I went to this game tonight. Every baseball fan’s dream came true over the weekend. My wife came to me and said “Hey, let’s go to the baseball game on Monday”. We did, took a couple of Dr. Pepper cans for $10 off tickets, and went. Got the best game I’ve seen pitched by a Ranger pitcher in quite awhile. Ismael Valdes was wonderful (contract extension is due guys!). He went 8 innings, and threw a 5 hit shutout. Was really masterful, and is something I wish we could see more often. Put that together with the way John Thompson has pitched the last two times out, and it makes a poor Ranger fan’s heart go all aflutter – I don’t know what to do with good pitching! :)
On the other side of the plate, we got three home runs – two from Carl Everett into the upper deck of the home run porch, and another by Blalock. We lead the majors again in home runs, but still have way too many of our runs from that. It’s fine I suppose if you can keep it up, but if the power goes away, so does our offense. :(
It was also really great to hear Chuck Morgan at the ballpark again. This was my third game of the season, and it’s great having Chuck back. My wife also really loved the Rangers Captain – said he was cute. I also like the mascot, too. Just wish he’d get around the ballpark more.
Anyway, we could use a few more games like this. Even though we’re under 500 and in last place, we’re only two games out of first as of today with the other three teams in our division all tied for first place. :)

Darnit. This one annoyed me for two reasons. First, we lost. Second, I missed the end of the game. I record Ranger games on my TiVo, and I pad them with an hour – because that’s normally more than enough, even if they go an inning or two extra. However, 13 inning games are a problem. The game ran out for me in the top of the 13th right as Sasaki came in.
What a waste of a good pitching performance by John Thomson. Thomson is looking pretty good so far this year – so far the most consistent pitcher on the staff, which I thought would be Valdes (who isn’t doing bad himself). Anyway, I hope Thompson can keep this up – if he does this the majority of the season, it’ll be really cool to have someone like that pitch for us. Arod had another home run, as did Todd Greene – who had a great day, even if he had the worst baseball day of his life (referring to his cousin, the former Iraq POW). Anyway, Bret Boone had TWO home runs. One to take the lead which Greene countered, but one in the bottom of the 13th.
Would have liked to have had a win to take the series, but given our track record the last few years, I’ll take playing good, I suppose. :)

OK, that sucked. As bad as Park has been, Drese was MILES worse in this game, not even getting two outs in the first inning, and only pitching .1 of an inning. His ERA is something like 125! About the only good thing really was Arod’s home run in Seattle.
Beyond that, I gave up watching the game after four innings and switched to listening to the radio (I seem to be able to pay attention to blowouts on the radio better than on TV).
Don’t want to write much about another huge blowout that ends at 12:30AM. :(

Earlier in the day, my wife asked me who was pitching. I replied with “Chan Ho Park”, to which she said “Oh boy, there’s a loss”. And after the first couple of innings, oh boy did I think that was true. Chan Ho Park walked something like 5 batters in the first two innings – including the first seven pitches of the game for a ball! However, due to some luck, and an awesome fielding play by Carl Everett in left, Chan Ho escaped unscathed. The Mariners (without Edgar Martinez, I might add) left the bases loaded in the first two innings. Chan Ho ended up going 5 innings, walking 7 and throwing 114 pitches all told. Boy did he luck out in getting the win tonight. CJ Nitkowski gave up the other run, and Cordero & Urbina were lights out again – something nice to see. If I had to categorize this pitching performance by Park, it’s “lucky”.
Fourth save for Urbina. Assuming he stays the entire season, and isn’t traded in July, at this rate, he might beat the team record for saves in a season.
On the other side of the ball, Rafael Palmeiro continued his apparent love of Safeco Field with a big two run jack in the 5th inning to right center field. At the time, that gave us the lead in the game, and we never gave it up again. The only other RBI (one run wasn’t credited as such) was by Carl Everett, who had a nice game overall.
I have to say, a very surprising win. I certainly wasn’t expecting a win when Chan Ho went into Seattle, and I’m still pretty down on him, but it was very nice to get.

The game started off ugly – like just about every game so far this year. Colby Lewis walked 8 batters in his 3.2 innings of work. Far too many. However, the bullpen was great. In the bullpens 5.1 innings, they pitched shutout ball, giving up just two hits – both by Yan. Fultz, Cordero, & Urbina gave up squat. And speaking of Urbina, he has three saves. We have three wins so far.
On the other side, unfortunately, four of our five runs came off the longball. While it’s nice to see homeruns, I’m a bit worried that such a radically high percentage of our total runs scored are that way. It seems that if we don’t hit home runs, we’re not winning – I don’t like that trend. Still, Mark Teixeira hit his first major league home run, scoring three. And Carl Everett hit a solo home run in the bottom of the 8th to win the game.
Overall, a great comeback win – great pitching from our bullpen. Makes me wish I was there. :)

This one was more annoying than the 2-1 loss yesterday. Not for the obvious reason that we lost by giving up 10+ runs. My point is that Ismael Valdes was brilliant the first three innings. Even the two home runs he gave up in the third didn’t feel like a big deal at all, since he was pitching well otherwise. Then the floodgates opened up.
On the positive side, Mark Teixeira finally got his first major league hit (a double), and his first RBI (a single driving in Todd Greene). Juan Gonzalez had another home run, as did Raffy (his 493rd).
I knew this season wouldn’t be that great going in, but damn – it’s annoying to be disenfranchised this early in the season. I wonder how Twins fans dealt with it all those years.

John Thomson looked like a pitcher that could win 20 games last night. Unfortunately, a pitcher that DID win 23 games last year was his opponent. Zito was masterful, his only mistake was a longball to Rafael Palmeiro. It’s our lot. Whenever we get a great pitching performance, we always seem to get outpitched by someone better.
We had a total of 5 hits (two of them by Mike Young, our “weak” offensive second baseman). Overall, it was a great BASEBALL game, but not a great Rangers game. :(
Of course, anything’s better than what Chan Ho Park has been doing. :)

Didn’t watch any of this game, for two reasons.
1) As my brother was still in town, I was out doing some things with him.
2) Chan Ho Park was pitching. I’m sorry, but I have a hard time getting up for his games anymore.

I went to Opening Day on Friday, and I also went to Opening Night on Saturday. I actually spent most of this game worrying about the weather, especially when I was in the bathroom and heard “Tornado touchdown” over the radio. Anyway, it turned out to be fine other than some heavy winds, and the Rangers got out the big bats. In the early trend of the season, the longball provided just about all the offense in the game. 7 of the 8 were off a home run. We had four of them – two by Juan Gonzalez, the others by Arod, and one by Hank Blalock. All of them were no doubters, too. Probably helped a bit by the wind, but eh? :)
Colby Lewis wasn’t spectacular, but he was serviceable, and this year that will be more than good enough, I think. I enjoyed being at the ballpark again, and I have to say that my pitching fantasies were dashed early on this season, I suspect we’ll still play well, despite that. I do wish we were a bit less dependant on the longball, though – even if chicks dig ’em. :)

There never is quite anything like opening day, is there? Even if you lose (which we did), there’s something nice about visiting the park again for a game. :)
It was also a special day for me because my brother was visiting in from out of town. I picked him up at the airport at 10:30, and we headed straight to the ballpark. Got there early, took in the sights of the new things at the park. The new scoreboards were gorgeous, much better than before – the mats outside the stadium were a tad gimmicky, but still OK, the banners of players were nice, although I would have liked them not to have the Donruss logo on them. The food stand signage is new and a needed improvement. The concourses seem less cluttered, but the frickin “Sign up for a credit card and get a towel” people REALLY NEED TO GO. I didn’t find the famed garlic fries, so I’ll have to try them the next time I’m out there. I even thought the Rangers mascot was cute. I’m not one of these baseball zealots (like on some web forums) who think that anything that deviates from their perceived “mantra of baseball” is bad. I even thought the Ranger Captain was cool. Overall, a definite improvement – but the best “new” thing about the Ballpark was the return of Chuck Morgan. Games go so much better with him there – it really was painful at times last year without him.
The game? Well, we lost. Ismael Valdes looked pretty decent again, if not spectacular. All our offense came from home runs again (one by Blalock, one by Sierra). Was a nice back and forth game which we lost, but my excitement at being at the Ballpark again really overshadowed the game. Even the sunburn I got was no big deal. Seeing friends again (Hi Tina!) was really nice.