbacks were added, one game wasn’t shown, as the original configuration of the Ballpark’s scoreboard didn’t have enough slots to display all the newer teams. Now it does, since the Rangers game isn’t shown there.
But overall, there really weren’t a whole lot of changes to the ol’ Ballpark since last season. Was nice being out there, and it was a great day weather wise. We had the usual pregame stuff, a marching band, the military made an appearance, and we had a plane flyover – a B52 bomber that was pretty close. I managed to get a good shot of that as it flew over. There was a really cool looking flag that the military guys held out on the field – was a US flag, but it was in the shape of the United States, too. I liked that.
The one moment I was really looking forward to during the pregame ceremonies was the unveiling of the Johnny Oates sign unveiling. They had Gloria Oates (his widow), and Adam Oates (his son) there. But the entire thing was RUINED by the fact that they had a gaggle of photographers standing in front of the damn thing! I COULDN’T SEE IT – and I wager most people couldn’t either. It was really annoying – I mean to the point where it made me made enough to register a complaint there, and then I also called Chuck Morgan on Tuesday morning and expressed my distaste with this. Oates meant a lot to me, a lot more than he does to most people, because I knew him from outside his days as a Ranger manager. And the stupid damned photographers just stood in the way, and you couldn’t see any damn thing that was going on there. They need to GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY – so that the fans can see things. Good Lord did that make me mad! :( And I really wanted to enjoy that moment, too. Even the TV cameras were interfered with if you watched the TV coverage of it. :(
Once the game got started, I calmed down a bit, as there’s always something to be sitting in the sun at a ballpark, scoring a game, and having a beer. It was great, no matter how good or how bad one’s team is. So when Soriano got us out to 1-0 with a leadoff home run, the day felt good. We were up 2-0 after the first, and even after Anaheim tied it in the third, it still felt good. Felt even better after 5 when we were up 6-2. However, that was the end of our scoring. The Angels pecked away with runs in the 7th, 8th, & 9th to tie the game, finally winning it in the 10th. Kenny Rogers was fine, going seven innings giving up three runs. We had beat up Jarrod Washburn for 6 runs in 5.1 innings – I was feeling good. Ryan Bukvich wasn’t – he gave up two in his .2 of work. Cordero blew his second save in four tries, and RA Dickey gave up a home run to lose the game. The bullpen curse isn’t very good. I’m refusing to blame it all on the non appearances of Francisco & Alamanzar. I know that’s part of it, but the guys who are there shouldn’t be tanking like this so much just because two guys aren’t there. That doesn’t feel right. Offensively, three of our six runs came from the longball. Soriano in the first, Barajas in the fourth, & Blalock in the fifth. We had a lot of hits all over the place, 14 in all. We left 9 men on base in all, twice we left the bases loaded! ARGH! Frustrating.
Generally when games are sellouts, or near sellouts, to avoid traffic, I tend to work my way downstairs before the game was over. This time was no different. After the Rangers batted in the 8th, I took off for the lower concourse. I usually watch the game on the TV’s as I walk down the concourse from home plate to first base. Then I’ll watch it from the open area underneath section 40-41 and avoid ushers who want to boot you out of there. However, this time, when we didn’t win it in the bottom of the 9th, I left. Which is very unusual for me. I hate leaving games early, but this game gave me a feeling of doom. Plus with 50,000 there and it being 4PM, I wanted to avoid the 5PM rush hour going through Dallas back to Garland. I got to my truck right as the Rangers were batting in the bottom of the 10th, and they didn’t put it together at all, so I didn’t miss anything in the time I left. Plus I actually felt a little guilty being there at the game when my wife was at home feeling rather uncomfortable from being 39.5 weeks pregnant. I went, I had a good time, but I didn’t enjoy it like I normally would. Was worried about my wife, the thing with the photographers and the Oates ceremony irritated me, and the ending of the game really irritated me.
One amusing moment during the player introductions was Mike Young. Chuck Morgan started off by saying “Playing Shortstop #3… “Playing Shortstop #10″… He accidentally read Arod’s Number instead of Mike Young’s number, although he corrected himself before the name was read. I felt it was an amusing gaffe, I didn’t think much about it. However, Channel 4 news really picked on him. They did a story about it, how “We thought we were done with Arod”, and they talked to about 3 or 4 people in the stands. I thought it was a bit much by Channel 4 to pick on Chuck like that – was an honest mistake. I called him this morning and asked, and he said there’s new lineup cards this year that are different than what he got before, and the #3 was the batting order, not Arod’s number – that part was coincidence, but he was reading the player’s batting number order, not the former position holder there.
However, it was nice to say hi to Kirobaito & Douglas from my forums – thanks for stopping by guys!
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.
Good to thave the season back, and the update on your site. Just thought you might want to know, the bomber that flew over was not a B-2, it was a B-52. Hey, I’m a plane nut (pun intended) as well as baseball nut too.