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The Ballpark in Arlington & Videogames

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I saw an article online tonight about MLB 2k9, the forthcoming annual entry in videogame baseball from 2K Sports. The article (from gaming news site Operation Sports) shows screenshots from every ballpark in the new game. Below is their shot from the Ballpark in Arlington (click on it for a larger version).

As you’ll note from the shot, they did not take into account the changes in the ballpark for 2009. I know they start working on these months and months before they come out, but I was kind of hoping they’d be in there. I haven’t seen a shot of the Ballpark from the Sony entry (MLB 09: The Show), but they probably have the same layout.

The games come out in just a little over two weeks at this point, and the Sony entry for the PS3 looks absolutely stellar again. I wrote about it a lot for last year’s edition, and that was stellar – things only look to get better. The 2K entry also appears to be much improved from what I’ve read.

Here are some ordering links if you’re interested:

2K Sports’ MLB 2K9:
[ Xbox 360 | Playstation 3 | Playstation 2 | PSP | Wii | PC ]

Sony’s MLB 09: The Show:
[ Playstation 3 | Playstation 2 | PSP ]

Spring Training Broadcast Schedule Stuff

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The Rangers announced this afternoon that our Spring Training broadcast schedule will be far greater than at any point in the past. Some highlights:

  • Five games on TV! – In the past, we’d get generally two, and all in the last week. This time most of them are at the end of spring training, but there’s one early. The five dates are Mar 7 (White Sox), Mar 22 (Dodgers), Mar 25 (DBacks), Mar 27 (Brewers), & Apr 4 (Royals). The last one is the spring finale, and is in Arlington.
  • 18 games on the radio! – This was previously announced when the new radio deal with 105.3 FM was announced, but it’s nice to see a lot more of them. You can check out my schedule page for spring training to see what is what there.
  • MLB.com Gameday Audio – It was said that there will be eight (presumably other) games that will be webcast on Gameday Audio. I’m hoping it uses the Rangers guys, and not just the general MLB guys. The latter don’t make for a good broadcast, I think, since they spend most of their time talking about everything else except the teams on the field. The press release refers to it as “Texas Rangers Gameday Audio”. That could just be markting crap, and it’s the MLB guys, but I’m hopeful those will be actually listenable. The press release does NOT, however say which eight games. They only mention the first one, which is March 10th. If anyone knows the dates of the other seven, please pass them along to me. Thanks.

In addition, I went through my schedule for the regular season and updated game times. The schedule published a month or so ago had about 20 games with TBD as the gametime. That’s been rectified for all but one game, so I’ve gone ahead and updated my schedule with the proper times. The official press release talks about three other games that have had their times changed, I picked up those, too.
Saturday, June 20 at San Francisco: TBD to 8:05 p.m. CT
Sunday, August 16 vs. Boston: 7:05 to 1:05 p.m. CT
Friday, August 21 at Tampa Bay: 6:08 to 6:38 p.m. CT

That’s it, I’m done.

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I am sick of talking about steroids. I have declared my Rangers website to be a steroid free zone going forward. I’ve also tweaked my header graphic to take note of this. I’m not writing about steroids again.

George W. Bush

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Saw a link the day before Barack Obama was inagurated as President about the baseball history of George W. Bush. I forgot to post it, but I wanted to get it out there so people might see it.
It shows a lot of first pitch pictures of Dubya, and it reminded me. He never threw one out as President for the Texas Rangers. He may yet do that, but as a sitting president, I’m still kind of surprised he never did it for the team he used to own. Heck, Dick “I’ll shoot you in the face” Cheney did – I was there.
That issue aside, this article is a nice look back and some of the baseball related things of the 43rd President of the United States.

A-Roid again

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So. Alex came out today and admitted he did steroids for all three years he was in Texas. He claims he hasn’t done any since then. There’s no positive tests to combat that since then. However, given he lied about doing them here in Texas, who knows what the real truth is?

I actually kind of buy into his logic that he felt he needed to live up to the contract. I remember there being an awful lot of talk in that direction when he first signed here. How he chose to try and live up to it.. Ever since he left Texas (09 will now be his sixth season since he wore a Texas uniform), I’ve always personally thought he held up his end of the bargain by delivering on the field. I’m not sure what I think now.

However, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. In looking around for a pic of A-Roid to use in this story, look what I found in the archives. I had forgotten about this – it should have been so obvious!

Donnelly Signed

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  • P Brendan Donnelly signed to a 1 year minor league contract with an invite to spring training [ Link ]

More Minor League Signings

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The Rangers continue their march to getting to camp without signing a single player to a major league contract from the free agent pool this offseason. A couple more signings.
Yesterday, the Rangers signed Jason Jennings to a minor league contract with an invite to spring training. Last year was clearly a disaster for the Mesquite TX native. He even said so in the remarks about the contract for 2009. This really is not a big deal. He’d have to pitch his way onto the roster. Doesn’t cost us much at all – if he makes the roster, he gets $800,000 plus various incentives totaling $1.4 million based on innings pitched (from 110 through 200). Only $15,000 of the contract is guaranteed, so this is no brainer, really.
Today, the Rangers signed Brendan Donnelly to a minor league contract. Apparently if he makes the club, he’ll get $950,000 and can request his release if he’s not in the majors between March 27 and April 27th. He’s coming off of Tommy John surgery in 2007 for his right elbow. This would be about the time guys bounce back, so we’ll see. Ranger fans should remember him (and his goggles) from his time with the Anaheim Angels.
Finally, while he hasn’t signed, there’s a lot of talk that the Rangers are about to sign Andrew Jones to a minor league deal. He’s getting a gazillion dollars from the Dodgers in money and deferred money to go away, so he’s a zero risk player – we don’t need to pay him anything at all, really. Rudy Jaramillo has a habit of working gold with players, and until he dropped off the face of the Earth two years ago offensively, he was seriously top dog player. I don’t particularly think outfield is a place we need to pick up players – we have an overflow as it is, and a couple really good guys in the system. Unless Rudy fixes him in spring, and he hits 50 HR and 145 RBI again, I’m not particularly sure I see the need. We’ll see.
Oh, and I haven’t said anything about Ben Sheets at all. He’s hurt. Nobody signed him. Now we know why. I would like to see the Rangers sign him to a two year contract now with the first year paying him next to nothing, and the next year be somewhat realistic. Probably won’t happen, though.

A-Roid

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There’s been so much written in so many places today about this. Not to mention the coverage on MLB Network (Hi Jamey!) and ESPN… There’s just so much to digest, I’m only saying this.
The name A-Fraud in the Torre book is getting all the attention at the moment. Perhaps a better nickname for him now might be A-ROID!.
Yeah, OK – everything I’m seeing says he tested positive just once, and there’s nothing to say he has since this happened (which is now 6 years ago). However, there was a remark I saw where Gene Orza apparently tipped off Arod in 2004 to a screening. If that’s true, then there’s a gigantic problem in the Union (shocker, I know). But still.
Arod’s a user. Bummer. Perhaps he was using something else when he dumped Cynthia for Madonna. Makes this pocket schedule seem kind of prophetic. 2003. Arod. Fuzzy background. ;)

On Saturday night, Kevin Sherrington of the DMN had an article about the “All Juiced Team”, saying Arod here completes it. Check this out. Shows the position and how they became linked to steroids:
CF – Gary Matthews Jr. – Mitchell Report
C – Pudge Rodriguez – Teammate allegation
SS – Alex Rodriguez – Media report
RF – Juan Gonzalez – Teammate allegation
1B – Rafael Palmeiro – Tested positive
3B – Ken Caminiti – Acknowledged
DH – David Segui – Acknowledged
2B – Randy Velarde – Mitchell Report
LF – Chad Allen – Mitchell Report
The amusing thing about this is the first comment left by someone on the DMN site about this. They said “Crazy line up there…..but once again NO pitching!”.
That remark made me laugh.

Jennings Re-signed

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  • P Jason Jennings signed to a 1 year minor league contract with an invite to spring training [ Link ]

Texas Rangers Pocket Schedules

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One of the lesser used pages on my site is my archive of Texas Rangers pocket schedules. I’ve been collecting them since just before I started this site (Dec of 1998), and a few years ago I decided to fill in the holes and get every one ever made. The problem with that is that my research has turned up a lot of alternates. There’s Spanish versions, multiple English ones, spring training schedules, etc… So a list of what the complete archive comprises is not available. Still, I’ve been trying to at least get all the years represented. Today I’ve done that.
Before I get to that, I wanted to draw attention to the first 2009 edition that I’ve seen myself. Features Josh Hamilton inside the ballpark. It shows off some of the more prominent tattoos on his arm, and given how great of a season he had in 2008, he probably deserves to be on the pocket schedule for 2009. That image is shown here. Based on what I’ve seen, there will be other 2009 variants, too. If any of you reading this are going to spring training in Surprise, can you pick me up a pocket schedule for spring training? They’ve had them in the past, and if they have one this year, I’d like to get one. Thanks.
As for the archives, I was fortunate to be sent an email from a Claude Jacques recently which completed the task of getting all the years on my archive. Claude runs a website dedicated to collecting pocket schedules. He’s got just about every team in every sport, in every level of majors and minors you can think of. It’s QUITE extensive. He was kind enough to send over everything he had relating to the Texas Rangers. After I went through and weeded out the duplicates of things I already had, he gave me 28 pocket schedule images I did not have before. I now have every year from 1972 through 2009 represented, and that’s pretty cool. Of the 28 new ones, below are a few highlights of ones he sent over that I liked the look of.
Make sure to check out my archive of schedules where you can see everything I have. As usual, if you have a variant I do not, or you have a larger/better quality version of something I do have, please drop me a line. Thanks.

Pocket schedule design has come a long way from this one in 1972, eh?