I have to say, once we fell behind 6-0 in the first inning, I lost my desire to watch the game. I’ve had enough of that kind of crap inning as a Rangers fan, and the prospect of sitting through another game hoping and praying we’ll catch up was not one I was looking forward to. It got worse once we got to the third, and went down 7-0. By this point, I was flipping channels, and started watching Baseball Tonight, and also watched more of the Nationals Giants game than the Rangers game. That kid the Nats ran out there (John Lannan) looked pretty good on the hill against Barry Bonds (and the rest of the Giants).
Anyway, the Rangers did pick up a three spot in the bottom of the third to make the game a little more palatable. Two scored on a Sosa Texas leaguer to left, and the other on a Marlon Byrd single.
As bad as the first inning was for Rheinecker, I have to give him some credit for battling, and staying out there for five innings. Really, other than the grand slam in the first, he wasn’t THAT awful. Now there’s no good way to say giving up six runs in an inning is a good thing, but innings 2-5 were pretty decent. Shine’s off the shoe a bit regarding that honeymoon feeling when he was called up, though.
In the bottom of the eighth, we got the bats going again and got closer. We scored three. The first two were on a Jason Botts home run (which I’m sure had every Newberg fan and Jamey himself probably too excited for their own good), and a groundout by Kinsler, scoring Salty.
The bottom of the ninth was led off by Michael Young’s first home run in three months (to tie it and go to extra innings), and then two innings later, Michael Young led off the inning by getting his first ejection of the season, followed quickly by the first ejection of Ron Washington too. Ron looked pretty darned mad. I know managers can get mad, but Ron seems like one of those “nice guys”. Nice guys can get seriously mad when they do get mad. Makes me wish I could lip read, there was a really good closeup of the argument on TV.
Mike Wood (4IP), Joaquin Benoit (1IP), & CJ Wilson (2IP) were all great out of the pen, keeping the A’s off the scoreboard. Then in the 13th, came in Willie Eyre. I had that feeling of doom. I’m not a real big fan of Eyre, and my feeling was upheld. Eyre gave up two runs in the top of the 13th that lost us the game. Shame, as it was a great feeling coming back from down 7-0 so early.
A few amusing things… Regarding Marlon Byrd, when did this thing start I saw on TV where everyone was “doing the Bird”? I don’t have a problem with it, it’s rather cool, but I can’t recall seeing it before tonight. Also, I saw on TV that Saltamacchia had his own “Hank’s Homies”. Forget right now what they were called, but it was “Salty’s Shakers” I think. That’s nice to see so quickly.
Bonds is still at 755. I’ll probably be flipping between channels again tonight to see if he hits 756. I know it’ll be all over SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, and every sports show and website from here until the end of time, but there’s something about “seeing it live when it happens”, that makes me want to flip channels. :)