In a game that could be considered somewhat sloppy and not terribly well pitched (4 errors, and 24 hits), the Rangers came from behind in the bottom of the ninth to win on Sunday, 8-7. Now before I get started talking about the game, I have to say that I did listen to the entire game. I was by myself listening to it. Unfortunately, I listened to most of it unconscious. I fell asleep somewhere around the bottom of the third, and woke up as the Rangers were coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth. It was the usual Sunday afternoon siesta. Both my wife and kid were also asleep in their respective bedrooms. I was in the living room blowing Z’s on the sofa. But my little girl woke me up, and announced “I like it when Daddy has baseball on the radio!”. For some reason she thinks it sounds like “music”. I don’t get it, but I’ll take the fact that my kid wants me to have baseball on the radio. :)
Late winter acquisition Jason Jennings started this game for the Rangers. His first batter was walked. After that, not much else. In fact, there was nothing else, as he had no hits, and just the one walk in two innings. Obviously, we don’t want to proclaim him awesome just on THAT, but it’s nice to see that line instead of say the line that the next Rangers pitcher threw. That was Luis Mendoza, who went 1.1 IP giving up three hits, two walks, and four earned runs. Not good (although two of those runs were when Rowe was on the mound). Of the four other Ranger relivers, Eddie Guadardo escaped unscathed, with no hits and no runs. Fukumori wasn’t bad either – two hits over two innings with one unearned run. Josh Rupe & Rowe each gave up an earned run in their mound time.
On the flip side, only KC pitcher Luke Hochevar didn’t give up any runs.
Offensively, we were led by Josh Hamilton, who went 3-3 with an RBI. Ian Kinsler had two hits, and all the other remaining nine hits were scattered amongst nine other Ranger batters. Most were singles, but we had four doubles (Hamilton, Kinsler, Boggs, & Duran) and a home run (Ryan Roberts). Roberts’ home run was well timed, coming in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game at 7 at that point. Was nice to hear, even in my mostly woozy state having just woken up about a minute or two before that.
On the positive side, we turned three double plays in this game, and did win in a rather exciting fashion, which is what it’s all about, I suppose.

It’s almost midnight, I had a great family day today with my daughter (while my wife worked), and then my wife and I spent the evening talking. Quite frankly, I enjoyed that a lot more than writing about this Rangers game.
Was nice to see a big blowout, with primarily second stringers.
One thing though. When I put the game on, my two year old said “Daddy, what is that?” I responded with “It’s the baseball game on the radio – it’s the Texas Rangers”. Her response was “I like that! I like listening with you – it’s kinda like music!”
Made me chuckle.

This was another spring training game I only superficially got to listen to. This was due to work concerns. Right now I’m in a rather large project that is getting close to winding down, so spending three hours listening to a baseball game only during work is not an option now.
I will say this. It was very nice to hear Victor Rojas & Eric Nadel back. One of the things I’ve always loved about Eric that you don’t hear with the overwhelming majority of announcers is how Eric describes things. The Rangers are wearing their blue warmups, with no names on the back, just numbers. The uniform has red striping down the sides, and… That kind of thing. He does that for the parks, too. On an audio only medium, it’s a very nice touch to have.
The Rangers again sent eight pitchers to the hill. Our starter (Matt Harrison) threw two innings. Nobody else had more than one. CJ Wilson’s inning was quite good. No hits, no runs, and two strikeouts.
Both teams did their scoring in bunches. Between both teams, there were 14 pitchers. Runs scored on just two of them. One on each side. For the Angels, their guy was “R Rodriguez”, who gave up three hits and two walks in his 1.1 innings of work; and of course the 2 runs the Rangers got. Which both came off the bat of Gerald Laird, who had a two run home run in the 5th). On the other side, our guy was Warner Madrigal, who gave up 3 hits and 1 walk in his lone inning of work. Unfortunately he also gave up the three earned runs the Angels got. Which included a home run, too.
Ian Kinsler continues to be hot in the early going, now batting .571 for the spring.
Next up is Vicente Pidente.

The second game of the spring came on at an odd time. Most spring games don’t start at 4:05 Central Time. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter, as I was unavailable. My wife and I were at the Doctor’s office for her pregnancy. So I didn’t get to hear any of this. This, like yesterday’s game was on MLB’s Gameday Audio. If you don’t know Gameday audio, it’s a surprisingly good deal. For $15 a season, you get streaming access to every game. You get the home and away audio for every game played the entire season, including several Spanish stations. The Rangers’ Spanish team is on here. But if you spend a lot of time in front of the computer, and like other teams besides the Rangers, it’s a great deal.
Anyway, in looking over the box score, it appears we faced a pretty “real” Angels team. The Angels starting lineup was pretty much a regular season one. All their regulars appeared to start the game, including Torii Hunter, who most people figured would have been a Ranger now. Likewise the Rangers lineup looked pretty solid. I don’t think this was the “regular” lineup, but it seemed pretty close.
Offensively, the Rangers were pretty confined. Counting subs, we sent a total of 18 batters to the plate. Only four of them got hits. And three of those got two each (Kinsler, Hamilton, & Murphy). The other was Hank Blalock. Kinsler & Blalock had a double each, and Josh Hamilton had a triple. Our RBI’s came from Mike Young, Josh Hamilton, and Ben Broussard (with a sac fly). Most of this damage was against Anaheim starter Ervin Santana, who gave up two of the three runs in his two innings of work. He gave up three hits and a walk, which will usually push a run or two across the board.
The remainder of the Angels pitchers are surnames I don’t recognize (Olenberger, Bonilla, M White, & Arredondo). Even the linked names in the box score on mlb don’t have names for these guys. Must be all NRI’s. White though was pretty good, striking out four in his two innings of work.
On the other side of the coin, the Rangers sent eight pitchers to the hill in this one. Only the starter (Kason Gabbard) threw more than an inning (he threw two). Well, OK, Eric Hurley threw 1.2, but his time was balanced by Batista who threw just 0.1 (to one batter, no less). The remaining Rangers pitchers were Jamey Wright, Fukumori, Davis, Kam Loe, & Franklyn German. Gabbard, Hurley & Davis gave up one run each. Hurley walked two many (2 in 1.2 to go with three hits), but the walks were down (4 in all by Rangers pitching).
Because this game ended in a tie, I was tempted to make some sort of Bud Selig joke, but decided against it, as I couldn’t make it work well enough.
Bring on Eric & Victor tomorrow!

And so begins another year. I got to listen to the game, it was on mlb.com’s Gameday Audio. They had one of mlb.com’s “webcasts” (which means it wasn’t broadcast on the radio). This is game that originally was not supposed to count, it was listed as “Charity Game”, but it ended up being an official game anyway. 5,460 showed up.
The Rangers were designated as the home team, and sent out Kevin Millwood er, Brandon McCarthy AJ Murray to start the game. Arlington was “OK”. I don’t see a pitch count for him, but he was not crisp. Didn’t give up any runs, but walked two in his two innings of work. In the bottom of the first, Ian Kinsler got on via an error, which was ironic, since he gave up an error himself in the top of the first. However, KC pitcher John Bale then struck out the side.
The Rangers first run of 2008 was an RBI double by David Murphy, bringing in Marlon Byrd (who had also doubled) in the second inning.
In the third, the Royals sent out their #1 pick Luke Hochevar, who promptly sent down all six Rangers he faced. Two perfect innings. I heard him on the radio the other morning on XM, and he seemed pretty blase about being “the franchise” for the Royals. In fact, he said “you know” an awful lot in his talking, you know? ;)
Gerald Laird continued his defensive prowess behind the plate by throwing out Alex Gordon in the fourth attempting to steal; ending the inning.
In the top of the fifth, Frank Francisco gave up a run on three hits, and didn’t really help himself. That gave him an official blown save, but then…
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Brian Lawrence (briefly in camp with Rangers not all that long ago) gave up two hits and two runs, one a rather nice sounding double by Josh Hamilton. At that time Eric Nadel was in the booth with the mlb announcer. Hamilton was referred to as having “effortless power” by the mlb.com guy; Nadel agreed with that. They talked a bunch about being a “nice guy”, as the guy announcing the game was doing Reds games a lot last year. It was really nice to hear Eric Nadel again. Be better hearing him on Friday when the first Rangers broadcast happens.
In the bottom of the seventh, the first home run of the season for the Rangers was by Taylor Teagarden. It came off of former Ranger Ron Mahay, now with the Royals. We also picked up a few runs in the bottom of the 8th to close off the scoring at six.
Had the usual non Rangers announcer gaffes about our players. The most noticeable one to me was the guy calling Wes Littleton “Wes Littlejohn”, and that he was trying to win a roster spot for the first time.
I am busy at work with a project, and almost forgot to listen, but I had the whole game on. Funny moment is that they played the bottom of the ninth, even though the game was officially over. Only took a couple of minutes, nothing really happened – was probably an agreed to thing so that pitchers could get their work.
Nice to have baseball back again.

This is obviously a fake entry.
I needed a placeholder for the 2008 season to test some template work I’m doing for the new season.