Well, the chat log from Evan Grant’s recent chat on the DMN website is up, and in it, two answers talk about trading Mark Teixeira. There’s also the rumour site mlbtraderumors.com who picked up on the chat and offered their own speculation on the matter. Got me to wondering, what SHOULD we do with him?
Now I’m nowhere near ready to panic and give up on 2007 – that would be a Cowboys fan mentality to give up that quick. Sure, it hasn’t gone that well so far, but the basic construction of the team is sound, IMO, and I think we can, it just has to be done soon, where we have to decide if we are going to try and trade off pieces.
Ignoring the reality of trade pieces, and whatnot, if he wasn’t here, I would think Baltimore would be a great place for him to go. I think they’re still looking for that “face of the franchise” type of player that Cal Ripken was. Tejada is a great player, but I don’t think Orioles when I think of him – he’s still an “A”. If you’re a Rangers fan, you already know he’s from there, so I’m sure it would be a nice fit. Whether they can offer what we’d want in return, which I’m sure would be a major league ready starting pitcher, and a replacement for Tex (Markakis?). Problem is they don’t really have any active starters that excite me. But where else would he go? Anaheim? I doubt we’d trade him there unless we got John Lackey back (yeah, right – like that would happen), although I can see him going there as a free agent. Or worse, the Yankees. Ugh.
Anyway, I set up a poll here on the front page of my site asking what you think we should do with Teixeira this season. Please vote. Thanks. BTW, I voted for “sign him long term”, but I’m starting to feel that won’t happen. Two off seasons ago, he signed that two year deal to avoid arbitration with the idea that we’d work on a long term contract before this 2 year one is up. It’s almost up – I wonder if they meant that.

Just wanted to drop folks a line. I got the word the other day that I have a family member that was given about a week to live, so if that happens, I might drop off the face of the earth for a bit. Just wanted to let you know in case I stop updating for awhile.
Update Wed 25th: My stepfather died last night after a bout with several illnesses that I won’t get into here. This will probably keep me offline through the weekend. Thanks for the notes of condolence I’ve gotten so far.
Update 2 Sat 28th: I’m taking off in the morning to attend funeral services back home. I return Wed evening, I’m not expecting to be updating while I’m away. Nice win last night – good to see Tex finally get a home run. And Sosa keeps hitting ’em.
Update 3 May 5th: I’m back home, but I’m so behind the eight ball from being offline for a week that I probably won’t be able to do any updates until Monday, at which point I’ll probably do one of my massive catch up updates.

Remember the old post game show guy Scott Franzke? When KRLD dropped the show for a year, we lost Franzke to the Phillies, who was first hired just to do the same thing there he did here. But he’s now in their broadcast team. Philadelphia does things differently than we do here. In Texas, we have dedicated radio & TV teams. Not so in Philly. After a couple of innings, they rotate between TV and radio, so you get to hear/see everyone in one game (I believe it’s everyone).
Anyway, there’s an article about Franzke and the rest of the Phillies broadcast team over here at this Philly sports blog. They seem to like him over there – which is good. I was rather annoyed when we let him go. I don’t think I’ve listened to his replacement here in Texas more than once or twice.

No, I don’t want some home made ice cream that Momma was shouting through the screen about from my “Good ol country home”.
I know that the “Bunt Cake” commercial is a joke.
Need some new ads, guys. Two three years with the same ad is pretty annoying, especially when you hear the same ones 3-4 times (or more) during one game.
Gaaaaahhhhh!
Edit: Gaaah! This commercial came on a second time within 30 minutes after I posted this!

Gotta love fifth place. Thing of beauty.

Saw an article come over my rss feed reader this morning from the website for Hank’s Homies, which isn’t updated very often, so the notice stuck out. Apparently the Homies are three years old now. The funny thing is I remember them in the upper deck around Section 340 or so before they moved to Section 5. I remember looking at ’em like “What’s with these guys”? They were just a row or two in front of me. I seem to recall getting annoyed when I couldn’t see because they held up their sign. :)

Anyway, they moved down to Section 5, and a legend was born. If you read their story, they recall again the story from May 2nd, 2004 when the entire stadium was wrapped up “SWEEP – SWEEP – SWEEP”. I agree with them, it was one of the best moments I’d heard in the park. To hear the entire stadium wrapped up chanting sweep was very cool. It wasn’t until later that I found out how cool it really was when I found out the Homies started it, and it was even mentioned on air in this audio clip by Eric Nadel and old radio guy Vince Cotroneo.

You can check out this quick video clip I took of them singing their chant when Hank was up the day I hung out with them on June 24, 2004. I couldn’t handle standing the entire game, I eventually ended up sitting down where my real seat was. But I had fun with ’em.

A lot has been written about Jackie Robinson this weekend, so I won’t try and tarnish that with my weak attempt at what Robinson was and what he meant. I do appreciate what he did, but feel unable to write words that would be worthy, so I won’t.
But I will say this. Heard tonight on Baseball Tonight that the Yankees have a memorial to Jackie Robinson out in their Monument Park in left field in Yankee Stadium. Now I know every team has something for Jackie Robinson in their park, but for most teams, it’s just a “Robinson 42” where their retired numbers are. And that’s fine.
But I thought the Yankees did something cool by giving him a place in their monument park, especially given the old history between the Yankees & the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Yeah, the Yankees were the only team that didn’t have an in stadium “something” for Robinson, but I think they made up for being last with this.
Here’s what’s on the plaque… “In becoming the first Major League player to break the color barrier, Jackie will forever be an inspiration with his grace, dignity and perseverance. His story and the stories of those who never had the same opportunity must never be forgotten.”
Here is a link to a wire story which talks about the memorial in Yankee Stadium. Check it out.

I don’t talk about stuff like this too much, because what more can really be said except “That sucks”. Don’t know what your religious leanings are, but I offered up a prayer for the victims of that fiasco when I heard about it.

Anyway, I was reminded tonight that there’s a sort of Rangers connection there. The guy whose baseball card I have displayed here is a member of the Virginia Tech Hall of Fame. VT did retire his jersey, but not his uniform number, which is something I can’t say I’ve heard of before. Anyway, there’s a nice (but short) writeup about Oates and Virginia Tech at this link at the Virginia Tech Hokies website. Check it out.

Also, the picture I picked I did because it’s the one that means the most to me. I’ve written about Oates a few times in the past on this site, but this baseball card is the one that meant the most to me as a kid. I always found this one a cool card, and I was glad to be able to get Oates to autograph one for me before he passed away a few years back.

As I’ve been offline sick for a bit, I was playing catch up this afternoon with my reading.
Read this post on USS Mariner where they slagged off the Michael Young contract extension, saying stuff like this:
…. defense has already degraded to the point that he shouldn’t be playing shortstop
Adam Morris’ response over at lonestarball.com was pretty well constructed, you should read it. It’s much better than my response, which would have simply been this:

But that’s the Philly boy in me, I guess. ;)

Here is an interesting article I picked up while reading USS Mariner this morning. It’s about how this guy is convinced Francisco Rodriguez was doctoring the ball during opening night.
Anyone else think this? I didn’t see it, personally. But it would give me another reason to not like him – His “K-Rod” is fingernails on a chalkboard for me. A-Rod is the only one that can get away with that, IMO. And don’t even get me started on “I-Rod” for Pudge. Gaaaaaa!