I think most people expected the Rangers to beat the Devil Rays at least two out of three, and after the first game, I’d say they’re well on their way to that. They beat the Rays pretty handily. The offense showed up tonight, we had pretty decent pitching, and it looked like a fun time in the Rangers dugout.
This game started off relatively quiet. Oh sure, the Rays bunched a couple of hits together in the second for a couple runs, and the Rangers manufactured a couple of runs in the fourth thanks to a steal of second, but for the most part, it was a pretty well pitched game through five and a half innings.
Brandon McCarthy went six innings, giving up just two runs on 5 hits and two walks. A few too many, IMO, but the bottom line was not bad. Kameron Loe followed him, and has NOT looked like the same guy we saw in spring training. The scary part about that is that it will likely keep Jamey Wright in the starting rotation longer, which is something this Rangers fan is not looking forward to. Scott Feldman and our other scrapheap pitcher, Bruce Chen did toss scoreless innings to keep us in the win column.
The sixth though was a good inning for us, as we put up a six spot, and it seemed that no matter what the Rays were throwing we were hitting it. No home runs mind you, but a lot of hits, and that works, too. In fact, at one point, our output in the sixth was: single (w/steal), single, single, single, walk, single, double, walk. The coolest part of the inning was that Rangers backup catcher Chris Stewart started his first game, and also got his first major league hit, which also came in a (at that time) close game, and came with an RBI as well. This was the funny moment, because the umps pulled the ball out of the game, handed it to the Rangers coaches, who passed it from person to person where it landed up in the hands of Matt Kata, who faked throwing it into the stands. Ron Washington was watching that and threw up his hands as if to go “NO – DON’T DO THAT!”. Kata pulled his hands down and busted out laughing. I caught it as it happened, before Josh & Tom talked about it on the TV replay. I don’t think we would have seen anything like that under the Showalter regime. It’s nice to see that kind of atmosphere in the dugout.
It is kind of weird to look in the box score and see our first three guys all with batting averages under the Mendoza line. This would be Lofton with .115, Catalanotto with .111, and Young with .194. Even Tex is only batting .261. The only two guys who seem to be fine out of the gate offensively are Hank Blalock & Nelson Cruz. That’s good, as there’s an article on the Rangers site this morning saying that Cruz will be playing a lot more. He’s a great defender, and seems to be moving towards getting it together offensively, too.
Also, the guy the Rays have playing third made some great defensive plays, especially that really hard hit ball he grabbed when he was playing in against the bunt. That was one of the better lineout plays to third I’d ever seen, and I watched guys like Brooks Robinson & Mike Schmidt in my youth. Akinori Iwamura plays a great third. Not sure what he’s going to be like offensively here, but if he is good, that will be a great pickup for Tampa Bay.

You know, as much as I don’t much care for ESPN’s Joe Morgan/Jon Miller combo anymore (need a new team in there) ESPN does have some seriously good camera angles. I watched most of this game, and saw some really cool angles both inside and out of the park that local Fox (FSN/FOX/etc) coverage gets. Not that I have anything against our local guys, but I wonder if a different director of Rangers games might bring a fresh look or something. The shot of Catalanotto running during his HR trot which was obviously taken from a cameraman running alongside him in foul ground was nice. I loved the shots of the outside of the park before the game started. Also, ESPN pitch tracker is better than the one the Rangers have started using (which doesn’t bother me at all). Anyway..
Four of the five runs scored in the game overall were on the longball. We couldn’t contain David Ortiz any longer, and he jacked not one, but two home runs against Vicente Padilla, who pitched better than he did in his last outing. All three Boston runs were off of Ortiz homers, which was a good thing, I suppose. Overall, Padilla had a great night, going seven innings, giving up 4 hits and three runs – almost all to Ortiz. He only walked one, and struck out four. Nice ratio there. That odd play he made in the sixth was briefly troubling, looking like he might have twisted his ankle. Shame we couldn’t score more runs – but Curt Schilling overcame his first start of the year to pitch like the guy who normally inhabits the “38 – Schilling” uniform.
Schilling was better than Padilla, going seven, giving up just one run on four hits, and 6k’s (1BB). Joel Piniero, a guy we used to beat up a lot when he was with Seattle, wasn’t given the chance to get beat up, as he faced just three batters, two of which were walks. Our second run came in this inning, when Nelson Cruz got an RBI on a fielder’s choice. Our other run was on a home run by Frank Catalanotto in the first inning, which was right to the left of the foul pole, and into the wedgie in right field.
Another game where we had a total of five hits for the whole game. Looked like we were breaking out of it on Saturday night, but we ran into a good pitcher in Curt Schilling on Sunday. The loss dropped us to 2-4 on the young season. Not bad, but never like to see twice as many losses as wins, even if it’s just 1-2.

I was originally going to go to this game, but decided not to, as I didn’t feel like sitting out in the cold. I didn’t have tickets, so that wasn’t a loss – I was going to use free ticket vouchers from last September anyway. I missed out on my free yearbook, and some offense, but I saved myself about $10 in gas going back and forth from Garland, as well as being instantly home when the game was over. Still, I would have liked to have seen the game for several reasons.
The first was the live dot race. I spoke with Chuck Morgan earlier in the afternoon to tell him that I really liked the live dot race, and he told me that they were planning on having the dots run over Jim Knox, which I was glad they showed on TV after it happened. I wrote about this for yesterdays’ game, but I really liked the live dot race. It’s quite entertaining. We just need Randall Simon to come out and whack one of them. Anyway, about the actual game…
We fell behind 2-0 after two innings, and it was feeling like another Kevin Millwood outing. Good pitching, but not completely dominating, and he’d give up just enough for us to lose. Fortunately, that was not the case. After Millwood gave up a couple of runs and we left the bases loaded with no joy in the bottom of the second, it was feeling quite ugly. At that point I was VERY glad I didn’t go. However, we came up in the bottom of the third, and had our first real good offensive inning of the season. After Jerry Hairston got on base, Mike Young doubled to right field, at which point JD Drew gave me a great reason to break out my Nelson Muntz laugh. He blew it, and the ball got by him to the wedgie. This allowed Mike Young to fly around the bases, and he ran all the way home on a very close play (which to my eyes on the back side replay looked like he was barely tagged out), but I’ll take the pseudo-inside the parker. That tied the game. It was quite an exciting play. After that, Tex singled, Sosa singled, and Brad Wilkerson walked, loading the bases. In the short sample so far, we’ve not done well with the bases loaded, as we’ve left it that way several times. Not this time, Nelson Cruz singled hard to left scoring two, giving us a 4-2 lead. The four spot was nice.
Boston got one back in the top of the sixth, after we wasted a golden opportunity to tack one on in the bottom of the fifth. Blalock led off with a triple to deep right, and we left him there. Darnit. However, our offense was back with another fourspot in the bottom of the sixth. Two of the runs scored on singles by Mark Teixeira & Nelson Cruz. However, the big moment was Sammy Sosa’s first Rangers home run since #1 back in 1989. He got one into the first row of seats in left center field, and yeah, the hop was there. Victor Rojas loves his home run call. :)
Sosa’s home run will be the talk of the stories, but Nelson Cruz had quite the night. He was 2-4 with 3 RBI’s. In fact, of the 14 overall hits we had, two guys had none. Lofton & Laird. Everyone else had at least two, except Michael Young, who had just the one hit, but it was a VERY good one hit.
Yeah, would have been nice to have been out at the park, gotten my free yearbook (or 5, people ALWAYS leave them lying around), but from the looks of things on the TV, I would not have enjoyed all the cold out there. Even the doofuses who take their shirts off were acting cold.

You know, after an 0-3 start, and Robinson Tejeda starting the home opener, most Ranger fans were probably thinking that they’d be staring down the barrel of an 0-4 start (which the Astros ARE doing, BTW). It was cold out at the ballpark, and that was not a great thought as I entered the ballpark at around 10AM – the earliest I had ever gotten there for a home opener. Given the fiasco that I know parking was like on home openers, I decided to get there really early and have a look around at various changes.

The first thing I noticed was no Ameriquest. It was gone from the outside, and the stupid bell was gone, and Section 201 was back. I decided at some point this season, I was buying a ticket in Section 201 just because I could again. A lot of the advertisements that were Ameriquest were gone, replaced with other signage, and t was gone from most of the stuff in the media guide and the program (although not all of it probably due to printing deadlines). The Sonic ad in the bullpen was different, and I believe all of the billboards (except the daktronics board in the Coke sign) were updated or different, so it was nice not to have the same old signage.

There was also the announced ball girls, who were really not even noticable. Come to think of it, I don’t think I saw them go after ANY balls – the Hooters Girls I saw in Clearwater at Phillies spring training did more than that, and they wanted to sit on their chairs the whole time. I grew up in Philly, and the Phillies have had ball girls for as long as I can remember, but they at least knew how to field their positions, and didn’t run away from the balls. If you’re gonna have ’em there, use ’em, or put the “real” ball boys back. That brings me to the other thing, the “Six Shooters”. The “cheerleaders” so to speak. Now they’re not real cheerleaders as such, they’re basically there to toss T-shirts into the crowd, that kind of thing. For the most part I didn’t care for them, but I’m not going to rant really, they’re mostly ignorable. Except for one thing that really irritated me. When the military band was coming out onto the field, one of the stupid ball girls was still throwing shirts – RIGHT OVER them. Uh, hello – this is the military here, take your stupid T-shirt bit elsewhere. They didn’t wait, or anything, just ignored them. That is not what should be happening. I know it’s opening day, and you need to work out the kinks and all that, but yikes, show some respect. Also, the kid spelling Catalanotto on the jumbotron was death, give them something they can spell, like Young, or if he was still here, Nix.

But it wasn’t all bad. The live dot race was a triumph. I loved that. That had better stay, because it was very enjoyable, especially when the green and blue dots knocked down the red one. This was a great idea Chuck, but I have just one question. How do I get to be a dot? I’d love to do that once, although my rather large frame probably wouldn’t fit inside the dot costume. :)

Speaking of disrespect, what was with the Red Sox? During their player announcements, some weren’t there, and then a whole gaggle of them ran out all at the same time being led by Manny Ramirez doing some goofy dance thing. This was DURING the Ranger introductions. That seemed pretty disrespectful to me.

But the game was awesome. It’s the best home opener game I’ve ever seen. It was seriously well pitched. Check out these lines:

Robinson Tejeda: 7IP, 2H, 0R, 3BB, 77 pitches
Joaquin Benoit: 1IP, 0H, 0R, 1BB, 16 pitches
Akinori Otsuka: 1IP, 1H, 0R, 0BB, 9 pitches
Even the Sox had great pitching:
Tim Wakefield: 6IP, 3H, 2R, 1ER, 2BB, 96 pitches
Hideki Okajima: 1.1IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 20 pitches
Kyle Snyder: 0.2IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 12 pitches

It was a total of six hits for both teams combined. That was some outstanding pitching, and there was an awful lot of Red Sox batters swinging at the first or second pitches for outs. Combine that with the pitching lines, and it makes for a really quick game (two hours and fourteen minutes). Of the six hits, all were singles, except one, a double by Coco Crisp.

The Rangers also ran bunch, stealing twice on Wakefield on two straight attempts in the same inning. Sammy Sosa got a great ovation, and provided what turned out to be the game winning hit in the first inning, an excuse me bloop single to right, scoring Mike Young.

The game was over quick, but it was a good crisp (not Coco, that’s supposed to be a weather joke) game, and was a great game for Ron Washington’s first major league win. He said he was keeping the scorecard for his first ever game in Anaheim last Monday night; I bet he kept this, too.

I’ve been to a lot of games, and I have to say that the flyover by the two B1 bombers might have been the loudest flyover I’ve ever heard in my life!

Game just ended. As I’m at work, I don’t have time to write a lot about it. I’ll have something to say later this evening.
I will say this for now, though. At least we didn’t have to see the stupid rally monkey!

Well, Vicente Padilla was not very good. Vladamir Guerrero was very good. That’s a really condensed version of the game results. I watched most of the game, but got too tired, and had to bail out – I was starting to fall asleep.
Thing is as I look at the box score in the morning, I didn’t realize just how ineffective our offense was. We had only four hits the whole game. We SHOULD have had one of those bizarre line scores where you had 6 or 7 runs and four hits. But we couldn’t follow through. Loaded the bases again and did nothing. Still have no hits with runners in scoring position, although we did get a sacrifice fly. Game 1’s loss didn’t bother me too much, since it was you know, “game one”. But this one was a bit worse.
Padilla was ineffective, although I really thought he was going to plunk Guerrero. Speaking of him, can we please WALK THE GUY? Why the heck are we pitching to him at all? He should be walked every single time he comes up to the plate. I mean why let him beat us over and over again anymore? Heck, even Buck Showalter walked Bonds with the bases loaded, I think we’re at that point with Vlad. Just walk him, no matter what. Box score said we did do that once, but he should have been walked EVERY time.
Ian Kinsler had another home run, and it was a no doubter, looked really great off the bat. As was said on TV last night, if he keeps doing that, I wonder how long he’ll stay down in the nine hole. He’s better “protection” for Teixeira than Sosa is at the moment. :)
Kenny Lofton continues to be what he was brought here for. He looked good to me, and he had a nice swing I thought on his double to right field.
Two more errors for the Rangers, that’s never good, and it’s worse when you consider we have four errors in two games. Blech.
My wife really liked the Red Angels alternate uniform. I’m a bit indifferent towards them.