This was an interesting game for me for a few reasons. First, I had just come back from a trip to Philadelphia. I visited the new Phillies park up there, and I was attending my first Ranger game in a bit. I didn’t see them on TV for a week, and haven’t listened on the radio, so I enjoyed being back at my home ballpark. Second, I was part of the group that was in the Ebbets Field Luxury Box (the second deck one out in left field) with a bunch of folks from Jamey Newberg’s site. That was cool.
I did score the game, but even with that, I felt kind of disconnected from the game, as a lot of time was spent talking to folks, and just generally hanging around. Because of that, I won’t write about the specifics of the game, but there is one good thing to add.
If there ever is a time to be in a luxury box, it’s when you are in a rain delay. :)
We did fall out of first place, and sad as that is – I’ll add this. If I told you we’d be in 2nd place only half a game out of first the day before the trading deadline, I bet you would have thought I was insane. Even if we never get back to first, and miss the playoffs, this will be a great season.

Not much good happened in this one. We lost 11-1, and got a total of three hits, two of them by Eric Young. The Angels, on the other hand had 10 runs and 16 hits.
However, the really bad news was that we lost Ric-Rod for awhile. He was hit in the arm by a line drive off the bat of Robb Quinlan. Later on, they said he had a broken elbow, and is on the DL “indefinitely”. That’s really not good, as he was I’m sure you know was viewed as the permanent third starter. That’s just not good.
One interesting thing happened in this game you don’t often see. The Angels moved their DH in to play the field, which means they surrendered the DH – the pitcher was officially required to bat, although it didn’t happen as Anaheim used a PH in that spot in the ninth.
In case you missed it, this is my last update for about a week, as I’m going home to visit family and check out the new stadium the Phillies have. See you on June 30th as I’ll start up updates again when the Rangers come back home.

I didn’t start watching this game until 11:45PM last night, so I wasn’t in the mood to score it – in fact, I whizzed through watching the whole game in about 40 minutes in high speed on my TiVo. ;)
What I did see this game was a lot of pitching. Escobar struck out about 600 Rangers tonight. Ryan Drese didn’t allow a whole lot himself over his 7 innings. A well pitched game all around.

Nice comeback win! Too bad we had to come back in the first place, as Wasdin definitely pitched well enough to win. Wasdin got (technically) a quality start, and left with the lead, but unfortunately, a rare blown save for us – Frank Francisco was lights out his first inning, but gave up a HR ball to let the Sox tie it in the 8th. Almanzar came in, and put out the fire, as Francisco left two on base. Coco came in and was even more lights out, striking out the side to get his 29th save.
Teixeira’s HR streak came to an end, but he got a hit in the bottom of the 8th to help us with the victory. Rod Barajas was hot tonight with three doubles, and Gary Matthews Jr had a two run HR as well. Not a spectacular offensive night – we had 6 runs on 10 hits, but we had ours when they mattered most, it seemed.
Nice night to be out at the ballpark.