Rangerfans.com

Wow. That was one seriously good, but seriously frustrating game. A lot was written about Josh Beckett’s American League debut at home in Texas. A lot was written about how Beckett would dominate this game. And he did. He’s a good pitcher, I expect that. What I don’t think most people were expecting is that Kameron Loe stood toe to toe with him and was beating Beckett for most of the game. The Rangers went up 1-0 in the first inning and it stood that way until the seventh.
Loe was actually better than Beckett was, but the game’s difference was a home run Loe gave up in the seventh inning to Trot Nixon. That was the game. It was a shame, as Loe was brilliant. My heart sank on that, because I felt he deserved better than that. We couldn’t come back against the Sox. We came close against Mike Timlin, but Mark Teixeira was thrown out at the plate on a hit that I didn’t think we should have tried to score on. Oddly enough Boston didn’t bring in their closer (Foulke) to close out the game. They brought in Jonathan Papelbon. That raised a few eyes, I’m sure.
It was amusing to see Manny Ramirez stike out on some more high cheese for the second night in a row.
I hate writing about games that we should have won but lost due to one small thing. Sigh.

Game two went a lot better than game one. As I’ve said a million times before when facing a knuckleball pitcher, you either are shut down and get nothing, or you tee off and score 50 runs. There doesn’t appear to be any middle ground. Tonight we got the “tee off” version. We faced Tim Wakefield, whom we always seem to have decent success against. And we got off quickly, going up 4-0 after the first four batters of the game with no one out. That pretty much set the tone for this game. All the offense that wasn’t there against Schilling was against Wakefield.
On the flip side, Vicente Padilla delivered what Millwood didn’t in the first game – a dominating pitching performance. He had great movement on all his pitches, a dominating looking curveball, and he threw some really nice smoke when he needed it. He struck out Manny Ramirez twice. In fact, Ramirez struck out three times (the other by Otsuka). He was definitely kept in check. Padilla looked really great, and I felt he could have come out for another inninmg, but I guess you don’t want to stretch ’em out too far this early in the season.
Offensively, we were led by Phil Nevin, who had a total of 5 RBI for the night on two hits. We had 13 hits in all, spread out pretty nicely. The only starter without any hits was Laynce Nix, who has been bashing the ball the first two games, but hasn’t anything to show for it yet. Oh, and Kinsler didn’t have any hits either, but that’s not a problem. Kevin Mench had two doubles, Mike Young got one for his first hit of the season, and of course being the Rangers we had three home runs (Nevin, Barajas, & Wilkerson).
Overall a much more enjoyable game for Rangers fans than opening day was. Tomorrow we face Josh Beckett, who will be pitching at home (he’s from Texas), so he’ll probably be way up for that game.

Opening Day. What’s more fun than opening day? It’s a day that every baseball fan loves, a day for optimism, and all those other stereotypes you hear around now. But we had a beautiful day of weather, I was there at the game with my wife and baby, and it was wonderful. So was Curt Schilling. That’s the baseball story of this game. Curt Schilling. He dominated the Rangers, going 7 innings, giving up just two runs on 5 hits. The two runs were a line shot home run by Blalock into the wedge in the right hand corner.
A couple of highlights for me were watching Ian Kinsler make his major league debut, and getting a single off of Schilling. Schilling had a classy thing to say about it later when asked about giving up a knock to a rookie. Schiling said (something like) “He’s a major leaguer, he deserves to be there”. Nice statement by him. Kevin Milwood looked great in the first three innings. Then he seemed to run out of gas a bit too early, which is a surprise there. But again, Schilling locked us down pretty good.
It is definitely a bit more work when you have a one year old baby with you at the game. Credit to my wife who had to deal with most of it, as Samantha wanted mommy to hold her most of the time. Samantha normally would have napped for about two hours during the time we were there, so it made for a fidgety baby. But it all went well.
Parking was major ass, because I had to park all the way in the back of the parking lot out by Rt 30 and behind the Seimens building. I left about 2 hours and 45 minutes early, and I still couldn’t get to my usual parking spots. It was insane, I hate parking out that far. Next year we leave even earlier for opening day. Sigh.
There were some new ballpark things which I didn’t get a whole lot of time to check out. There is a new concert type area set up on the third base side on the hill next to Mark Holtz lake. I didn’t get much time to check it out, but it could be interesting. There was a new picnic area outside the old gates on the first base side. Both were constructed to have the same general astehtic (sp?) feel as the rest of the park around it, so it doesn’t stick out like a bright orange something going “I’m new!”. Neither I got much time to check out as we were running rather late due to the parking situation. But they definitely could be useful. Inside the park is where they should focus their attentions – new scoreboards, fix broken seats, missing cupholders, etc. The place is definitely NOT a dump, but there are certain things (fix the sound system) which would help overall in the experience.
Oh, and beer is $6 now. Sigh.
Baseball is back. Life is good.

Well, it’s almost 2AM, and I had intended on writing a bunch about my first trip to the Ballpark tonight. However, there was so much roster movement to take care of I don’t know how well I’ll be able to write. I’ll save my writing about what’s changed at the ballpark for Opening Day, which I almost never write about the actual game in my report. I will say this. I’m curious how they got an actual Lexus car up into the 200 level. If you come up the escalator on the third base side of the park, you’ll see what I mean.
The way this game started out, it felt like we were going to have to invoke the World Baseball Classic’s mercy rule. We were up 3-0 after three batters, and after a few more, we had three home runs in the first inning to go up 5-0. Brad Wilkerson added a solo home run in the second (his second of the game) to put us up 6-0, and life was good. However, R.A. Dickey then gave up a grand slam to Miguel Cabrera in the third, and we were back to a ballgame. However, that’s where the scoring stopped. The final score was reached in the top of the third.
Actually, Dickey wasn’t all that bad except for the slam. He struck out the side in the first inning, and looked as dominating as a knuckleballer can look – can a knuckleball pitcher be “dominating” anyway? The rest of the game was filled with a bunch of players that we’ll likely never see again. I did manage to keep up with all the changes on my Palm scoring program, which was unusual, I usually fall behind when scoring a spring training game in person, since I can’t pause it to catch up like I can at home. :)
It was nice to see a game again at the park. That’s it, game on. Bring on Monday afternoon!

[Read more…]

The Rangers are home. We’ve left spring training behind (well, in Arizona, anyway) for another year. This penultimate game of spring training went the way that a lot of Rangers games go. All of our offense was on the longball. Brad Wilkerson, Mark Teixiera, & David Dellucci all had homeruns. That was all of our offense for the game.
Phil Nevin and Hank Blalock both went 2 for 3, but didn’t have any RBI’s. We had a total of 8 hits in the game – a fairly well pitched game from Florida overall, although starter Brian Moeheler didn’t have a great line (5IP, 4ER, 8H).
Kameron Loe went only four, but did pitch well, allowing only a single solo home run for all of Florida’s offense. Fabio Castro, Erasmo Ramirez, Joaquin Benoit, Antonio Alfonseca, & Francisco Cordero all pitched in this game, and all combined for 5 innings of shutoutball on just three hits.
The game was on the radio, but I didn’t get a chance to listen to most of it, as I was doing daddy duties, and then ended up helping out my wife by dealing with dirty dishes, and washing baby bottles. With the water running, it was hard to hear the radio unless I blasted it, and I didn’t want to wake up my daughter. :)
The final game of spring training is at home in Arlington on Saturday evening. I’ll be there

[Read more…]