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Of all the things I thought would happen this series, what happened this night is NOT what I ever expected to happen. When this game started, I was feeling pretty down on the Ranger rookie pitchers. I was starting to think “Oh god, there isn’t going to be any real help from the farm at all”. I was feeling pretty bad about our rookie pitchers.

Then comes Brian Sikorski. The man runs onto the mound and pitches an absolute gem. Is it beginner’s luck? Is it that the Yankees don’t know anything about him? I’m sure that has something to do with it. However, it’s always nice to see such an awesome performance by a kid making his first ever start in the majors. Going 7+ innings, giving up four hits, and no runs. You really can’t ask for better than that. It also saved us from being swept at home in a season by the Yankees in our entire club history! Gotta love that, too. :) It was very cool that he got a standing O when finally taken out of the game in the 8th. I loved that Sikorski came in, pitched well, and looked like he belonged there. He didn’t look frightened – but if his first start was in Yankee Stadium, that might have changed things.

However, Gabe Kapler’s hitting streak came to an end, unfortunately. Still, it was a great light in the recent darkness that is our season. I hope that it didn’t get to him so much that he goes back into his shell – he’s been awesome since the All Star break, and I hope it continues.

Well, it’s the Yankees. We always lose to them, and in a season like this, I expect to get swept in all the games we play (except possibly tomorrow’s game – as David Cone is pitching almost as bad as Jose Lima this season). Anyway, the Rangers didn’t disappoint.
We were losing 9 pitches into the game 2-0. Actually, I felt Matt Perisho pitched OK the first couple, but couldn’t hold it past the 5th. We were only losing 3-0 after 5, and then it was 6-0. At that point, I stopped watching the game, and watched a couple of Star Trek episodes that had piled up on my TiVo. I tuned in late to see that we had scored 3 runs, but as usual, it wasn’t enough.
We’re now 0-9 in our last 9 games against the Bronx bombers, including last year’s sweep in the playoffs. :(

This game lived up to my usual expectations for a Rangers / Red Sox game. Close game, where both teams had chances, and the final score wasn’t a 1990’s artificially inflated score. The final was 4-2. What was interesting about the scoring was that both teams scored all their runs at once. All the other innings were goose eggs – although the Rangers tried.
I saw the inning where Kenny Rogers gave up four runs. It was the top of the third. As usual, it seems that Kenny was just “this much away” from getting out of the inning and then it breaks open with something. This was the same. It didn’t really feel like an inning where he should have given up four runs. But he did. We managed to tack two of our own on in the fourth, but I didn’t see that.
The reason was that I was on the Jumbotron for the birthday announcements after the fifth inning. I left my seats in the top of the fourth to make sure I was there at the top of the fifth for the setup for that. If anyone was at the game, I was the guy with the small sized Pooh bear doll dressed in a small baseball outfit.
Anyway, the rest of the game was rather uneventful, with the sole exception of Gabe Kapler’s further extending his newly owned hitting streak record to 26. He got a standing ovation from what I could see. We had a shot of getting back into the game, as we had the bases loaded – but a pop out into the Red Sox dugout was caught by a falling Ed Sprague for the final out of the inning – and our final chance at some runs for this game.

When a knuckleball pitcher is on the mound, he’s either totally unhittable, or gives up a ton of runs. On this night, Tim Wakefield was both. For the first three innings, Wakefield put up donuts on the board. Then in the fourth, it came apart for him. Wakefield walked the bases full (two of them on 4 pitch walks). He went 2-0 on Ricky Ledee, and then Ledee jacked a pitch into the right field stands for a grand slam, and a quick 4-0 lead. Wakefield then promptly walked the next batter with four pitches, and was yanked. Those four runs were all we needed for the win, which was nice.
Rick Helling deserved it, after getting screwed in a 2-0 loss the last time out. Rick’s now alone in second place with wins in the AL, and is in third place in ERA with 3.61. I’m glad Rick is pitching this well – if he keeps it up next year too, he’s in for a great payday as his contract is up after the 2001 season. :)
Gabe Kapler was the other big story of this game. He broke Mickey Rivers’ 24 game hitting streak, and now stands alone in the Ranger record books with that hit. In watching the hit, it was the kind of play that Nomar Garciaparra always makes – a little part of me wonders if Nomar didn’t intentionally let the ball go under his glove, knowing what it meant to Kapler.

Usually, when the Rangers play the Boston Red Sox, we have a great game. We win, or we lose, but we always seem to play a good game. Not tonight – this game was an exception to that rule. My wife and I love it when we play the Red Sox, as she can cheer for Nomar (she got into baseball in 1997, when Nomar was in his rookie season), and the overall good play we always seem to get when playing the Red Sox.
There wasn’t much to cheer about in this game. Especially when Ryan Glynn came out of the game. The next inning started, and someone was passed out on the ground. After seeing what happened with Larry Dierker last season, I wasn’t too thrilled at seeing it happen again – much less in our own dugout. The game was stopped, and since I have TiVo, I paused the action (gotta love that feature), and went and got my wife to check this out. We watched as they worked on Ryan in the dugout – and the one thing both of us had to say was this.. If he was passed out unconsious on the dugout floor, why on earth was everyone cramming around him? Wouldn’t giving him more space be better than crowding him? Yeesh. Anyway, he eventually got up off the floor, and was wheeled out on a wheelchair – they didn’t use the truck that had driven in from left field with a stretcher. It was a bad thing to see – I wouldn’t wish anything like that on my most disliked player (mostly Atlanta Braves), hope it all works out well for Ryan.
Anyway, the only really great thing that happened this game was Gabe Kapler tying Mickey Rivers‘ 20 year old Ranger record for 24 consecutive games with a hit. That’s a nice thing to do – hope he breaks it tomorrow night. This was by far the brightest spot of the night for the Rangers.

No update available from me. I had a hard drive crash on Wednesday, which took me two days to recover from. No time on Friday to do an update for this game.