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Dallas Morning News Article

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Last week I was interviewed by someone from the Dallas Morning News about my attendance at baseball games. Early in 2007 I did an article about attendance and the team’s record. It included a graph, and the fellow from the DMN liked this, hence how we got to talking. The interview ended up with me generally griping that it’s too bloody expensive to go to a ton of games, unless you’re part of what a friend of mine calls “the boob job and cocaine crowd”.

This article is out in today’s Dallas Morning News paper, and is actually the lead story on the front page of the newspaper. The angle of the piece is “Why is attendance so bad?” I had a lot more to say in the interview than what was used, but that’s fine – I know how newspaper interviews go. You say about 200 times more than what is actually used. They seemed to like my quote about “It costs $28 before you even buy your ticket”. I did have a lot more to say about several other things to the DMN guy. The rest of this article is pretty much what I talked about.

I also had a lot to say about the 7PM start times. I hate them. Given that the article does say I live 33 miles from the ballpark, you have to consider my route to the Ballpark. I get done with work at 6PM, and for me to leave work at 6, drive through that nightmare that is rush hour traffic downtown, get out to the ballpark, park my car, walk to the stadium, get through to my seat, and IF I AM LUCKY I will be in my seat for first pitch. One other thing I said in the article that I was hopeful would make it in was that given how expensive these games are to attend, I want to see the whole darn thing. The 7PM start times make that near impossible for me, and I don’t want to run around like a chicken with my head cut off just to MAYBE make it there in time. If I can’t see the whole game, the heck with it, I’m staying home.

This is hindered by one major change in 2008. Parking. The team has screwed up the cash parking really good. Given that I used to go to so many games for over a decade, I knew all the good parking tricks.

That is the 2008 Parking map. The dirty little secret was that you used to be able to park with cash parking lot A. This was the best place to park, provided you got to the game about an hour ahead of time. If you got there too close, it would have been filled up, and you’d get stuck. But Lot A was the way to go for cash parking. Not anymore, it’s been replaced with all voucher parking (meaning the common guy is blocked). In 2007, they did add a new lot, it is “Lot M”. That actually wasn’t too bad in terms of walking. I didn’t mind that so much. Not as close as “Lot A”, mind you, but not too bad. But in a brilliant maneuver, AFTER JUST ONE YEAR OF USE, it was deemed too nice of a lot, and also taken away from cash parking (per the map I’m showing here). That leaves cash parking all the way out behind the darned Siemens building. ANother really stupid move – take away parking for an OFFICE BUILDING. Brilliant maneuver. There is “Lot H”, which is not all that bad in terms of walk to the park. It’s a bit longer than I’d prefer, but it’s hell of a lot better than the N, I, or G lots. Forget the H & F lots – I will never park there. Just ain’t happening. I don’t want to have to park, and THEN TAKE A BUS. Anyway, “Lot H”, isn’t so bad, but the problem is getting out. You’re essentially trapped there, and when I parked there opening day it took A FRIGGIN HOUR AND A HALF just to get to Route 30. It’s not so bad now that the season has started, but you have to leave the ballpark THE SECOND the game is over to make that a viable exit. If you don’t (meaning use the bathroom, visit the gift shop), it will then take you 45 minutes to an hour to get to Rt 30, because all the other cards have clogged the roads in front of you. So yeah, Parking was SERIOUSLY screwed up in 2008, and that too has contributed to my not enjoying going out there anymore. It also contributes to the feeling that there’s nothing to do out by the ballpark. There really isn’t, but when you feel you have to get in your car immediately to keep yourself from spending the better part of an hour just getting to the highway, you don’t WANT to stay there. You want to get out as fast as possible.

The biggest thing I seem to think that baseball teams have in their mindset is that they view the price of the ticket as the ultimate cost to attending a game. It is not. Not even close. The Rangers are right though in that the majority of their tickets are moderately priced. With all the deals and packages out there, it’s not that hard to get a decently priced ticket. But understand this, Mr. Hicks/Nolan Ryan/Chuck Morgan/this year’s guy who is supposed to increase ticket sales… THE COST OF TICKETS IS NOT THE PROBLEM – It’s all the other bloody costs associated with the the entire Major League Baseball experience. As the article pointed out, it costs $28 for me to just get to the park. You buy the cheapest decent seat to sit behind home plate up top, and it costs $16. That makes it $44 for one game, and that’s assuming you go by yourself, and don’t buy anything at the park. Here’s a list of costs..

  • Ticket – $15.00 (in upper deck behind home plate, or $19 for things like Yankees/Red Sox) – but this is a wildly variable number. $15 is the low end of the spectrum. Yes, I know there are $6 seats, but nobody REALLY wishes to sit there, you sit there out of cost only)
  • Gas – $16.00 (for me, I know this varies for people, but it’s a real cost now)
  • Parking – $12.00
  • Large Soda – $5.50
  • Hot Dog – $4.50
  • Beer – $6.50 (could be $6.25 or $6.75, I forget which right this minute)
  • Program – $5 (although it can be $3 if you use the coupon on your parking stub)
  • Fitted Baseball Cap – $32.50 (yeah, there are cheaper ones, but the quality is nowhere as good)

That’s just one of each of these things. Bring more people, and that cost rises exponentially. I know the “All You can Eat Seats” are an attempt to address the food cost issue, and that is a good deal, but for those of us who are already of uh, “portly build”, it’s actually embarrassing. “Oh look, the fat guy is in the All you can eat seats – I wonder how many hot dogs and nachos he’ll pound down?” So no, I don’t use this option. I also know you don’t buy a cap every time you go, but one thing that gets talked about a lot when cost of baseball games are brought up is the “family experience”. If you bring a couple of kids, and you can only go once or twice a year, then yeah, “stuff to buy” is a viable cost, too.

So yeah, with gas at $4 a gallon, and milk at roughly the same price, with everything else going up because of rising fuel costs, the $5 Racetrack gas gard is a nice idea, but it’s like spitting in a swimming pool. It disappears immediately, and doesn’t have any true lasting impact. To cover my gas going to one game, there would have to be four people coming out, and that’s a lot of extra cost.

Yeah, I’m a bit angry about all of this. Because I now feel both priced out of the game, and squeezed out due to the mess that parking has become. Don’t get me wrong, when I’m out there, and actually in my seat, I still love going to MLB games. But all the crap that surrounds getting me to my seat makes it impossible to enjoy it as much as I used to.

What would solve this for me? High Speed rail to the ballpark. I was hoping that when Jerrylandâ„¢ moved in next door, we might get some sort of light rail option out to the area. No such luck. When I grew up in Philly, I averaged a TON of games – on the order of 30 or so a year. The reason was cost. With a GOOD mass transit system, all you had to do was get on ANY bus in the entire system, and somewhere they would connect to either the Subway or the High Speed elevated train. The El would connect to the Subway, and you took the Subway in Philly to the end of the line. Get off the subway, and you were RIGHT THERE. No parking, no gas, no fuss. At my peak, I went to 45 games a year – almost all of them on mass transit. That would knock out a massive cost of attendance, and would allow me to go to more games. Yes. Guaranteed – put in light rail, and my attendance would go way the heck back up. But noooo. The City of Arlington had to get all pissy about paying for Dart, so there’s no option there at all.

The article talks about my “church commitment”. For the record, my church is building a new building, and we’re currently in the “raising funds” part of that procedure. I went and took the cost list above and averaged it out via my personal spending habits at Rangers games, and worked it to be roughly $50 a game. I multiplied that by the number of games per year, and decided I’d rather give that money to Jesus Christ and the church than to Tom Hicks and the Texas Rangers. Its’ going to serve a far better purpose bringing people to Jesus, than bringing people to the Ballpark. While I’m enough of a baseball fan that I can’t go completely cold turkey and not go to any, my average of about 20-25 games has dropped to a projected attendance of six this year. I have just two more games I plan on going to this year. For the 2008, 2009, & 2010 seasons, my “Texas Rangers” money is going to my church so we can build a new facility. We’re an Anglican church, and if you’re in the Garland/Mesquite/Rowlett area, come visit us, we’d love to have you.

To sum up, yes I am donating a huge amount of money from what used to be my Texas Rangers “budget to my church. But even if I was not, I still would have not attended as many games due to all the other problems I’ve detailed above. Major League Baseball is always saying how “good” things are, and how much money the overall sport is making. Of course it is, they’re making it on the backs of the peons who love the game, and are being totally squeezed out due to mostly cost. I know I am.

UPDATE: There was a photographer out at my office on Friday from the Dallas Morning News and took some pictures of me. That did not get used in the article, but I was able to get a copy of the picture that was submitted for the article. Had it been used, this picture would have been in the article:

MLB 08: The Show Review

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Those of you who know my life outside the Rangers site know that I work for a video game company. I work for a company that puts out third person shooters (recent vintage would be Prey, and we’ve done Max Payne, and going further back, Duke Nukem). Anyway, I’ve been playing video games for quite some time, going back to my first system, the Atari 2600 in 1977. I’ve played just about all of them since then, and if there’s one thing I do on a new console, it’s play baseball games. I can’t say I’ve played every single one, but I’ve played a great percentage. This past Christmas when I got a Playstation 3 from my company as a Christmas present, I immediately started looking into the situation regarding baseball games on this new console. I had played The Bigs on my Wii, and have been playing the 2K Baseball game on my Xbox console since it was called something else on Xbox 1.
The Playstation 3 console had the 2K game ported to it, but due to contracts, the only company who could make a PS3 specific game is Sony themselves. So I checked into the MLB 07 The Show game, and it had decent reviews, but from what I could gather was not the “killer app” baseball game for the console. Since this was mid December, the early remarks were out on the next iteration, MLB 08. They were looking pretty good, and since it was only for the PS3 (well, for the PS2 & PSP as well, but that’s not germane here), I thought it would be a lot better. Console specific games usually are, since they don’t have to worry about multiplatform issues, and can truly harness the power of a specific console. So I got excited about this release.
So we get to March, and the game hits the stores. I actually walked out of the store with a copy of MLB 08 the Show for the PS3, and MLB 2k8 for my Xbox 360. Brought them home, and fired ’em both up. I know the 2K series, having been with it for years, and the newest iteration of that game feels a lot like the same thing more or less. Oh, I know it’s not, but it FEELS that way having bought and played every version for about five or six straight years. Then I hit MLB 08 The Show, and I have to say it felt like a breath of fresh air. Let’s hit some “official” bullet points about The Show…

  • MLB 08 The Show is the long running officially licensed baseball title available exclusively on all PlayStation platforms: PLAYSTATION 3, PlayStation 2 and the portable PSP.
  • MLB 08 The Show is available exclusively for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable consoles.
  • MLB 08 The Show is the best-selling and most realistic baseball simulation available.
  • MLB 08 The Show for PlayStation delivers the closest experience possible next to actually playing in the Majors.

Most of that sounds like corporate selling stuff, but I will buy into the most realistic baseball simulation available. That is not corporate stuff. It’s quite true. MLB 08 The Show kicks MLB 2k8 in the head pretty darned well. 2K had some major frame rate issues (which were helped, but not solved) with a patch. The Show was quite fluid from game one, and has remained so. I do not have an HDTV (yet), but even in standard def, The Show’s graphics are way better. Also, something else I should point out. In this day when most games are gearing towards HDTV, they take very little care into how the game looks on SDTV’s. 2K has some text that is COMPLETELY unreadable on my TV set – it’s just too small. On an HDTV, that might not be a problem, but on my TV, it’s rendered useless. MLB 08 The Show has no such problem. All the screens are rendered beautifully, and are totally readable.
One of those “intangible” things is the “feel” of the game. It’s not something that I can pin down and say “OK, this menu does “X, and the other game does “Y” so I’m saying this game is better”. MLB 08 The Show’s menus just “feel” solid. Some games you look at the menus, and it looks pretty shoddily designed. Again, no such feeling here with The Show. The menus don’t feel like you’re going to break the game, they don’t chug, and they perform like you’d expect them to. Basically I don’t feel like I’m fighting the interface to find what I want here. I know most people don’t care about the feel of the menus, but I do – and this excels perfectly.
One other thing I tend to notice about a lot of baseball games is not a lot of care is taken in how the fonts and lettering on the back of uniforms look. A lot of games look well, WRONG. The Show has no such problem. Check out these couple of shots, and they look right to me. You can click on either of them to see a larger image.

It’s not just things like fonts on the player uniforms that look better. Ballparks, player models, umpires, everything just “looks” great. It’s hard to quantify it, and give you the words that will make you believe this, but if you play it, you’ll see it. Again, here’s a few screenshots to show you what I’m talking about.

That’s just graphics. The game play is solid, too. It took some getting used to the first few games I played, because I was so used to 2k’s way of doing things, but once I wrapped my head around it, I had no problems going forward from that point. Hard to talk at length about controllers – they either work, or they don’t – and this works. :)
The announcers I like a lot. The guys in the game are Rex Hudler, Matt Vasgersian and Dave Campbell. Dave Campbell was a guy I thought who was underused on Baseball Tonight, and Rex Hudler you know from the Angels. The other guy I admit to not knowing who he is, but that’s not a problem. Hudler is “Hud” in the game, too. Has some goofy comments – try swinging at a pitch that you have no hope of hitting, or throwing to a base where nobody is, and you get a good chance at a “Hudism” being thrown your way. The Show also suffers far less from repeat announcers. A problem a lot of games have is that once you play them a lot, you hear the same “bits” over and over again. I’ve heard some repeating here for sure, but nothing even close to being in the same ballpark (har har har) as some other games (yeah, I’m looking at you Joe Morgan in 2K).
Probably the most hyped feature of the game is “Road to the Show”. This is actually cooler than it sounds, provided you pick the right position. Basically you start this game by creating a player, and giving him specific abilities, you can customize just about everything about the player. One’s initial thought would be to create a roid raging freak-a-zoid, and have him called up to the Show after his second game in the minors, but you can’t just max out everything, you have a limited number of skill points you can distribute around, so it’s more fair in that regard. I created a few players, and played this way for awhile. It’s pretty cool, because your manager will berate you if you play like crap, and will bench you. You have to negotiate your contract in the offseason, and while I’ve never been outright released, I imagine that’s in there somewhere if you play like a complete moron. One other thing about this is that the mode is geared around a single player, and actual in game play reflects this. YOU ONLY PLAY ACTUAL PLAYS THAT INVOLVE YOUR PLAYER! This is important, because if you pick what’s regarded as a boring position (left field perhaps), not much happens. One time I picked first base, and 95% of my plays involve just running to first to have another player throw me the ball. That was really not very exciting, to be honest. If you are benched, the game might skip two or three games before you get called up as a pinch hitter. That’s another drag – if you are playing a RTTS game with a bench player, the game has to load all the graphics, and all the sounds you normally would to play a game, just for one at bat. You spend more time loading than you do playing in that scenario. Don’t get benched, you’ll spend a lot of time loading. That nit aside, it’s a very cool feature, and one of the stronger points of the game.

Some other minor things which are important is the ability to save in the middle of the game. For some reason, baseball games don’t let you do that, but you can here. There’s a really strong replay feature that is called “Replay Vault”, which lets you go back to any play in the game and check it out. There’s also customized personal music, really detailed stats on players, real life scores from MLB games in a ticker, MLB news, and the usual gameplay modes you see in baseball game (season, franchise, playoffs, etc). Franchise mode is where I spend most of my time, although RTTS was a really cool one that draws a lot of attention too. Anyway, Franchise has things like controlling player time, which you don’t often see in that mode.
Players generally look more like themselves than other games I’ve played. There’s also a boatload of personalized player moves, the umpires aren’t generic, and the coach names are the right ones, too. There are a TON of features that I don’t have time to get into here. I suggest checking out this Sony press release about the game – it goes into a lot more detail than I can here.
One other thing that I really like is the game has had weekly roster updates. It’s pretty darned thorough, so if you’re into having the current guys on your team, you’ll probably be into this, big time.

There is one thing I wanted to say that I feel MLB 2k8 is superior to The Show in. That’s a feature where you can collect and trade baseball cards. 2K has this thing where they have Topps baseball cards and you can collect them by achieving certain “objectives” with a player. You can also trade with others online, collect packs, and all that kind of stuff. I really REALLY liked that feature. In fact, if MLB 08 The Show had that feature, I would have NEVER played 2K’s game at all. MLB 08 The Show’s baseball game is far superior to 2k’s now, and if either 2K did not have the cards, or the Show did have the cards, I never would have played anything but the Show. Hey, if the Show designers ever read this, stick in the card thing. Guarantee you it would get used.
My review of the game is based on my experiences playing the Playstation 3 version. The game is also available for the Playstation 2. My guess is the game is the same, just the graphics (for obvious reasons) aren’t as strong. As for the PSP version, I have to image it’s mostly the same but with FAR less sophisticated graphics. I can’t speak to the PS2 & PSP versions, I have not played them.
If you have a Playstation 3, and never got the game, I strongly suggest buying it – it is by far my favorite baseball game right now. Below are some ordering links you can use to buy the game (click on the cover art). If you have one of these consoles, and like baseball games, I recommend it very highly. Back on April 11th, I asked about whether or not you had a PS3, and I gave away a few copies of the game back then, but I still have some left. If you have a Playstation 3, and have not played this game, please drop me a line. First two people to send me a PSN Friend request (to Joe3DR) will get it. Thanks. The remaining copies are spoken for.

Here are a few Youtube videos showing various aspects of the game. Check ’em out, they’re quite cool.

I wanted to apologize to Ayn over at BNC for taking so long in getting this done. I was originally supposed to do this back in March, but as time marched on, I got more embarrassed at how long it took me to do this. Sorry about that!

G105: Texas still can’t sweep; we lose finale to A’s, 6-5

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_07_27_texmlb_oakmlb_1>MLB.com Recap

As much as Saturday’s game was led by the longball for the Rangers win, Sunday’s game was led by the longball for the Rangers loss.
We did manage to start the game with a lead, going up 1-0 in the first inning on a Milton Bradley double.
Eric Hurley started the game for the Rangers, and ran into immediate problems. Jack Cust got Hurley for a two run shot in the first inning. Hurley got out of the inning without any more damage, but was tagged again in the second. A’s catcher Curt Suzuki jacked a three run home run, and combined with another run the A’s plated that frame, put them up 6-1 at that point. At that point I got digusted and took my daughter out for a ride around town after getting some ice cream. My wife needed a little bit of alone time, so we went out for a ride. While I was out, I had the scoreboard on my XM display, and saw the Rangers moving back in the top of the fifth.
When we eventually got back home, I flipped on the top of the fifth, and it was nice to see the Rangers make a game out of it. The big shot in this inning was a bases clearing double by Hank Blalock.
But outside of our four run top of the fifth, it actually was a pretty well pitched game. Rangers only scored in two innings, as did the A’s. The rest of the game was zeroes.
Really odd that we still can’t seal the deal on a series sweep.

G104: Texas homers its way to a 9-4 win in Oakland

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_07_26_texmlb_oakmlb_1&mode=wrap>MLB.com Recap

Well, this was one of the games we couldn’t see on TV. Was radio only, which means no timeshifting for me. Until TiVo comes out with a “TiVo for radio”, I’m stuck listening to the game when it actually happens when it’s radio only. Since I almost NEVER watch anything when it’s really on, that concept is alien to me. Since I was spending the day with my three year old, sitting down and listening to a Rangers game on the radio was not an option, so I just opted out of the whole thing. This was a box score only game for me.
Rangers rookie Matt Harrison started this game, and did not appear to be all that bad, really. He only threw five innings, but gave up just one earned run. There were two more that were attributable to a Michael Young error, but in all, the linescore wasn’t that bad. Five innings, five hits, three walks. Josh Rupe followed up with three innings of scoreless relief. Warner Madrigal finished up, and allowed a solo home run in his one inning of work. In all, not bad. Just two earned runs over nine innings of work – not bad line for the staff at all.
The Rangers work at the plate was fairly efficient, as we had ten hits in all. Three of them were home runs. There were two solo shots (Chris Davis in the 7th & Marlon Byrd in the 8th), as well as the big one, a three run home run by Josh Hamilton in fifth. That’s five of our nine runs right there. Chris Davis also had a double, and got picked up by me on a couple of fantasy teams I’m on. :)
Nice job by the Rangers getting to former Ranger Justin Duchscherer. Before this game, his ERA was under 2, and had only given up three runs once all year. His ERA jumped to 2.37, and we tagged him for EIGHT runs – by far his worst performance of the year. It also guaranteed we’d leave Oakland with sole possession of second place in the AL West.

Hurley back

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  • P Eric Hurley activated from the 15 day DL
  • C Max Ramirez optioned to AAA [ Link ]

Millwood to DL

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  • P Kevin Millwood placed on 15 day DL, retro to Jul 24
  • C Gerald Laird activated from 15 day DL [ Link ]

G103: Rangers pour it on LATE, win game 14-5

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_07_25_texmlb_oakmlb_1&mode=wrap>MLB.com Recap

The best picture from the game:

First off, I want to shamelessly steal this line from the MLB.com Texas Rangers specific game recap from this one. When I read it, it’s pretty true. The article said, “This was the perfect get-well card for Rangers hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo, who underwent knee replacement surgery on Friday in Dallas.“. Have to agree with that.

Secondly, it’s probably time to make more complaints about late games. I was watching this game, enjoying it until my wife came out to tell me she was going to sleep, and apparently I had fallen asleep on the sofa somewhere in the fifth or sixth innings. Woke me up in the top of the seventh, so I backed up the game (yay TiVo), and started watching. Well, apparently I was more tired than I realized, as I fell asleep again, only this time it was in the bottom of the eighth. I decided I was just going to go to bed, and stopped the recording, and well, went to bed. I get up this morning, sit at the dining room table with the paper and my coffee, and see the eight spot in the top of the ninth! DAMMIT! I missed it, both because I gave up and went to bed during the bottom of the 8th, and secondly because I stopped my TiVo from recording. I tried undeleting it on Saturday morning, but then I realized I had stopped it recording when I went to bed, which I almost never do. DAMMIT AGAIN! When I told all this to my wife, who was getting ready for work at the time, she said “Wow – that’s so not like you to miss it due to canceling a recording!” We need to get to the Central, and if we have to give up Hicks’ precious regular series against the Astros to do it, then I say go for it. I’m tired of falling asleep on the sofa during all our division games! OK, enough of that. Let’s get to the game.

Vicente Padilla took the hill, and most Rangers fans wondered which one we’d get. The good one from the first part of the season, or the one that seemed tentative and hurt his last two starts before the break. While his line won’t show it, we got the good one. You see, Vicente’s line shows six innings pitched, seven hits, four walks, and FIVE earned runs. He also struck out nine, which I believe is a season high for him. But the five earned runs all came in the same inning – the bottom of the third. The events of the game showed that the runs probably could have been unearned, but they were on the ledger of Padilla. Even the official transcripts and box scores don’t show anything that would have led you to think they should have been, but that’s how the game is played. Actually, it would have been worse, but David Murphy made a great throw, gunning down Hannahan at the plate for the final out of the inning.

Thing is, the Rangers responded in the next inning with a five spot of their own to tie the game. The first batter of the inning reached on a throwing error, which DID lead to unearned runs. Unlike Padilla, Oakland’s starter Sean Gallagher was the “beneficiary” of four unearned runs. Still, the inning was powered by the long ball. After Byrd reached on the error, David Murphy jacked a ball over the left center field power alley wall for a two run shot. After a single (Davis), awalk (Salty), and a bunt (Kinsler), Michael Young sac flied in the third run of the inning. Josh Hamilton followed with a home run to right field, tying the game at 5. It was also Hamilton’s 99th and 100th RBI’s of the season. Quite impressive numbers.

Vicente Padilla must have been energized by that, because he retired the remaining nine batters he faced in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings combined. Was quite the turnaround. Yeah, his third wasn’t too great, but he closed out his performance QUITE strongly to earn his 12th win of the season. There’s been a lot of talk this past week or so as to whether the Rangers would move Padilla. Given his overall turnaround, I find it hard to believe we’d give up our leader in wins, because Scott Feldman aside, we don’t really appear to have someone who can cover that slot in the starting rotation.

The Rangers pushed across the tying run in the top of the 7th when Chris Davis doubled, and was later singled in by Ian Kinsler. The Rangers never looked back at that point. Frank Francisco came in and threw a perfect bottom of the seventh. Eddie Guardado pitched a scoreless bottom of the eighth, and was I believe the last thing I saw before I went to bed. In fact, as I type this, I now recall seeing the double play to end the bottom of the 8th where Kinsler turned it on a slightly bad hop. That’s when I stopped watching. Go figure. CJ Wilson started warming up here, and never came into the game.

That’s because the Rangers exploded in the top of the ninth inning when I (and a lot of other fans probably) had fallen asleep. While an eight run frame means offense all over the place, the highlights was another Chris Davis home run. It was one of those innings (from reading the play by play account) where there weren’t a lot of big moments, it was a ton of small stuff. Here, you read it:

Rangers 9th (Rangers 14, Athletics 5) — Pitcher Change: A. Embree replaces B. Ziegler. M. Byrd grounds out, M. Ellis to J. Hannahan. D. Murphy singles to first base. C. Davis hits a home run to right field on a 2-2 pitch, D. Murphy scores. J. Saltalamacchia singles to right-center field. I. Kinsler walks, J. Saltalamacchia to 2nd. Pitcher Change: A. Brown replaces A. Embree. M. Young hits a ground rule double to center field, J. Saltalamacchia scores; I. Kinsler to 3rd. A. Brown intentionally walks J. Hamilton. With M. Bradley batting, passed ball by K. Suzuki, I. Kinsler scores; M. Young to 3rd; J. Hamilton to 2nd. M. Bradley walks. H. Blalock singles to left-center field, M. Young scores; J. Hamilton scores; M. Bradley to 2nd. M. Byrd doubles to right-center field, M. Bradley scores; H. Blalock to 3rd. D. Murphy grounds out to J. Hannahan, H. Blalock scores; M. Byrd to 3rd. C. Davis grounds out, B. Crosby to J. Hannahan. (8 Runs, 6 Hits, 0 Errors, 1 LOB)

Nice to see the Rangers win the game, something we have had issues doing this season for any sort of stretch of time. While it feels like we’re pretty much out of the running for the divison (we’re 10.5 games back), I also don’t feel we’re bound for the playoffs, but this has turned out to be a decent season because of all the kids we’re playing.
I wonder who we’re moving before this coming Thursday. Laird or Saltamacchia? Padilla? Catalanotto? We’ll see soon enough.
Speaking of “seeing”, Saturday’s game is one of those two mutant games in the schedule where it is not on TV here in the Metroplex. For the longest time, we’ve had 162 games on the TV, and I think about 3 years ago or so, we started having about 160. What’s the deal with the last two?

P.S. After I wrote all that, I realized I forgot to mention that this win put the Rangers in second place, passing the A’s. If we win either Saturday or Sunday (preferably both), we’ll retain second place when the series is over. This is a good thing. While I’m pretty convinced we’re not making the playoffs, I think second place is a good goal for 2008.

G102: Rangers don’t have enough stick, lose 10-8

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_07_23_texmlb_chamlb_1&mode=wrap>MLB.com Recap

I was so busy with work today, I didn’t even realize the game was on. By the time I did realize it, it was 4:30, and the game was already over. From the looks of things I missed some heartbreak.
Oh well, I think I’ll skip writing about this one.

Hank Blalock

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There’s been a lot of talk about Hank Blalock this year. Injured and off the field for the most part. Had a switch to first, and a not completely voluntary switch back to third while he was hurt. His second half stats have been not that good the last several years he’s been on the field.

It feels, by reading all the local writers, that it’s a foregone conclusion the Rangers will not pick up his option for 2009. Whether the team lets him walk, or trades him, I think most people feel he won’t be here.

What do you think?

G101: Rangers lose big to White Sox, 10-2

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_07_22_texmlb_chamlb_1>MLB.com Recap

There’s not much positive to say about this game.
1) Our starting pitching stunk. Luis Mendoza gave up six earned runs on nine hits and two walks (and a home run). Dustin Nippert was no better, giving up four runs on three hits and three walks (and a grand slam). Bleargh. See what I mean from the report from the last game?
2) Our starting pitching stunk. Luis Mendoza gave up six earned runs on nine hits and two walks (and a home run). Dustin Nippert was no better, giving up four runs on three hits and three walks (and a grand slam). Bleargh. See what I mean from the report from the last game?
Yes I realize that’s the same thing twice, but I thought they stunk so bad, it was worth pointing it out twice.
Actually, the big positive was Chris Davis. Having recently been granted the first baseman’s job by Ron Washington, he paid that back with a great night. Chris went 3-4 with a home run. Milton Bradley was also 2-4, but that’s about it for the positive in this game (does Blalock’s triple count?)