Read today where George W. Bush will be throwing out the first pitch of the season in the home opener for the Washington Nationals. That game is April 14th. Politics aside, I always felt the one thing I liked about baseball in the past was that the president would usually throw out the first pitch at a Senators game (both the Twins variant and the Rangers variant). Having the president throw out the first pitch is something just “American” to me, and I always loved seeing that old footage. Hoever, since baseball hasn’t been played in DC since 1971 (when I was 6), I’m a little too young to remember it. Now I’ll get a chance, and I like that. I hope Bush (and whoever comes after him) makes it an annual tradition, like I think it should be.
In other Nationals news, you will hear a lot during the leadup to the start of the season about how the original Senators went to be the Twins and the replacment Senators came here to be the Rangers. That’s not entirely true. The Twins/Senators franchise wasn’t the original Washington Senators team. There was one in the late 1800’s which ended up being contracted out of existance. The Washington Senators from 1892-1899 weren’t any better than the Senators that came after them, but they did exist, and it always irritates me that the press gets it wrong all the time by calling the Twins/Senators the “original Senators”. They weren’t.
Rangers give extensions to Hart & Showalter
This morning comes the (pretty much expected) news that Texas Rangers GM John Hart and Manager Buck Showalter have been given contract extensions. Can’t say I’m surprised by either move.
The former I’m not terribly sold on, I still think that Grady Fuson would have been a better GM than John Hart is. Hart still seems to not turn up for bad news, he seems (to my eyes) to only want to talk about good news. On the other hand, I don’t view him with the vitriol that some do (Randy Galloway for example). I doubt any GM is out to tank the team, but I just would have preferred Grady Fuson. Hart’s contract is for two years renewable annually. That’s what the news stories say. We’ll see if it really is just two years, and isn’t some sort of “open ended” thing due to the verbiage of “annually”.
Buck Showalter on the other hand I was a bit more intersted in seeing an extension on. I rather like him, and was glad to see we’ve got him on board for awhile. His new extension (three years) locks him to the Rangers through the 2009 season (with a club option for 2010). The 2005 season is the third of the original four year contract that Showalter received. If you believe the stories, Showalter was the behind the scenes power that forced Fuson out and kept Hart as GM, as it gives Buck a GM that’s easier to his own whims and decisions. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s obvious Showalter is a powerful person. I’ve spoken with him a few times, and as a fan, he always seems (to my eyes) to go out of his way to make sure the fans are included, thought of – something that not many baseball men do anymore. I like that.
So I give the moves a thumbs up, but not all the way up because of the extension (and the open ended nature of it) to Hart. You can read more details on this over at the Rangers website here.
A new look for the site
Effective immediately, there’s a new look for my site. I’ve been looking for an easier way to do news, and it finally occurred to me. “Blogify it!” :) I’ve been running a personal blog for some time now, but until recently, it never occurred to me to update my various sites with blog software for news. So here I am. It took me a few days to get this all down, setting up the css and the templates so it mostly looked like the old site was hard, and then I had a display problem with Internet explorer. I finally got that fixed, so here it is! It was designed to work best with your screen resolution to be 1024×768 or higher. It mostly works with 800×600, but there’s a small display issue with some browsers there. And 640×480? Uh, get a video card, please. But if you’re 1024×768 or higher, you should not see any problems.
This new news system will allow people to search the news that I post, which wasn’t a real option before. However, it’s only going forward. I went backwards with my old news only till the end of this past season. I didn’t see the point in entering all my old news into the system (I first started this site in December of 1998), especially since I’d have to do it by hand (if I can get old news imported automatically, I might revisit this decision).
Additionally, this new system will allow you to comment on my news stories and whatnot without having to visit my forums (which are still very much open and alive). This is just another way of communicating. Plus, being blog software I get to be connected to other blogs of relevant content, when it’s appropriate.
But the bottom line is that it will make things easier for me, and I’m also trying to insert a little more of “myself” into things. In the past, I’ve made comments here and there, but on the whole, I haven’t said much about individual news stories. I hope to change that. I don’t think I’ll ever be anywhere NEAR as verbose as Jamey Newberg is, but I hope I can say something once in awhile that people might like.
Finally, I’ve removed a few options from the menu on the left. One is “News”. Given that the news page on the site comes up when you first hit the site, I’ve removed that option. If you want to get “Home” on here, click the baseball in the upper left hand corner. I’ve also removed the “From Joe’s Mind” option. Mostly because I’ve incorporated all the old entries from that location into this news system. I have categories here (if you look to the options to your right), so you can see all those that way if you want to. I’ll just be putting all the Joe’s Mind comments (which weren’t many anyway) into this new news layout, since it will also have commentary from me.
Let me know what you think of the new system by leaving a comment – you can do that right below this text by clicking on the Comments link – it’s between the time and the word “Trackback” (trackback is something used to connect blog entries to another blog’s entries).
Carlos Delgado Watch
The Carlos Delgado watch continues. The problem is I don’t know what to believe about it. First we got fed a dose of “We can’t sign Carlos without trading Soriano”. I don’t buy that for a minute, because moving Arod was supposed to create room for stuff like this. Plus a lot of old contracts (Van Poppel, Palmeiro, Gonzalez, etc) were off the books. We had the space. OK, for the last several days, we’ve been reading quotes about “We can have both of them”. What I personally think happened there is that we couldn’t get enough back for Soriano, so it was decided to say “We can keep both now”.
But then in today’s local media we have differing opinions on Delgado. The Dallas Morning News has a story with the headline of “Rangers a step behind in the pursuit of Delgado“. The thrust of the article is that we’re coming to the dance late, other teams have talked to him twice, basically taking a defeatist attitude towards it. Then also in today’s Ft Worth Star Telegram, we get an article titled “Hicks ready to open up wallet to sign Delgado“. This article is all postive, saying that Hicks has that “glint in his eye”, and that he’s ready to do what it takes, and how it would all be good for our Latin connection, which has been lacking the last several years.
So I don’t know what to believe about Delgado now. Are we lacking as the DMN says, or are things rosy like the FWST say? I suppose we’ll find out next week for sure.
Can we just start spring training, please? Thank you.
Random thoughts about attending games
Here are a few random comments from me about behaviour of some people at games..
- Anyone who does the wave at the Ballpark should be removed from the park. You’re here to watch a ballgame, not dance around like an idiot. I hate the wave!
- Players and umpires who throw foul balls into the stands should have them sent to the upper deck. The people who can afford to sit in the first few rows can afford to buy their own baseballs. Give them to the kid sitting in the $5 seat – he’d appreciate it more.
- When you’re sitting in a row that doesn’t have all the seats taken, spread the hell out – there’s no need for four people to sit right next to each other when the entire row is open!
Former Rangers Moves
Aaron Sele:
Aaron Sele signed a 1 year minor league contract with the Mariners yesterday. He was most recently with the Angels where he spent his time either being hurt, or not pitching very well. So of course, Sele was someone the Rangers were looking at picking up. Seriously, he wasn’t as bad as all that, but like Esteban Loaiza, I didn’t think picking up one of your former pitching guys was a really great idea. Hey, I hear John Burkett’s not doing anything now. ;)
Brian Jordan:
The 2004 version of a Rangers right fielder (Brian Jordan) returned to the Atlanta Braves today on a 1 year deal. I liked Brian a lot as a person. He seemed to be someone good for this team. Unfortunately, he was hurt almost the entire season, and produced next to nothing for us.
Dean Palmer:
Saw today where the Detroit Tigers have invited former Ranger Dean Palmer to spring training. Yikes – if the Tigers are inviting Palmer, who was easily a non factor on the field the last few years of his career to spring training, they must be hurting. Add to the fact that he’s retired, and it’s a bit of a puzzler to me.
Carlos Almanzar signs
One of the nice surprises of 2004 (relief pitcher Carlos Almanzar) resigned with the Rangers today. He’s got a 1 year deal, and was the final player we had that was arbitration eligible.
That takes care of all of our roster concerns of this type. Now it’s on to Carlos Delgado, hopefully. :)
Mark DeRosa signed
Former Atlanta Brave Mark DeRosa was signed to a 1 year minor league contract today with an invite to spring training. I assume he’ll have a chance to compete for the job that Eric Young had last year (although I don’t know if DeRosa played the OF at all).
Roster Transaction
Roster Transaction
- OF Gary Matthews Jr signed to a 1 year
contract [
link ]
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