I was originally going to go to this game, but decided not to, as I didn’t feel like sitting out in the cold. I didn’t have tickets, so that wasn’t a loss – I was going to use free ticket vouchers from last September anyway. I missed out on my free yearbook, and some offense, but I saved myself about $10 in gas going back and forth from Garland, as well as being instantly home when the game was over. Still, I would have liked to have seen the game for several reasons.
The first was the live dot race. I spoke with Chuck Morgan earlier in the afternoon to tell him that I really liked the live dot race, and he told me that they were planning on having the dots run over Jim Knox, which I was glad they showed on TV after it happened. I wrote about this for yesterdays’ game, but I really liked the live dot race. It’s quite entertaining. We just need Randall Simon to come out and whack one of them. Anyway, about the actual game…
We fell behind 2-0 after two innings, and it was feeling like another Kevin Millwood outing. Good pitching, but not completely dominating, and he’d give up just enough for us to lose. Fortunately, that was not the case. After Millwood gave up a couple of runs and we left the bases loaded with no joy in the bottom of the second, it was feeling quite ugly. At that point I was VERY glad I didn’t go. However, we came up in the bottom of the third, and had our first real good offensive inning of the season. After Jerry Hairston got on base, Mike Young doubled to right field, at which point JD Drew gave me a great reason to break out my Nelson Muntz laugh. He blew it, and the ball got by him to the wedgie. This allowed Mike Young to fly around the bases, and he ran all the way home on a very close play (which to my eyes on the back side replay looked like he was barely tagged out), but I’ll take the pseudo-inside the parker. That tied the game. It was quite an exciting play. After that, Tex singled, Sosa singled, and Brad Wilkerson walked, loading the bases. In the short sample so far, we’ve not done well with the bases loaded, as we’ve left it that way several times. Not this time, Nelson Cruz singled hard to left scoring two, giving us a 4-2 lead. The four spot was nice.
Boston got one back in the top of the sixth, after we wasted a golden opportunity to tack one on in the bottom of the fifth. Blalock led off with a triple to deep right, and we left him there. Darnit. However, our offense was back with another fourspot in the bottom of the sixth. Two of the runs scored on singles by Mark Teixeira & Nelson Cruz. However, the big moment was Sammy Sosa’s first Rangers home run since #1 back in 1989. He got one into the first row of seats in left center field, and yeah, the hop was there. Victor Rojas loves his home run call. :)
Sosa’s home run will be the talk of the stories, but Nelson Cruz had quite the night. He was 2-4 with 3 RBI’s. In fact, of the 14 overall hits we had, two guys had none. Lofton & Laird. Everyone else had at least two, except Michael Young, who had just the one hit, but it was a VERY good one hit.
Yeah, would have been nice to have been out at the park, gotten my free yearbook (or 5, people ALWAYS leave them lying around), but from the looks of things on the TV, I would not have enjoyed all the cold out there. Even the doofuses who take their shirts off were acting cold.
We go from getting swept to about to sweep!