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Well, as much as last night’s game was about Ryan Glynn, tonight’s game was about Eric Gagne. He shut down the Rangers with only a few hits, and when we had a chance, we couldn’t follow through.
The only good thing tonight was Pudge, who went 3 for 4 with a solo home run in the 8th for our only run. Most everyone else was silent. In fact only three Rangers had any hits at all – Pudge (3), Segui (2), & Raffy (1). That was it. Scarborough Green almost had his first major league home run, as he hit a ball, and it was called a HR. The fireworks went off, the music from the Natural played, and there was thunderous applause. However, about halfway through the trot, I saw the umps standing in the basepaths conferring, and I knew it would be taken away – it was. That was a shame, even if it really was a foul ball – it would have been nice.
I sat in one of two remaining places in the ballpark that I’d never sat in before. Far left field. I sat in Section 301 row 1. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t all that bad after the second inning. For the first two innings, I had to sit with my head down and my cap’s brim over the sun, as it was very sunny out there. But for $6, it wasn’t all that bad really – even though I missed seeing the out of town scoreboard. :)

Good lord – where was this Ryan Glynn hiding last season? This really doesn’t look like the same guy who was up here last year. Out dueling Kevin Brown – what an accomplishment. I really hope this is the Ryan Glynn that will continue to pitch for us. I’m sure Ryan’s performance last night will earn him a slightly longer look than was originally anticipated. He was supposed to come up just for this game, and go right back down. However, he was so good, you never know when he’ll show up again, which now my guess would be pretty quickly, especially if his next start at AAA is decent.
There really isn’t much to say about this one – Ryan Glynn took a no hitter into the 6th, and only gave up two hits over 8 innings pitched – totally masterful! Kevin Brown didn’t give up much, but what he gave up was enough to beat him.
The story of this game is by far and away Ryan Glynn. Don’t know what else to write about this one except this.. This was our first shutout of the season. We were the last American League club to throw one, and this was the shortest game of the season so far at 2:22.

No commentary – don’t have the time to write it up today. Sorry.

No commentary – don’t have the time to write it up today. Sorry.

Back home against the Diamondbacks. I’m a bit disappointed in that neither Randy Johnson or Mike Morgan will pitch (at least Morgan not as a starter). I was going to go to the Sat evening game should Morgan have started, but they said he wasn’t. Oh well. We got behind early, and while we had a good rally in the bottom of the 9th against Arizona closer Matt Mantei, it wasn’t enough – we lost 5-4, even with two home runs (one by Raffy & one by Royce).
However, that wasn’t the story of this game. The story here was that we lost Ruben Mateo for the season. I watched it happen in the bottom of the seventh – the replay was quite bizarre (the TV guys said it wasn’t for the squeamish – more on the TV guys in a minute). It was a pretty ugly thing – he tripped over the base and went down in a heap face down. From the looks of it at the time, it looked exactly the same as the injury that knocked out Pittsburgh’s Jason Kendall last year for the season. He came back strong this year, but Ruben has a history of being hurt – I wonder how much that will impact this injury.
Also, TV guy Tom Grieve is out for a few games, apparently he had some sort of outpatient surgery to “remove a growth from his ear” – I can’t find any more info other than that. His replacement is the radio post game call-in guy Steve Busby (who used to do TV coverage from 1982-1994). I immediately thought Steve Busby was way more chatty than Tom Grieve was. Nothing against Tom, but Steve seemed to talk more than Tom normally does. Also, with Craig Miller not being there for the pre-game show, Ranger games have an odd feeling to ’em. I also want to bring back John Rhadigan for the “man in the ballpark” things – he was really funny.

No Juan again. My gut feeling says we’ll never see him in a Tigers uniform, as the Tigers come to Arlington the last four days of July (aka the trading deadline). I’d be surprised if he’s going to be here then. I could be wrong, but my guess is that he’ll be somewhere else (probably Baltimore).
Anyway, we clobbered Detroit tonight 13-5. Rafael Palmeiro got it started early with a home run in the first inning. He then proceeded to get a couple more hits and RBI’s for a total of 3 hits and 4 RBI’s. Luis Alicea continues to be a most pleasant surprise this season, now batting .333 and going 3 for 4 tonight with 4 runs scored, two walks, and two RBI’s. I really have to admit that I was leery about him, but he’s done a great job this season (so much so that I picked him up on two of my fantasy baseball teams ). Overall, we went 16 for 42 as a team tonight, and Royce Clayton was 2 for 3, and Ruben Mateo was 3 for 5. A great offensive night, which is good because our offence has more or less been asleep the last few games.
Pitching wise, we had another “eh” performance by Darren Oliver, who might be taking a trip to the disabled list if this “dead arm” thing keeps up. He gave up five earned runs in 5.2 innings. However, our pen was great again – Crabtree & Perisho combining for 3.1 innings of shutout ball. That looked good, especially from Perisho.
We come back home for the Diamondbacks this weekend. That ought to be a tougher challenge, and the way we played on the road this trip doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence.