Something I try to do every year to bring the site up to speed is update my roster pages. I started this site in December of 1998, and unless a player is a “cup of coffee” guy, I create a roster page for them. As they move to other teams (and even other countries), I try and keep them up to date. The problem is that as the years have gone on, and I’ve amassed more and more former player pages, it becomes harder to make a pass through them. I have a total of 226 pages at the moment. I try and keep all the links the same, so two years ago when I decided to add a Wikipedia link to the roster pages, I had to go through and edit all the pages for that. A few years I never made it through the “pass”, but this year I did.
I’ve gone through all my roster pages, and updated everyone. There were bunch of players from last season I never created pages for, and they’re all up to date now, too. As is the case during spring training, I don’t add pages for everyone, since most of the guys in camp aren’t breaking camp with the big club, and they’ll likely not be seen again, or won’t be seen for awhile anyway.
So at this point unless we trade for a major player who has a guaranteed major league contract, or sign a guy who will be on the big club, I’m not adding any more pages until the 25 man roster is set in late March.
One thing though – all the current player pages I’ve added a new widget thing from ESPN – it has individual stats and news on players. Here’s an example of two: They’re free, so I figured why not. :)

Now that Nolan Ryan is our president, I wonder how plausible this might be..
In a couple of years, Pudge Rodriguez will likely be on the back end of his career. He’s still pretty darned good now. Not the Pudge of the mid/late 90’s, but he’s still a great catcher. Of all the former Ranger players from the championship teams that went and played somewhere else, Pudge is probably still the most beloved.
Juan Gonzalez is in the Cardinals system trying to hang on, most have retired, but Pudge is still pretty active. He turns 37 after the 2008 season, so I wonder.. When he’s no longer a frontline catcher, I wonder if the Rangers will bring him back to be the backup catcher/part time DH. Nolan caught Pudge back in the day, and I wonder if that might spark something on either side for a career ending reunion.
Other Ranger players have done that kind of thing at the back ends of their career. Jim Sundberg came back in 88/89 to finish off his career after spending a few years in Kansas City and Chicago. Jeff Russell came back in 95/96 after a couple of seasons in Oakland, Boston, & Cleveland. So it could happen.
I was at Pudge’s final game as a Ranger. It was quite the love fest, and when he’s returned with Florida and Detroit, he’s always warmly welcomed by the fans.
Wouldn’t surprise me.

Yahoo’s fantasy baseball is open again. I’ll be running the usual league I do, but someone posed this question to me..
What about doing a paid league? Where folks had to pay to play? Yahoo has a pay league which has more in the way of stats, and all that. If the league was made up of folks who paid, we’d be likely to keep the league together towards the end.
I’ll still have a free league whatever I do, but is there enough interest in putting together a paid league?
The league costs $125 to buy the whole league, which would be not too bad if we spread it out amongst everyone who joined. Is there enough interest from those of you who regularly play in the leagues I put together?
Please let me know.

Back in November, I wrote about cheerleaders in baseball. As a red blooded normal American male, I find them nice to look at, but as a baseball fan, meh. Like crying, they don’t really belong in baseball, do they?

When I last wrote about this, it seems that when there are cheerleaders, it’s in Latin ball mostly. Turns out that’s not an exclusive thing south of the United States. I saw an article today talking about the cheerleaders for the Florida Marlins, The Mermaids. Heh. Given the community in the Miami area, it makes sense I suppose, but I can’t say I recall seeing them on TV. Not that I see a lot of Marlins home games, but you’d think they’d turn up somewhere.

What do you think of the concept of cheerleaders in baseball? A lot is written at places who write a lot better than I about what “baseball has become”. The game itself sometimes seems like a sideshow to all the other “stuff” that is going on in and around the park. A lot of teams have faux cheerleaders already – ushers that dance, groundscrew that dance, and the Rangers version of that, the “somethingorother six shooters” – girls that play games with the crowd, shoot t-shirts into the stands etc. They’re “fakey” cheerleaders.

When I was in Florida in March 2007 for spring training, the Phillies had Hooters girls (in full regalia) as ball girls. Ball girls are a bit different than an actual cheerleader, though. Makes you wonder at what point some major team will take the leap from all these “almost” cheerleaders to actual cheerleaders. I mean besides the Marlins.

Or heck, with JerryLand being built next door to our little ol’ ballpark, I wonder if we’ll be seeing the Cowboys cheerleaders at games now. I mean if you go to a Rangers game, which of these two pictures would you rather see live in person? It’s a harder question than you think. :)

It could be worse, though. It could still be “Rootin’ Tootin’ Ranger”. :)

Was looking through some pictures I’ve collected, and ran across this one of Johnny Oates. It always makes me laugh. Looks like an overly enthusiastic call to the bullpen. :)

Do you spend a bunch of time listening to mp3’s on your computer, or on your iPod or something like that?
If you do, you might want to check out a service called “LastFM”. It’s a social network for music fans. You install a plugin on your machine, and it keeps track of what you’ve listened to lately, and gives you reports based on your listening trends, what your friends are listening to, etc, etc, etc. I use iTunes as my primary mp3 player, but there’s plugins for Winamp and Windows Media player, too. It’s quite cool – I’ve been doing this for about three years now, and have quite a playlist history. Check out my profile page here.
Anyway, I’ve started up a group for visitors to this site. As I JUST started it, there’s not much there, so I’m hoping to get some of you to join the group, as one needs 10 members before it will generate any playlists. I think it would be cool to see what some of the readers of this site listen to.
There’s more info about LastFM on the Wikipedia page for it, and on their own site, too.

The annual Rangers Winter Carnival is on Saturday the 26th from 9AM to 5PM.
However, I have another personal obligation that day, and cannot attend. I have a free ticket for it that was sent to me by the Rangers which I cannot use. I’m therefore sticking it up here. First person who emails me and asks for it will get it.
All I ask is this. Please don’t email me unless you’re actually going. I’d want this to really be USED, not “I might just go”. Please don’t ask unless you’re honest to God planning to go.
It’s also good for $5 admission for others in your party (so says the letter that came with it).

Since all the Rangers fan sites seem to be crying in their coffee over the game last night, I’d like to offer a different opinion.

Thank you Eli Manning for not having your usual 4 interception game. And thank you Dallas for so many penalties. Enjoyed it.

You know, I love how the Rangers are “close” on signing people, but haven’t actually signed them.
Kazuo Fukumori was “signed” back on December 14th, but still technically hasn’t been finalized. They even paraded him in front of cameras with a uniform. What was with that if he wasn’t actually signed (technically)?
We’ve been “close” with Eddie Guardardo for a couple of weeks now it seems.
Then yesterday we are “close” to signing Jason Jennings.
And this morning we get word that we’re “close” on bringing back Jamey Wright on a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. (I thought he did better last year than a minor league deal with an invite).
Anyway, what’s with all these “close” deals? Are we that hurt for news that we report on incomplete deals like they’re done? These have all had stories on the Rangers official site, which for awhile there was actual, factual, completed news. Guess it’s turning into mlbtraderumors.com over there at mlb.com.