Well, this was a day game, which means I only superficially got to pay attention. I did score the game, but about 40% of my scorecard was me looking at what had happened on the MLB Gameday scorecard stuff. And I didn’t miss much. Wasdin was not good today, we fell behind a lot early, and that was about it. Made a little noise when Kevin Mench hit a three run home run, but we were behind the 8 ball in this one almost immediately, and never really had a chance to win, I felt.
The loss makes the 2-2 split in Seattle seem like an 0-4 to me.

No commentary from me, because something happened last night that almost never happens. I got tired in the middle of the game and went to bed! I hate these 9PM starts.

No time to write commentary today.
Brett Carre: The fun in Seattle ends with a 4-3 loss on Tuesday. This was a game that was on the table, but we couldn’t pull it out. One of the few times this year that we couldn’t pull out one like this.
Benoit pitched decent tonight, but we gave up just too many tonight as we could only produce 3 runs tonight. Some people said tonight his future with the Rangers was on the line. I think he preformed well enough to stop talks about that until his next start!
On the offensive side we had chances but didn’t take advantage of them. This is a game I think we should have won, but Seattle got the big hit tonight by Aurilia, the two run homer with two outs in the 6th.
Kenny is on the mound tomorrow. Does that mean we can already put a check in the “W” column?

There’s no scorecard stuff from me. My brother called, and I didn’t get to start watching the game until 11:30PM. I did actually start scoring it, but after three innings I was falling asleep, so I gave up and watched the rest of the game in about 10 minutes in high speed scan on my TiVo. ;)
BOMBS AWAY!
The Rangers hit five home runs in this game, including two in the first inning, and two overall by Hank Blalock. The offense was the star of this game by far. We also had home runs by Soriano, Mench, & Texieira. The HR accounted for 7 of the 8 runs we got.
It’s good we had offense, as Bierbrodt had nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true, he got the first two batters of the game out, but not much after that. He gave up 3 in his 1.2 innings. Ricardo Rodriguez went 3.2, and gave up a run, not too bad. Mahay, Francisco, Almanzar, & Cordero went a combined 3.2 innings and gave up just one more run. Cordero got his 23rd save.
It was almost all good. A nice start to the road trip.

Ryan Drese pitched a complete game. He gave up one run, on a double play ball, so there was no RBI involved. He walked two, struck out four, and threw 114 pitches. He was sensational. He lost.
Roy Oswalt was absolutely untouchable. He gave up 4 hits over his 8 innings, and a play in the first inning pretty much summed it up. That was Beltran’s robbing of Mike Young’s home run ball over the center field wall in the first inning. After some theatrics on the catch, Beltran held in his hand the closest thing we had to a run all day. We had a triple by EY, a double by Rod Bajaras, but squat otherwise. Oswalt was absolutely dominating. Was amazing we got what we did, tell you the truth.
Sad part is that Ryan Drese lost the game, when he pitched well enough to win it on any other day. Don’t feel too bad about this loss, as we certainly got enough pitching, something we’ve lacked the last few years. We went 5-1 on the homestand, including 8 of the last 9 to take first place in the division, and as I write this on Sunday afternoon the A’s haven’t played yet, so we will head out on the road in sole possession of first. Whether it’s 1 game or 2, is up to the A’s tonight.
We won’t see another home game until Friday July 16th – 19 days from now.

Rain. Lots of it. It rained for the first three innings or so, and then it rained from the 7th onwards. There was no rain in the middle, but it was pretty ugly. I ended up sitting in the last row of the upper deck behind home plate, I wasn’t in the mood to sit in the rain, even though I had an umbrella with me.
This was a good back and forth game. There was no real dominant pitching here, in fact, there was some awful pitching today (Frank Francisco). The rest was just OK. We had a 2-0 lead, then 2-1, then 2-2, and we went up, they went up, it went on that way until the bottom of the sixth when we were up 7-3. I was feeling pretty good about the game, but that’s when Francisco came in and laid a big stinking one on the field. The game was tied 7-7 at that point. I was glad we weren’t behind, but not thrilled at having given up the lead.
The Hammer, who lead the offense with a 4 for 5 day, scoring three times, and having 2 RBI’s hit a game winning solo home run into the Rangers bullpen off brief former Ranger Dan Miceli to win it. Cordero got his 22nd save. Speaking of former Rangers and home runs, our old friend Mike Lamb had a solo home run in the game. I’m glad he’s doing well in Houston, I just hope the Beltran trade doesn’t end up jacking with Mike’s time, given all the position shifts they’ve had.
Anyway we’re now 8 in a row, and are 13 games over 500. Right now only the Yankees have a better record than us in the AL, and only one team in the NL has a better record – the Cardinals. Who would have thought it? Hell, Tampa Bay is now one game over 500 and in third place in their division. Bizarre things are afoot in 2004.

WOW! I mean WOW – what more can you say about Kenny Rogers? Yeah, there were a few runs in this game, and Carlos Beltran made his debut as an Astro tonight.
This night belonged to Kenny Rogers. Get the feeling that if this was an NL park game, he would have gone 3 for 4 with a HR, too.

I started scoring this game when the game started. My regular work hours are 9AM to 6PM. My wife was working late, so I had planned to meet her during her dinner break, which was 6 to 7. OK, we went extra innings. I figured that was not a big deal, as it was 4PM. Thought I’d have plenty of time. As it inched closer to quitting time, I started to get worried. So, I left work at 6PM, and they were just starting the 16th inning. As I drove up to where I was meeting my wife, the 15th inning just ended – I really thought we were going to win this several times, but our best shot was the bottom of the 16th – bases loaded with one out. We failed. So I met my wife for dinner, and figured I’d just retro score the game when we were done. At 6:55 when I drove her back to work, the game was still going on! I dropped her off at work, and as soon as she got out of the truck, Soriano hit his GW home run in the 18th inning. I did have to retro score the 16th through 18th innings, but it was still cool to hear the end of the game.
Three years ago (almost), my wife and I were at the last 18 inning game, one the Rangers won 8-7 over Boston on Aug 25, 2001. That was one wild game, but given it started at 7, it was done just short of 2AM. I loved it. I’m sure I would have loved this game had I gone to it, but I also probably would be dead tired given the fact that it lasted 6 hours in the sun during the day. But hell, I love extra inning games, and REALLY extra inning games are great! Given there’s so much to talk about on this one, I’ll just list several bullet points I noticed – in no particular order.

• Hank Blalock had 9 at bats – tying a Ranger record
• The Rangers had 23 hits, which tied a team record.
• We tied the team record for most innings played in a game – 18.
• This was the longest game both in innings and time in the majors this season (so far).
• Brian Shouse got his first major league win (in 112 appearances)
• We blew it bigtime in the 15th inning. BIG TIME.
• We now have 6 wins in a row – a season high
• We’re now 11 games over .500 – a season high
• Edgar Martinez walked 5 times in this game, twice intentionally.
• Seattle used all their relief pitchers – had to use Jamie Moyer (tomorrow’s starter) to finish the game.
• The batteries in my Palm ran down almost to zero because I had the backlight on and the game took too long. ;)
• The length of this game was longer than the first two games in the series combined.
• Rod Barajas now has three more HR this season then he had in his entire career before this year.

It is nice to have this kind of roll going into the Astros series, especially since the Astros acquired Carlos Beltran – that happened right as I was finishing up this story. ;)

I did not score the game this evening – I spent most of the game hanging out behind section 5 with Hank’s Homies. ;)  Got there a little bit before the game started – and then I hung out there till the end of the fifth. It was fun hanging with the Homies. I mostly took pictures of them, as they didn’t have any, but the guys were cool. I got eye blacked up, and we had a blast. I had to leave as I was meeting someone else at the park, so I went and met him, and then went to my actual seat, which was in Sec 327. By that time I was really tired, and didn’t stand for the 7th inning stretch, as I had “stretched” all the game already. ;)

The game itself was great – although watching it from a different part of the park meant my perception of it was different, and I was having a hard time following the ball most of the time. The top of the lineup duo of Hank Blalock & Mike Young seem to be at it again, pushing across a run in the first. It actually stayed that way for awhile, with Bierbrodt and Franklin pitching well, making outs when they had to. Seattle tied the game in the top of the fifth, and took the lead in the sixth, but we stormed back with a 5 spot in the bottom of the sixth to put it away.

This game for me was less about the actual game than standing out in left shouting “Go Hank” and clapping my hands more than I can remember in quite awhile. :)

We’ve now won 5 in a row. We’re 10 games over 500 for the first time this season, and damn, it feels good to be thinking (even remotely) that the playoffs might be an option.

Brett Carre: Last night I actually went to this game. Me and my buddy thought it would be cool to head up there to catch the FIRST place Rangers.

If you are a Ranger fan it was a great game. We got off to a 1-0 as the dynamic duro did their deal. A Yougn double followed by a Blalock single. It stayed a pitchers dual between Ryan Franklin and Nick “Beer Braut” We trailed 2-1 going into the bottom of the 6th, but a 5 run inning turbed the tide as we took a 6-2 lead. It was nice to see us get 5 runs in one inning without a home run. It seems the last week or two all of our runs were coming via a home run.

Ahhh, first place. When the Rangers are in first it seems like the air is fresher, the food tastes better, and life is just a billion times better. Since we are in first I have come up with a phrase for this team to take on for the rest the year: “Get er Done!” Thats all I got.