Ran across this picture when looking for something else tonight. It’s too bad Andreas Galarraga is in this picture, otherwise it would be the “All ‘Roid picture”. Who would have thought Jose Canseco was more right than we wanted to believe?

Yeah, I know, it was never proven Pudge did anything, but he got awfully less “Pudgy” after he was outed in Canseco’s book. Arod, Raffy, & Caminiti? No issues there.
Anyone hard about Andreas Galarraga lately? I haven’t – I wonder if he’s still cancer free.

This post was inspired by TR Sullivan’s “Just for the heck of it….”

Was looking through some old photos today and saw this rather silly picture of Andreas Galarraga. :)

Well, OK, maybe just one of them who has a blog, anyway.
You know, whenever something like Lackey being ejected after two pitches happen, you expect one thing to happen. The fans will polarize around their team being absolutely rock solid in their opinions on the matter. You expect Rangers fans to say that it was the right call, and you expect Angels fans to scream bloody murder. I didn’t quite expect this.
A guy with the nickname of “Rev Halofan” seems to put Randy Galloway to shame, and that’s an impressive feat. First off, he leads off his story on the game with this:

The Texas Rangers play in the nation’s 4th largest media market and it is obvious that MLB wants to get the ratings going to bring in baseball dollars amidst Footballville. They have the umps completely getting in the way of player’s establishing their game and a first inning ejection of John Lackey was the most obvious indicator that baseball intends to hand a mediocre organization a competitive edge thru treachery in order to more firmly take on the NFL deep in the heart of Texas.

OK, that’s mostly mild. Although thinking that MLB wants to hand a title to the Rangers is fairly dumb, it’s a pretty harmless statement, you can let it ride. But then you get into some of the quotes on his comments page, and wow. Who gave this guy a blog?

I heard a rumor that the Rangers players put vaseline on all the toilet seats in the Angels locker room this morning. Lackey likes to read a chapter of Lord of the Rings son the crapper before each start and today he slipped on the seat and fell on his ass and it ruined his pregame ritual. Lay off the practical jokes, Rangers, don’t you guys have girlfriends to occupy you spare time, or are all Texan women too crazy to date?
Mature? When the Rangers come to Anaheim and there is SARAN WRAP across the toilet bowls, your players are really going to regret it. Imagine how poorly Hank Blalock will play if he is interrupted reading his pregame Shakespeare Sonnet on the john.

Most of that thread is actually well thought out comments (inlcuding the graphic showing the strike zone and pitches thrown), but the guy running it.. That’s just stupid. Even his own users are calling him out, that’s fairly amusing, like this one from user “suboptimal”..

I get as angry as anyone about shit games like today’s. It was a shit game. The Angels lost, I’m mad at the officiating, and Vicente Padilla is not that good. But there’s a line between being angry about losing and just being angry at the other team, at their fans, even at the people who happen to live in the area. Even if this stuff isn’t to be taken seriously, it still strikes me as a little below the belt.

And this one by Red114, which I can only say “What bloody team are you talking about? Only the Yankees act like that. Or the Dallas Cowboys. Not the Texas Rangers”:

These fools were celebrating the division title in May

While watching the Phillies game tonight, I was also checking out some sites, and ran across a site called “Keeper’s League GM“, where they talked about a bunch of things, including some talk about the MLB Network. Funny thing is what they say I agree with:

I am a huge fan of the MLB Network. Given what ESPN has become (i.e. 24hr ads for NYY & BOS), I welcomed this new network with open arms. I think we all did. HOWEVER, I do have some criticism. The camaraderie during MLB Tonight is obvious, but I am getting so tired of watching five minutes of former players laughing like little kids about inside jokes I’d never understand. I’m talking to you Sean Casey. Sure, it beats Baseball Tonight’s inane shouting matches, but rule number one in TV is, don’t make each other laugh, make ME laugh.
It would also be nice to see some real analysis and real criticism. Guys, not everyone is “in line for a bounce-back season.” I know these are your friends you are discussing, but this is the MLB Network. Show some balls and tell it like it is or I’ll start fast-forwarding through the commentary. Way it is.

I have to agree about Sean Casey. I don’t like him there at all, and he’s almost always a “fast forward” when he starts talking. He needs to go. Replace him with Jamey Newberg or put Victor Rojas back more often than he has been.

I was at the exhibition finale today in Arlington, and of course, I couldn’t resist taking a bunch of pictures of the new scoreboard stuff. Given this is a long article with a lot of pictures, I’m breaking most of the content off onto a secondary page, so if you’re reading this on a feed reader or something, you will have to click through to the main website to see everything.

[Read more…]

UPDATE: That is seriously funny timing. Two hours after I posted this, the HD schedule was released today. Here it is..
As I now have an HDTV, and this will be my first full season with one of those, I’m most interested in the HDTV plans for the Rangers. If you go to their website, this text appears on the “TV Broadcasts Page“…

FSSW High-Definition For the second consecutive season, the majority of Rangers games will be presented in high-definition on FOX Sports Southwest HD, KDFI My27 HD and KDFW FOX 4 HD where available. A complete Rangers HD schedule will be announced once it is finalized.

The actual broadcast schedule page has nothing about HD, just whether it’s Ch 27 or FSSW.
So my question is this. Where is the HD schedule? It’s now six days from the home opener, and five days from the overall season opening game on Sunday night. I find it hard to believe this schedule doesn’t exist. My TiVo has guide information til about April 15th or so right now, and so far, every game the Rangers are playing is on a HD channel.
Has anyone seen the actual HD schedule published anywhere? If so, where? Please tell me.

I’ve talked about MLB Network a few times before, but I just got done telling my wife one of the reasons I enjoy watching the MLB Tonight show.
I’m watching the Seattle Mariners version of “30 Teams in 30 Days”, and the topic on the table was Ken Griffey Jr and how he would impact the 2009 edition of the Mariners. The guys talking at the table were Matt Vasgergian (sp!), Harold Reynolds, Sean Casey, & John Hart. As I’m sure you know, Reynolds played on the Mariners when Griffey came up.
The bit I really enjoyed was when Harold Reynolds was talking about Griffey, and the graphic that came up was one from Ken Griffey’s debut with the Mariners. Leading off that game was Reynolds, who the graphic said went 0-4 with a strikeout. That graphic came up, and Reynolds stopped mid sentence and said “What is this?”, which prompted Matt V to say “And Griffey batted behind a guy who went 0-4”. The other guys started laughing. It’s that kind of sense of humor between the show and it’s on screen talent makes this work for me. I laughed out loud when Reynolds said “What is this?” Hahahahaha.
The other thing I wanted to say was about the Rangers’ John Hart. Like most Rangers fans we were overjoyed when Hart was removed from the Texas GM job and booted upstairs. Since that happened, you almost never heard about or from him (the latter being the same behaviour as when he WAS the GM). Anyway, he’s usually the guy who comments on what team management’s perspective is on whatever the story at hand is. I have to say, I’ve rather enjoyed him as a commentator on MLB Network. There was some talk that he might be a candidate for the vacant GM job in Washington DC. If that happens, he’s off MLBN for sure, which would I feel be a loss for the commentating crew.
What would NOT be a loss is the departure of Sean Casey. He’s the first guy they’ve put on the network that I wished would not come back. I’d rather Al Leiter stay there all the time. I’ve enjoyed the heck out of Al for the “former player” perspective.
If you’re not regularly watching MLB Network, you should be. I don’t think I’ve watched more than 10 minutes of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight since BBTN has come back on the air early in spring training. Watch it.

The gods don’t want us to have local beat coverage, do they?
First this offseason we lost our DMN beat writers. In a cost cutting move, it was decided to do away with the DMN guys, and go with just the Ft Worth Star Telegram guys. Which is fine, so long as someone is doing it.
Then tonight came the news that the Ft Worth Star Telegram may not survive the current recession! That has all kinds of larger implications, but the amusing part about it to a Rangers fan is that those guys just picked up the banner of local coverage.
Fortunately, we have D Magazine to thank for picking up Evan Grant for beat coverage, but one would think if the Telegram goes away, the DMN beat guys would get rehired. I would imagine if the FTST goes away, the DMN might expand to be a metroplex wide newspaper, I can’t imagine Ft Worth without a newspaper at all.

Saw this amusing post on a Reds Blog.

Did anyone else notice that our starting rotation,
H arang
A rroyo
V olquez
O wings
C ueto
Spells HAVOC!

Tried that with our guys. It doesn’t spell anything. First off, there’s no vowels. :)
Millwood
Padilla
McCarthy
Harrison
Feldman
MPMHF