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Well, we won. However, it wasn’t the prettiest of games for many reasons. We lost a few players for a few days with injuries. Rusty Greer got hit in the eye with a ball during warmups, and is out for a few. Luis Alicea sprained a muscle during the game, and is out for awhile. Jeff Zimmerman also came out of the game early with muscle tightness.
Add to that the fact that we let the Royals get back in it to send the game to extra innings isn’t good. Add to that the fact that the 10th was given to us on a silver platter by KC (errors, wild pitches all over the place), and leads me to believe that we shouldn’t have won this game either.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take the win, and I’m glad to get out of KC, but I don’t think we deserved the win. I’m hoping we can do better in Minnesota, and then have the team healthy on Friday when the DRays come to town.

Ugh. No commentary again. Three in a row to the Royals while the Yankees were also swept? This is sad.

Ugh. No commentary again.

Ugh. No commentary.

The name of this game was John Burkett. I read in the news reports that Burkett was booed when he came on at the start of the game – I didn’t see it, as I was at my bowling league for the start of the game. When I came home, the game was already 3-0. When Burkett was pulled, it was really, really nice to see him get a standing ovation – made me feel really good. Teared up a bit. :)
Tim Crabtree got the pitch of the game when he struck out Manny Ramirez with the bases loaded to preserve our shutout. That was the biggest single moment of the game, although Burkett’s pitching was stellar.
We’re 29 games over 500, and going further into uncharted territory. We did spoil the Indians clinching their division. They won it after they had left the Ballpark already and had packed up their champagne – HAHA! :)
The AP story says that two fans were married in the stands – I wonder who they were. :)
It was announced that Mark Clark will not be activated for the rest of the year – hopefully he can get it together next year, and contribute.

I don’t have much time to write this – I’m really busy at work today. Was an awesome baseball game, and I was even thinking this before Pudge hit the home run to win the game. This was one of those games that if we had lost, I wouldn’t have minded it, but it was great that we won!
Couple of roster moves – Mike Simms was active for the first time all season (although he didn’t play), and Rafael Palmeiro was out of the game (as well as tomorrow) with a hand problem leftover from being hit in the hand in the first game of the double header the other night.
The Rangers are now 28 games over 500 for the first time ever. We could end up winning 100 games this season – it’s not all that unlikely. After this game, there are 22 games left. If we win 16 of these 22, we’ll have 100 wins. It’ll be an awesome season. It still is a great season, but I’d like to push through and win 100 games.

I have to say, I wasn’t a big fan of Jeff Fassero coming here. And I suppose I’m still not. But, after last night, he didn’t seem any worse than some of the pitching we’ve thrown out there. Plus he’s a lefty, so I guess that can help. Jeff went 5 innings, giving up 6 hits and two earned runs. Not all that bad, really. He wasn’t pitching poorly when he was pulled, so I was surprised that he was. Read this morning in the DMN that Johnny Oates had him on a pitch count total, which was the reason he came out when he did.
Danny Kolb came on to relieve Fassero, and gave up just about as much as Fassero did, but in only 2/3 of an inning – not a good outing here. After him came the forgotten man in the bullpen, Mike Muñoz. Mike pitched very well, going 1 2/3, giving up just one hit, and nothing else. Tim Crabtree also pitched, giving up nothing, and Wetteland got his second save of the day (For some reason, the box score doesn’t list Wetteland as having pitched). Overall a decently pitched (if not great) game by the Rangers. Was a little surprised by Fassero, but given his history in ’99, I’ll save my excitement for later – like a shutout against the Yankees in the playoffs. :)
Our offense this game came from the longball. A three run shot by Rusty in the third gave us the lead, and a huge shot by Juan with Rusty on in the 5th was all we needed. There was another one in between these runs (a sac fly in the 4th), but game two seemed to be long ball offense. Was nice to see Rusty get another, and Juan to hit one instead of his usual swing and miss on a slider low and away. :)
A long night of watching baseball – was slightly over 6.5 hours. I would have sat through it at the Ballpark, but hey, I don’t want to torture my wife that much. It was enough she watched through most of it with me on TV. She’s great. :)

Well, after last night’s rainout, Jeff Fassero got pushed off to game 2 of the double header. The starter was Rick Helling.
After an extremely quick top of the first, we blew out to a big lead in a hurry. After a passed ball that let Alicea score (and Juan to first on strike three), Jim Parque plunked Raffy in the hand to load the bases. Todd Zeile came up, and smacked one over the center field wall. It wasn’t a monster home run, it didn’t get up onto Green’s hill, but it was enough to get over the fence for a grand slam! That put us up 5-0 after the first inning, and it was 6-0 after the start of the second when Royce Clayton belted one over the 407 sign in right center field – the deepest part of the park. We also got two more in the 6th when Pudge doubled home two runners. However, the runs in the first and second seemed more dramatic to me. – It was nice to get Rick Helling some run support, though – something he’s not gotten all year, and has kept his win loss record down.
Rick Helling was doing really well – his only mistake through 6 innings was a solo home run ball in the fifth inning to Chris Singleton, and another solo shot by Carlos Lee to lead off the seventh. After the start of the seventh, Rick seemed to lose it a bit, allowing a few more hits, and two more runs. Venafro came on to finish out the 7th, and start the 8th. After a triple, Zimmerman came on, and would have gotten out of the inning unscathed, but an error by Royce Clayton allowed another run to score.
Scarborough Green came into the game as a pinch runner and was promptly picked off first. D’oh!
That closed out the scoring at 8-6. This is a game where we let the White Sox get back in it by small stupid things, when they shouldn’t have. We outplayed them for the most part, and let ’em creep back into the game. Fortunately, we had enough going offensively to overcome it. Wetteland came in and allowed only a single to get his 38th save of the year.

Well, my wife and I got out there, and it had been raining all day. It didn’t rain during our drive to the ballpark, but once we got there.. boom. Rain! We sat there through the two hour rain delay (that’s nothing for us – we sat through two 3 and a half hour delays in 98), until they called it. There were two things to see during the delay…
The usual thing the Rangers do on Sunday before a game was still done. That was the bit where they picked a family (although I’ve not seen anything other than a father and a son) play catch out in left field in front of the scoreboard. They did that in the rain. At first I thought “Oh man, you get picked, but what crappy weather”. Then I thought it would still be cool to do that, even if it was in the rain. The other thing was a pre-game show by some frisbee catching dogs. It was fairly cool, especially since there was nothing else going on.
This was the Beanie Baby night for the Rangers this year. The giveaway was “Luke”, a black Lab (shown here). This was tied into Rusty Greer, who has a few of them himself – in fact, there was a card given out with the beanie that had a pic of Rusty in uniform with his dogs. Looked cool. I wish it wasn’t limited to just kids 13 and under. I would have liked one, and not to turn it around and sell it, I would have liked one myself! There was a pretty cool article over on the Arlington Now web site about the beanie promotion at the Ballpark – check it out (thanks Lynn!)
After the game was called, they said that you could exchange each ticket you had for two for the double header tomorrow. Well, Lynn & I walked down to the ticket area, but it was mobbed beyond belief! And out into the rain. We blew that off, we’ll go another game. :)