Starting tomorrow, I’m going to finally be attending a Spring Training – something I’ve never done my entire life. Have always wanted to. But I won’t be in Surprise, AZ. I’ll be in Clearwater, FL at Phillies camp. I’ll be there with my brother and my stepbrothers.
I’m not sure what kind of updates I’ll be doing on the Ranger games while I’m in Florida, but I’ll try.

I haven’t had time to read this yet, but if I wait till I have that, I won’t remember to pass this on.
Headline article about CJ Wilson on ESPN’s baseball site this afternoon. check it out.

There’s an article online about which ballpark has the best seats.
They rank The Ballpark in Arlington’s Home Run Porch as #11 on the list, right behind the Green Monster Seats in Fenway (which I thought would be higher than that, actually). Here’s what they said about it.

This section has overhead electric fans to cool you on those 100-degree windless Texas evenings, when Mark Teixeira and Hank Blalock sends souvenirs your way.

I have never liked the Home Run Porch for a couple of reasons, one is in direct conflict with what they said. Yes, there are fans, but they’re so useless, they might as well not be there. In the upper home run porch, the fans are so far away from you that it’s stupid that they even exist. The lower home run porch is closer, but they’re still to far away to be effective.
I’ve sat in both the upper and lower home run porches, and I don’t like either of ’em. There is almost never a breeze there when I have sat, despite the acclaimed “jet stream” in the place. The worst part is that you can’t see the scoreboard, because it’s on top of you. I’ve been hearing rumours that they may rip out Sections 301-307 and install a second jumbotron up there. That would make the home run porches a bit more tolerable, but I am NOT a fan of sitting there at all. I have more fun out in the bleachers in center than the HR porches.
I wonder if the people who wrote that article ever actually SAT in the seats, or are just looking at ballpark design blueprints and pictures to determine these things.
If you ask me, I’d say anywhere in PNC Park. That place has one of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen.

I just found out tonight that someone close to me has brain cancer. I can’t quite bring myself to write game recaps right now.

If you are seeing this message, then you are seeing the Rangers site on the new server. I’ve recently moved around some websites I run to a new server, and this is one of them.
Things should be fine going forward, but you may be seeing this if you try going to one of my other sites (like the Black Sabbath site). It’s a DNS hiccup. If that happened to you, then you need to close your web browsers, go dump your local DNS cache, and retry.
This should all be academic in a day or two anyway.

Found an interesting link on one of the other team blogs I read, “Tiger Blog“. They are basically taking the slant that Michael Young’s contract would drive up the price of Carlos Guillen’s contract extension. They specifically make this statement:

Young is one year younger then Carlos Guillen and you can argue that both are pretty comparable players

I decided to look up their numbers for the last couple of seasons:

One thing that just leaps off the page is durability. In just the sampled years, the number of games played is a major difference. Number of hits is also a big difference. In fact, as you go down the line, the only number that seems pretty consistently the same is batting average. Before I looked up the numbers, I thought that Guillen had more home runs, but even then Mike Young’s got him beat over time.
After looking at the numbers, I do not believe that Guillen matches up with Young in all those phases. I don’t think Guillen needs to worry about Young’s contract impacting his. Guillen isn’t a $15 a year guy.
Michael Young is. Thank you Doug Melvin.

Got an email a few minutes ago from Victor Rojas. He informed me that he’s now blogging over at mlblogs again. His new one is entitled “The Spoils”, and can be reached here:
http://thespoils.mlblogs.com.
Vic’s a funny guy, so it’ll be nice to have some regular thoughts by him as the season goes along. Just don’t stop in mid stream, Vic! :)

I was googling for something the other day (can’t remember what now), and happened upon an article over at USS Mariner (probably the best Mariners fan site if you haven’t seen it) entitled, “Bugs Bunny, greatest banned player ever“.
It is an extremely funny “real life” check on the old 1946 cartoon “Baseball Bugs“. They break down the cartoon in such a way as to nitpick the events of it (talking about stadium capacity, realities of injuries sustained in the comic animation, etc). Oh dear, I haven’t laughed this hard in ages. It was originally published right about a year ago, and I obviously missed it. Being this funny, I would have remembered it. I haven’t laughed this hard in ages. This article is one of the best fan baseball things I’ve ever read on any site.
Here’s a couple of examples from the piece:

The Gorillas score 42 runs in this inning alone by drilling single after single right at the pitcher. By keeping the pace of the game extremely fast, they kept the pitcher in the game, presumably because he had a low pitch count and was not tired, but also there was no pitcher warmed up to relieve him, and the Gorillas scored so quickly that they drove the score up before one could even be told to begin stretching. There is an additional psychological effect to be considered, as well: faced with a team that can score 42 runs in an inning, the opposing manager must have been so stunned by the offensive onslaught that he was unable to make a move, and further that his coaches and other staff were similarly disabled.
It’s a further testament to the addled mental condition of the Teatotallers during this drubbing that they were unable to take advantage of the congested baserunning by fielding any ball and throwing it to any base, where it would have immediately forced out three runners and ended the inning.
Why such a game would be scheduled remains unclear. Efforts to find contemporary promotional material for insight into fan motivation or how the game was marketed have proved fruitless.

Seriously – if you haven’t read this piece over there, you need to go do so. The cartoon is available as part of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets. This particular toon is on Volume 1 (they have four as of the writing of my piece here). Click on the dvd image to order it from Amazon.com.

UPDATE: I noticed the entire cartoon is available on Google video. You should buy the DVD set, you get so much more, and a really good quality copy, too. :)

I know if you read my site, you’re also going to read all the other fan sites for the Rangers. I hold no illusions – my site is not a bastion of originality or extreme wordiness when it comes to Rangers news. I post when the moment strikes. :)
Anyway, having said that, I wanted to point out an article over at “Baseball Time in Arlington” by their new writer, Joe Matschulat. It talks about our DH situation, and a lot about Jason Botts, as well as the rest of the outfielders who are likely to spend some time in the DH slot. I got a major kick out of the first line of the article..

If only John Hart hadn’t dealt Travis Hafner.

Isn’t that the truth. :) Anyway, as I said above, if you’re reading this, I’m sure you would have seen his piece anyway, but I still wanted to draw attention to it, as it was a well written article.
UPDATE: Guess it would help if I did something useful like post the link!

I just got done with my first fantasy draft of the season for a public league I joined. I ended up with an OK team I think, although my outfield doesn’t have any AAA players in it. Check this out:
C – Pudge
1B – Ryan Howard
2B – Mark DeRosa
SS – Michael Young
3B – Hank Blalock
OF – Jermaine Dye
OF – Michael Cuddyer
OF – Brad Hawpe
DH – Frank Thomas
B – Gary Matthews Jr
B – Frank Catalanotto
SP – Carlos Zambrano
SP – John Lackey
RP – Trevor Hoffman
RP – Bobby Jenks
P – Chris Young
P – Barry Zito
P – Derek Lowe
B – Josh Johnson
B – Greg Maddux
B – Brandon McCarthy
In the next to the last round, it occurred to me that of the 21 players I have on my team, nine of them are current or former Texas Rangers players. I’m such a homer. :)
Anyway, I still have a few slots open in my second Yahoo Fantasy Team. Seven have signed up so far, there’s five open slots as of the writing of this story. You can check out the details on how to sign up in this post from earlier this week. Thanks.