Why couldn’t they have done this last night?
I was working again in the evening, so I couldn’t pay a lot of attention to this, but it was nice to hear the Rangers blast off so many times against the Yankees and El Duque. In fact, I’m just going to list the home runs from the box score. THat about sums up this game pretty damn well, except for Ruben Sierra’s 5-5 with 2 HR night. What a night for him!
ALEX RODRIGUEZ (38) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 1ST, 1 ON
FRANK CATALANOTTO (9) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 2ND, 1 ON
RAFAEL PALMEIRO (33) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 3RD, 0 ON
RUBEN SIERRA (15) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 3RD, 0 ON
RUBEN SIERRA (16) OFF WOHLERS IN THE 8TH, 0 ON

#@)(%*)@$%(‘ing Yankees!
Dammit! Today was my birthday. I’ve always had this tradition of going to a baseball game on my birthday (or as close to it as possible). Even though we were up against Roger Clemens, I thought we’d make a game out of it. And after the game started, I thought we were going to win it!
It was an awesome game up until the 8th inning. After that point it all fell apart. Rick Helling looked great – he gave up one home run ball, but then lost it after 5, and ended up giving up four runs. Danny Kolb came in, and was spectacular! He went 1.2 innings, with three strikeouts in a span of five batters. The usually good Juan Moreno came in and the Yankees lit him up bg time. A few home runs eliminated our lead, and we never recovered. The wind seemed to be gone. And to cap off the weirdness, Pat Mahomes came in and didn’t give up anything. Go figure!

While Aaron Myette didn’t sparkle, it was nice to see the Rangers get a win.
Seemed to be the hit batter game, as there was a total of 5 players hit on both sides. None seemed intentional to me, but the press is making it out to be a beanball fest. There was also five home runs in this game, three for the Rangers. Raffy, Arod, & Mike Lamb hit home runs.
Wasn’t a terribly exciting game to watch (I kept flipping over to Astros/Pirates, which wasn’t much better as it was a blowout). However, the wife was out seeing a movie with a friend, so it was nice seeing some baseball by myself. Sorry, not much commentary from me, today’s yet another horribly busy day at work.
Also, we get Roger Clemens on Monday night (along with El Duque & Pedro Martinez) this coming week. Oh joy! :)

Rob Bell is starting to look like the player we traded away to get him. He’s playing sloppy, has moments of brilliance, but hasn’t ever put it together totally. However, I’m not down on him yet, I still feel he will be great, but with the performance today, it’s hard to tell. Of the five runs the Jays scored, three were a direct result of Rob Bell’s wild pitches. All three came with someone on third – who then scored. That is not good.
I missed the start of this game, as I was TiVoing the Astros/Pirates game, which overlapped the start of the Rangers game, so when I started watching, it was 1-0, and I came in just in time to see Bell’s two wild pitch runs in the first. That didn’t set me up in a good mood. However, I was OK with the game as it progressed – going into the bottom of the sixth, we were only down 3-1, with our sticks, I could deal with that. However, we then went down 5-1, which is also not that big of a deal, but the wind was kind of out of my sails. I started skipping through the game, but started watching again in the top of the 8th. Glad I did..
We put three across in the top of the eighth – although it should have been more, Raul Mondesi made a great catch on Pudge with the bases loaded in right, not allowing anyone to score, although Sierra came through right after that with a two run single.
Pudge got another chance in the ninth – Billy “I have the stupidest beard of all time” Koch was in, and I expected us to lose, being down 5-4. However, he was not himself. We scored the tying run on a Catalonotto single, and then after Arod was intentionally walked to load the bases, Raffy reached on an infield single, giving us the go ahead run. Then, Pudge coming up for the second straight inning with the bases loaded did not disappoint. A grand slam of epic proportions – it was one of those instant “Goodbye” balls – a serious grand slam, putting a major exclamation point on this win. I didn’t get to see any more, as the program ended on my TiVo (there was something else I really wanted to watch at 6PM, which is about when this happened), but I see that there was another home run in the 9th, giving us two more runs, for a total of 12. Really nice finish, I’m glad I didn’t bail out on the game earlier.

Having a TiVo affords you certain luxuries when watching a baseball game gone bad. When things are ugly, you can skip past bad parts in a hurry if you want. Lately I’ve found myself doing that more and more. When the Rangers fell behind, I started getting bored, and was skipping through a lot. It’s to the point where I almost don’t even want to watch the Rangers in the field, because the pitching is mostly horrible.
As the game started, I was underwhelmed by the pitching matchup – a mostly failed Rangers pitching duel – Loaiza vs. Oliver. Yawn. However, Loaiza pitched long, if not spectuacularly. He gave up a couple of runs in the first inning (as did Oliver), but that was all Loaiza gave up. Oliver, on the other hand, gave up a few. Then someone came on who I don’t have a lot of confidence in anymore – Pat Mahomes. He gave up FOUR home runs in one inning. At this point, I was already watching the game in 60x speed, so I got to see him give them all up in the span of like 10 seconds. :)
That’s about the only positive thing about this game other than Arod’s two solo home runs.
Oh yeah, former Ranger Jeff Frye hit for the cycle – there was a lot of junk in the press about him holding up for a single when he clearly could have had a double. Feh – I think he did exactly what he should have done. At that point there was nothing left teamwise to go for, he should have eased up and stayed with the single for the cycle. Good for him.

Ugh – another loss. It’s really hard to continue to write daily about a team that loses so much, but as I’m a fan, and not actually getting paid for this, I can decide if I don’t want to write. However, I don’t want to be like Dallas Cowboy fans and care only when their team is winning, so I plow on – but it is hard to write about a team that loses so much. :)
I watched the start of this game, feeling that we’d have a good shot at winning – because Doug Davis, our most reliable pitcher lately was on the mound. IN the start of the game it went pretty good, but in typical Ranger fashion they wore us down, but it again didn’t feel like we got blown away, you’re watching the game and you go, “just when did we lose this game”? I stopped watching for awhile, and then tuned back in, and we had taken the lead, but gave it back up again. Methinks there will be major changes in the bullpen during the offseason.

I don’t have the time to write commentary for this game either, as I’m still working on the big project at work today. However, it was another Ranger loss – there’s too many of them this year. 68 is about what you should have for an entire season, not your total at Aug 14th.