I know there was more to talk about, but this game will be remembered for the picture above. I was there. It was seriously impressive live. I stood there in row 14 of Section 325 for about two minutes with both arms up in the air.

Here’s a video clip.  It’s still damn impressive..

What do you say about games like this? Offense all over the place. No pitcher was particuarly well represented by his box score.

Texas			IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Millwood (W, 6-4)	5.0	9	5	3	0	2	1	4.93
Wright (H, 11)		2.0	1	0	0	1	2	0	4.44
Rupe 			0.1	2	3	3	1	0	1	4.31
Guardado (H, 17)	0.2	1	0	0	0	0	0	2.90
Wilson (S, 21)		1.0	2	2	2	0	2	2	4.70

Baltimore		IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Liz (L, 3-1)		3.2	7	6	4	5	4	1	5.94
Loewen 			1.0	0	0	0	2	1	0	8.02
Cabrera, F 		1.1	2	0	0	0	2	0	0.00
Bradford 		1.0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.78
Johnson 		0.2	3	4	4	1	0	0	1.88
Sherrill 		1.1	2	1	1	2	3	0	3.72

In fact, that’s about all I’m going to do for this one. Was a pretty poorly pitched game (21 runs and 29 hits total), that’s what this one boils down to.

German Duran, a guy who has been here for awhile, but seemingly gets overlooked when you think of the current roster makeup lead the team yesterday to a 5-3 win. Duran, batting ninth went 3-3 with two doubles and two runs scored. He wasn’t the only one with multiple hits. Michael Young went 3-5, and Ian Kinsler who continues his assult on just about everything went 2-3 with a walk, as well as two runs scored and two RBI’s. I guess if you look just at the numbers, Kinsler “led the offense”, but Duran’s 3-3 struck me as more impressive for some reason. Can’t tell you why, that’s a “gut feeling”, but perhaps it’s from a guy who may be considered “the 25th man”.
Kinsler did jack another home run, and is turning out to be the player he was lauded to be when he was coming up. He was not slated to start the All-Star game, but he really should be. Stupid Boston media bias. Pedroia is a fine player, but he’s not comparing this year to what Kinsler is doing.
Pitching wise, Scott Feldman got a start. He wasn’t supposed to start, but got the call at the last minute. Pitched OK. Technically a quality start, but barely. Six innings pitched, three earned runs, four walks though (too many). He was OK enough to get the win. He deserves that, considering how many he pitched well enough to win he got no run support. The pen was great, not allowing any runs.
Baltimore isn’t even drawing 20,000 on a Saturday game. Man have their fortunes fallen. They were a 40k+ per night draw for a long time. Shall we blame it on the owner? :)

Well, after the game I went to against the Phillies when Padilla looked fairly pedestrian, I thought “OK, he’s been pretty decent, he’ll bounce back against Baltimore”. WRONG.
Vicente Padilla looked like the 2007 edition of himself, even evoking bad memories of Chan Ho Park & Mark Clark. He gave up a run in the first. OK, no big deal, just one run. He looked wobbly in the first inning, but this version of Padilla has been good with dealing with that. Not this game. In the second inning he gave up three runs, then four more in the third. They were all earned, too. Couldn’t pin the numbers on a bad play behind him – Pidente threw up eight earned runs on the scoreboard; not surviving the third inning. It was pretty darned ugly. I think the most telling stat is that he didn’t strike out anyone. While he’s not going to lead the league in strikeouts, he does get his fair share, and to strike out zero is a pretty much the telling sign. The Rangers pen did put up four innings of zeroes before Josh Rupe gave up two more runs in the 8th. But the damage was done, we were never really in this game.
That despite an actual first inning lead when Bradley doubled in a run. In fact, that double was our only extra base hit. We had eight more hits – all singles. Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie did allow two walks, but our bats were pretty much shut down. In fact, Milton Bradley pretty much was the offense. He was 2-4 with three RBI’s.
This game pretty much boiled down to Vicente Padilla was never in this game, so neither was the rest of the team. When you give up 28 runs total in two consecutive games, you pretty much aren’t going to be in either of those games.

Per my policy, I don’t write about Rangers losses to the Yankees.
Although I will say it was somewhat gratifying to beat Ponson, even if we didn’t beat the Yankees.

The Rangers had been godawful in Yankee Stadium the last few years. Oh, we’d get a win here and there to show we had a small pulse, but we’ve been effectively target practice for the Yankees. Not this year. After last night’s extremely well pitched game, we get another – and our second win in a row in Yankee stadium in as long as I can remember.
Kevin Millwood went for the Rangers, and had a pretty good outing. Went five innings, giving up five hits and a walk for one earned run. Struck out six. Funny thing is after just 84 pitches, he was out after five. I admit I passed out on the sofa for a bit there, so it’s possible there was an explanation and I missed it.
Josh Rupe followed and ended up with a blown save, as he gave up the tying run; his only in two innings. Frank Francisco followed with a scoreless frame. CJ Wilson closed it out, and after getting a double play, seemed absolutely fired up – got the final out on three pitches. Two strikes at 95+ on the radar gun, and the third was a ground out that shattered the bat. Was a great ending to this.
Offensively the Rangers had just nine hits. Six of them were by Kinsler, Young, & Bradley who had two each. But the big thing was Ian Kinsler, who ran us into this win. In the ninth inning, Ian got on, then stole second, and then stole third, and scored on a single in the top of the ninth. It was quite impressive to get the win against Rivera.
As a Ranger fan, you feel positively giddy about the lofty perch of three games over .500 – and to do it against Rivera and the Yankees made it a whole lot better. Dare we think sweep on Wednesday?