With Ryan Drese gone (that’s still irritating), the thought occurred to me this morning that when Kenny Rogers is serving his suspension, Chan Ho Park will be our “staff ace”.
Wow, is that a depressing thought. I know it’s not an original thought, but I thought about it when writing about the All-Star game this morning.
Thanks John Hart. First you screw up and give away Doug Davis, and now you’ve screwed up and given away Ryan Drese. Way to go. John Rocker’s available – sure you don’t want to give him another try?

Adam Morris over at lonestarball.com has an article up where he talks about a trade between the Rockies & the Nationals.
He theorizes that the Cubs were one of the people after Preston Wilson, and with Wilson off the market, they might be interested in trading for Soriano.
I wonder what we’d get from the Cubs for Soriano. Any thoughts?

I was reading Jim Reeves column in the Ft Worth Star Telegram today, and I felt like I wanted to say something about it. The article is about the Ryan Drese fiasco. The gist of the article is that Drese is making Ranger management look like morons for letting him go. Which I pretty much agree with. However, that’s not why I’m singling out this article. I loved this quote..

Drese is rapidly becoming general manager John Hart’s worst nightmare, somewhere between Randy Galloway and Kenny Rogers.

I actually laughed out loud at the Galloway & Rogers comparison. I’ve always believed that management will always withhold pieces of information. That’s their perogative. You can’t always tip your hand to the other teams, so I’m willing to accept that there’s pieces of info that aren’t meant for us. I’m good with all that. A lot of fans and press will say “They’re lying through their teeth about everything”. I can’t agree with that – a lot of it will fall under what I just said, withholding the real truth – we get a cliche instead. I’m still OK with that.
But the Ryan Drese thing – there HAS to be something more than their stated reason of “just performance”. Especially when you read that Connor & Hershisher wanted to keep him. As they’re the two pitching coaches, I would have to defer to their judgement.
This is the first time I’ve ever really questioned my own backing of Ranger management. Not a blind backing, but one that is willing to overlook a lot under the guise of “we don’t really know all the details, so I’m not going to automatically villify them” like a lot of folks do.
Anyway, thanks Jim – I enjoyed the laugh above. :)

Today when I went to do the recap for last night’s game, I noticed that the site I got the box score from dumped their old “plain text” version in favor of a formatted version.
I’d much rather have a plain text version – does anyone know of a website that still has plain text box scores for MLB games online?
If so, drop me a line. Thanks.

There’s a rumour going around the last day or so about the Rangers trading Laynce Nix (and some others) for Gary Sheffield.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. John Hart is certainly not akin to bringing in a moody player (John Rocker, Carl Everett), but I don’t know how I feel about him. I’d be surprised if the Yankees would WANT to trade him, tell you the truth.
Nix has underproduced, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if I’m ready to give up on him just yet. I know we’re strong in the minors in the OF, but trading a young kid for someone like Sheffield seems odd to me. I’m sure Sheffield would shred in our park. It would make our outfield likely Mench – Matthews – Sheffield (as I can’t imagine we’d keep Hidalgo if we brought in Shef). I don’t have a problem with that OF, but we’d have Shef through 2006 for sure at something like $13 million, I think.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Post a comment.
Check out what Gary has to say about not wanting to be traded in this article over on mlb.com. Not sure I’d want that.

I unfortunately missed the uniform number that Tejera wore when he was with us for the last few days in the bigs. Does someone remember what that was? I want to update my Uniform Number History section with that. Leave a comment here. Thanks.

This Tuesday through Thursday, the Rangers do something they’ve never done before. Play the Phillies in a regular season game. As I’m from Philly, I would have loved to have gone, but I couldn’t afford it.
Bet the house I’ll be watching all three of these from start to finish.
I just hope they come here next week. And here’s to Kevin Mench – hope he has a monster series back home!

The map of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium was released on Monday, and I finally got a chance to digest some of the changes on Tuesday evening. Once it’s finished, I don’t expect it will be a major impact to the ballpark, unless both are playing at the same time, in which traffic goes to hell. I’ve been around Texas Stadium, and the traffic is a nightmare there. The roads in the new area are going to be even WORSE, so I don’t think I’m gonna want to be anywhere near the new Jones Stadium during gametime. That might seriously affect my Rangers attendance. I know it will at least affect how I drive to and from the ballpark.

Anyway, I’m not sure what route people take to get to the ballpark, but here’s what I do to get in and out.

My entrance route: Since I’m coming from Garland, what I’ve always done is come west on 30, and get off at Six Flags drive. I take that, and followed it till it dead endedinto Division. Hang a right until I got to Stadium Drive, and then take a left when the Nolan Ryan Expressway branches off. I then parked in the “A” parking lot (see this parking lot map of the ballpark). If you want to see an overhead view of this entrance route, click here.

I have recently changed the route I take to get in, mostly because I’ve changed parking lots (because Lot J is easier to get out of than Lot A). If I’m paying cash, I’ll still use this old one from above. I now park in the J lot, but you can only park there with a parking coupon. As I’ve pre-paid my parking for the season back in January, I get parking passes, which I can use for the J lot – which is a LOT easier getting out. I still get off at Six Flags Drive, but instead of taking it long, when it passes underneath Rt 360, I take a right at Copeland, that run that runs RIGHT by Six Flags. I stay on Copeland, driving past the ballpark, and the new buildings they put in the parking lots until Copeland gets to the Nolan Ryan Expressway. I take it till it dead ends into Randol Mill Rd (although the the NRE veers off halfway through and if you go straight, the road name changes to Pennant Dr). Anyway, I make a left on Randol Mill and get to Lot J, and park there. There’s a picture of this newer route of mine here.

Both are close, although if you dawdle in the stadium at the end of the game, you’ll have a harder time getting out. I generally park as close to an exit as I can – it really helps when getting out (moreso in lot A than in Lot J). I’m usually out the door the second the last pitch is over – believe me, it helps. After 8 years of season tickets, I’ve learned how to get in and out in a hurry.

And speaking of getting out, my out route has been the same for a long time. It’s basically Randol Mill Road to Collins where I take a right and head to 30. Collins tends to clog a bit, but it moves fairly well, it’s not a standstill like the A parking lot is getting back out the way I came in – that’s a rookie parking mistake. ;) Click here to see an overhead of my exit route from Lot J. You can use it for Lot A, too, as there’s an exit from Lot A on Randol Mill as well. (Sometimes though if attendance at games is low, they won’t let you use this way, and you’ll be forced to go a different route).

So that’s it for my parking tips. Let’s get back to Jerry Jones and his evil empire, and how this will affect the Ballpark.

This is a cutout from a map that the Dallas Morning News posted on their site (here– see map link on page) showing where the stadium is to go. When it’s completed, it won’t look like it will affect Rangers parking all that much, but getting there will probably be a nightmare. It’s going to go flush up against Randol Mill Road, which is my exit route (and part of my entrance route), and my old way of gouing up from Division on Stadium and Nolan Ryan will be affected, too. I see from the posted map that it’s not going straight up against Stadium & Nolan Ryan, but something I saw on NBC5 news last night seemed to imply that it would go up against those roads. If it does, then I wonder if the Ballpark will share parking with Jones Stadium parking at some point. Either way, I predict major hassle till the stadium is built, once they actually start the real work of building it (probably not till next year I’d guess).

I can’t imagine where the new Cowboys stadium will be terribly good for parking in the area, both during construction, and afterwards. I was only in this area for one season of the construction of The Ballpark in Arlington (as I moved to this area in Dec of 92). I remember what parking was like around Arlington Stadium while the new place was being built. It was fiasco. Now, Jones Stadium won’t be anywhere near that close, but I can’t imagine it will be all that easy, especially if they decide to try and widen the roads, which I imagine will have to happen, as the roads in this area can’t support the fiasco of a parking situation I see around Texas Stadium – and there are highways over there!

There goes the neighborhood.

At some point last season, I heard/read that there was going to be another Rangers uniform. There was going to be a road version of the sleeveless jersey the Rangers wear at home. Obviously it would be road colors, but would match stylewise that new, and fairly popular uniform.

However, we’ve not seen it. Nor can I find any mention of it either – a quick google search didn’t turn up anything on it. Now I can’t remember right now on May 11th if I read it online or heard it on a radio or TV broadcast. But I know I heard it (and someone from my forums backed me up on that).

Has anyone heard anything about it? Have plans been shelved for it? Curious to know what happened. Assuming it exists, I believe this would be the uniform “lineup”:

Home White/Blue “regular”
Home sleeveless
Road Grey “regular”
Road sleeveless
Blue Alternate (aka the “Kenny Rogers” uniform)

Then there’s the spring training/BP one, but that doesn’t really “count”. I’ve also lost track of what’s home/road/alternate in terms of caps. Not sure what’s official and what isn’t as there’s about 50 or 60 different kinds of caps I see in the Ballpark gift shop. :)

Nowadways, everything is “The Ameriquest this”, or “The Fox Sports that”, to the “Verizon Wireless call to the Bullpen” or some such crap like that, I managed to find a sponsorship that really surprised me and made me roll my eyes driving home.

As some of you may know, I have XM Radio. I bought it because they now have the MLB Package where you can listen to every game (although not every broadcast, you only get the home feeds). My usual drive home from work is during 6PM to 630, depending on when I actually leave work. For Ranger games that start at 7, I can’t hear that, so I flip through the east coast games which have started.

So I’m listening to a Yankees game for a few minutes – they have a female radio announcer, so that kind of stops me, as it’s not something you usually hear. They’re doing the bit where “This game is copyrighted to the New York Yankees, and any rebroadcast.. bla, bla, bla”. Well, guess what?

THAT ANNOUNCEMENT WAS SPONSORED!

Right after the announcement, some New York Law Firm’s ad blurb was read by the woman. I couldn’t believe it. The “This game is copyrighted” speech had a corporate sponsor. I wonder when we’ll see corporate sponsors for those wrist guards players wear like battle armor, or sponsors for the belt buckles on their uniforms!