G128: Rangers power and pitching lead to 9-1 win over Tigers

This game has two big things which would sum it up.

First was the pitching performance by Kevin Millwood. Kevin got a complete game victory, something rare in baseball these days. He looked good, scattering six hits over his nine innings. Only helped out the Tigers once (his lone walk), and struck out four. No Tiger had more than one hit, although four of the six hits were extra base jobs. I was there in person, and the performance by Millwood just seemed to blend into the background. I was’t overwhelmed, nor was I bored. Of course, I was there with some friends, so my talking might have gotten in the way of my baseball perceptions.

However, the big story was the power. We had six home runs total. Only one of them was not a solo shot. That was Travis Metcalf’s home run in the second – there was one runner for that one. However, we had five more solo shots, including two different back to back shots. The six home runs were by Travis Metcalf (two), Brandon Boggs, Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, & Milton Bradley. Nice fun night to be there, and actually is the first home game win I’ve been to this year.

A few other random notes..

The Rangers six shooters make me feel old. They sat down next to me at one point waiting for the time to go dance on the dugout. Wow, I’m probably double the age of every one of them. That was helped by the fact that I thought I was old enough to be all of their fathers from the looks of it. Plus I turned 43 today, which made it even more “fun”.

The smoke from a Josh Hamilton home run hovered over the home plate area for quite awhile. Normally fireworks smoke blows away, but this one came to home plate, and just hovered there. I had major flashbacks to the original Star Trek episode Obsession where Capt Kirk is hell bent on destroying a cloud that was going around killing people.

The crowd wasn’t terribly large, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere, either. Guess six home runs will do that. :)

Driving out, I wasn’t sure if the game was even going to be played. Came out from Garland where it was nice and sunny. Once I got past the big post office just west of Dallas, I ran into a major rain storm in Grand Prairie. It was nuts, I couldn’t see two cars in front of me. Got to the ballpark, and it was nice and blue skies again. I know Texas weather can do things like that, but it was like three different types of weather.

Nice to have the Rangers back in town on August 20th. Since I was a little kid, I’ve had this tradition about going to a baseball game on my birthday. When they’re not in town, I pick the next closest calendar date. But August 20th has been out of town for many years now.