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Today’s the first workout

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Today is the first day of workouts for pitchers and catchers. A couple of pictures have popped up of some of the new Rangers. Here’s pictures of Kevin Milwood & Akinori Otsuka during workouts today.

Milwood named Opening Day Starter

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In an announcement that I think surprised no one, Kevin Milwood was named the opening day pitcher for the Texas Rangers. I’m also a Phillies fan, and I remember when he was brought there, he didn’t do well with that label. Hopefully it’s different here, as I really would like one of these signings to work.
Here’s the full story from Yahoo news.

Non Rangers Spring Training Radio Coverage

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I decided to look up the Rangers spring training broadcast schedule. THat’s not new, I’ve had it on the site already. But I knew the Rangers had about a dozen or so games on KRLD, and three on TV. I decided to check the opponent’s schedules to see what other games we could get coverage on.
MLB.Com for years now has had an excellent package called “MLB.com Gameday Audio” where you can get the audio feeds for all the teams, and all the games all season. It also includes spring training. Usually by now the annual package is avialable for sale, but with MLB pushing the World Baseball Classic they haven’t started selling the 2006 package. But when they do, you might want to invest in it. I don’t know what the price is this year, but in the past it’s either been $9.95 or $14.95. Hell, even if they increase it to $19.95 it’s still a good deal for all the games. You can also listen to the archives of older games too, which is nice.
Anyway, if you have that package, you can listen to the game feeds from the other teams who the Rangers are playing, and that’s where this comes into play. Here’s a list of the Rangers spring training games and whose radio if applicable the game is covered. Even if “none” is listed (there are eight such games), it still could be covered, as MLB.com does broadcasts of their own with their own people from two games a day (one from Florida, one from Arizona). The only problem with that is that their announcers spend way too much time talking aout everything else BUT the game they’re covering. They’ll take emails, and im’s and all that, and meanwhile two outs have happened in the game. That’s fairly annoying.
Anyway, here’s the spring training radio broadcast schedule for the Rangers with more than just the KRLD coverage:

Thu Mar 02 - vs Royals       - Royals Radio
Fri Mar 03 - @ Royals        - KRLD
Sat Mar 04 - @ Royals        - KRLD
Sun Mar 05 - vs Brewers      - KRLD
Mon Mar 06 - @ Diamondbacks  - None
Tue Mar 07 - @ Cubs          - Cubs Radio
Wed Mar 08 - vs Athletics    - None
Thu Mar 09 - vs Royals       - None
Fri Mar 10 - @ Padres        - Padres Radio
Sat Mar 11 - vs Rockies      - KRLD
Sun Mar 12 - @ Mariners      - KRLD
Mon Mar 13 - vs Royals       - None
Tue Mar 14 - @ Giants        - None
Wed Mar 15 - @ Angels        - Angels Radio
Thu Mar 16 - vs Giants       - None
Fri Mar 17 - @ White Sox     - White Sox Radio (also on CSN Sox TV)
Sat Mar 18 - vs Diamondbacks - KRLD
Sun Mar 19 - @ Cubs          - KRLD (also on Rangers FSN)
Tue Mar 21 - vs Angels       - KRLD
Wed Mar 22 - @ Brewers       - None
Thu Mar 23 - vs White Sox    - White Sox Radio (also on CSN Sox TV)
Fri Mar 24 - vs Cubs         - KRLD
Sat Mar 25 - @ Rockies       - Rockies Radio
Sun Mar 26 - vs Brewers      - KRLD (also on Rangers FSN)
Mon Mar 27 - vs Mariners     - KRLD (also on Rangers FSN)
Tue Mar 28 - @ Athletics     - None
Wed Mar 29 - vs Padres       - Padres Radio
Thu Mar 30 - @ Royals        - Cubs Radio
Fri Mar 31 - vs Marlins      - KRLD (in Frisco, TX)
Sat Apr 01 - vs Marlins      - KRLD (in Arlington, TX)

Pitchers & Catchers Report Today

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While there’s been several news reports lately about folks reporting early, today is the formal date for pitchers & catchers to report. It’s always a good day. You’ve got to love this day. :)

USA World Baseball Classic Roster

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The 30 man US roster for the World Baseball Classic was released this afternoon. There’s a couple of Rangers on there. They are 1B Mark Teixeira, and SS Mike Young. Former Ranger Alex Rodriguez is also on the roster. Some other current and former Rangers on the various rosters are:
Japan: Akinori Otsuka
Korea: Chan Ho Park
Canada: Aaron Myette
Mexico: Esteban Loaiza, Dennys Reyes, Ismael Valdez, Benji Gil, Adrian Gonzalez
Panama: Einar Diaz, Roberto Kelly (as the manager)
Puerto Rico: Pudge Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Ricky Ledee, Ruben Sierra, Andres Torres, Pedro Valdes
Dominican Republic: Francisco Cordero, Julio Franco, Alfonso Soriano, Sammy Sosa
Italy: Dan Miceli, Mark DeRosa, Vince Sinisi, Frank Catalanotto, David Dellucci
Venezuela: Richard Hidalgo
Some of these are provisional rosters, and not the final 30, because as of this afternoon, not all the 30 man rosters are in, and aren’t due till March 2nd. It will be nice to see Roberto Kelly pop up again, I liked him when he played for the Rangers for a couple of seasons. I believe Mark DeRosa has already declined. I seem to remember there being more than that who have declined, but I can’t find that at the moment. Also, some of these guys (Juan Gonzalez, Richard Hidalgo, Ismael Valdez) are without major league teams, I believe. Be interesting to see them turn up.
The more I think about the WBC, the more exciting I think it could be, if the flavor of this in last year’s Home Run Derby is any indicator. It’s one thing where I feel the latin countries have us beat hands down in is excitement at the park. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – I wish Chan Ho Park had worked here. Because when he first got here, all the Koreans would turn up at the park, take over a whole section, and did a lot of hooting and hollering any time Chan Ho did anything good. When he tanked, that went away, and I missed it. It was a LOT of fun.

Spring Training Radio Schedule & Fantasy Update

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When I was setting up the schedule earlier today, I was surprised to find out that nobody had the spring training radio broacdast schedule online. The Rangers site didn’t have it, and even more surprisingly, KRLD itself (either on the station or it’s texasbaseballradio site) had it. I was really surprised by that. So I wrote Victor Rojas and asked him. Vic was really cool and wrote ME when he first got the job, as he said he looked up Ranger fan sites and wrote people and said Hi, so I decided to ask him. HE wrote me back this evening with the schedule as he knew it, and it’s now online here. A thanks to Victor Rojas for filling me in on that.
Also, earlier this week I had noticed that the 2006 TV schedule was on the Rangers site. I had done the April page from that information, but only did the one page. I went today to make up the rest of the TV schedule, and it’s been taken back down. Not sure why, as it was there earlier this week, but it’s not there now – so I only have the TV broadcast info from April 2006 due to that.
And finally, my fantasy league is filled up. All 12 slots have been taken. I’ll create another one if there’s enough interest from folks in joining up. If you are still interested, either send me an email, or leave a comment to this message – I’ll do another one if there’s enough folks who want it.
UPDATE @ 11:45PM: Turns out the DMN article I read this morning did have the KRLD schedule, I missed it completely when I read the paper, I guess because I glossed over the schedule, which I had seen before. However, the DMN article did also show which games are on TV in spring training. There are three of them. Surpisingly the one in Arlington is not one of them. Check the schedule for this information.

A few site updates today

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Sunday morning brought the spring training preview in the Dallas Morning News’ sports section. After reading that over a nice omlette at breakfast, I then took to working on my site.
In the paper was the spring training roster. I went through the Uniform Number History section of my site and brought each number up to speed with the spring training assignments for 2006. The Rangers site also listed the non roster invites (which the DMN did not), so I’ve got everyone, except for the odd extra coaches who I usually have to find out right when spring training starts, as they’re generally not listed anywhere ahead of time. Also, some of the season staff (Bobby Jones for one) don’t have assigned uniform numbers on the Rangers site yet, and things like the bullpen catcher aren’t listed, either.
I also went through and did my 2006 Schedule pages. I normally would have them done by now, as the 2006 schedule has been known for awhile. However, I’ve been trying to think of a new way to do the schedules for 2006 that more involves my blogging software here, but I’ve been unable to come up with a really good automatic way, so I’ll probably just end up doing it the same way unless I can think of something (that works) between now and when games actually start in March.
Speaking of the schedule pages, I also have decided that I’m not going to go backwards (meaning from the 1999 through 2005 season archives I have here) and update the pages with the new menu look. There’s an absolutely incredible number of pages there – roughly 200 per season over the 7 seasons in the archives). I’m not planning on spending THAT much time on the site. Manually updating roughly 1,400 pages is a lot of work considering they rarely get looked at (even by me).
Also, don’t forget about my Yahoo fantasy league if you’re a regular site visitor. There’s details about it here. Thanks for visiting!

Texas Rangers TV Commercials

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When I was constructing the pages for the new site layout, I hit upon my downloads page. It’s rather out of date, and hasn’t been seriously updated in years. However…
I did realize that I had several TV commercials there from 1998 & 1999 as mpg files. THrough the magic of Google, their new Google Video service allows you to send them video files, and they’ll host them for you. They also allow you to stream them to your own site and you don’t have to cover any of the bandwith.
That’s what the Ben Grieve commercial I posted the other day was. This story contains streaming versions of all of these TV ads that I sent to Google. The Google Video player requires you to have the flash plugin active (which just about every modern browser does now). You could in theory play them all simulteanously, but I wouldn’t advise that. :)
I really wish I had the old Molly ads on tape, but I don’t – the Rusty Greer “I am Pillow Man” one was great, as was the one where Molly was playing videogames on the Jumbotron with someone (McLemore maybe?).
If you liked any of these, please use the comments field and leave a comment on them. Thanks.

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