Recently in From Joe's Mind Category

As those of you who have followed my site for awhile know, I've been out of work for some 15 months. This past week, I started up working again. Not full time, but a part time gig. Thing is, the first two weeks of the gig are going to be way busier than any other time, so I haven't had much time for Rangers stuff.

This will probably extend into next week, so I'm taking a short sabbatical from doing updates while I deal with work stuff.

I will be back, I want to be around for the tail end of the season. :)

A lot has been written both locally (pro and blog) and nationally about how the Rangers are "running away" with the AL West. That we have the widest margin of any of the division leaders, and that we're a "slam dunk" to make the playoffs. While all of that may be true, I decided to examine our record and see where it would put us.

I remember some years ago when the Padres make the playoffs (1998), there was talk that they were the "best of a bunch of bad teams", and that they only make the playoffs because someone from that division had to. There always seems to be some team somewhere that kind of does that - "backs into" the playoffs is what it's generally called.

Now, do I feel that's the way the Rangers are in 2010? No, we're not a bad team. No, we won't "back" into the playoffs. The way the team has played this year, we deserve to be there. But still, having said all that, I'd like to see where our current record would place us in the other divisions. A lot also has been made about how the other teams besides the Yankees & the Red Sox (and the Rays in more recent vintage) in the AL East would fare better if they were in another division. So here goes:

AL West: We're in first place, 9.5 games up on second place Oakland. Our record is 73-55, 18 games over .500 - our winning percentage is .570

AL Central: Our record in that division would put us in second place behind the Twins, only a half game behind them. We'd be three games up on third place Chicago. A pretty decent shot at winning that division, I'd say while it wouldn't be as easy, we could win that division.

AL East: We'd be in FOURTH place here. Right now the Yankees & Rays are tied at 78-50 (.609), and then Boston is in third at 74-55 (.574). We wouldn't be far behind Boston (one game), and the division leaders (5GB), but we would have to hop three other teams to get there. I'd say this would be the hardest shot to make the playoffs, despite being only 5 games out.

NL West: Our record here would put us in second place, about 3.5 games back of division leader San Diego, and 2.5 games in front of third place San Francisco. Again, we'd be right in the thick of things, and would probably have a good shot at winning this division.

NL Central: Again, second place. This time just one game back of division leader Cincinnati, and 3 games in front of second place St. Louis. A very winnable division if we were in it.

NL East: This time, our record would tie us with Atlanta for the division lead, and two games up on what would be third place Philadelphia. Of the three NL divisions, I'd say this would be the hardest fight, but we probably could win this as well.

So basically, outside of our own division, we could easily win three of them, have a good fight with one of them, and in my opinion, be out of the playoffs in one other.

I realize this is a nebulous thing, if you moved us out of the division, we'd play different teams, different stadiums, things would be different. Yeah, I know that. Just playing a "pick up and put into another scenario - how would be be doing" fantasy. I know that. Still, it's nice to know where we stand amongst everyone else.

I've given Tom Hicks some grief many a time for letting Bud Selig off the hook on moving the Rangers to the AL Central, where we'd more fit in with our division mates and the time zone. It stinks having so many games start at 9PM. However, had Bud not taken the guaranteed home and away series with the Astros every year, and actually moved us to the AL Central, we wouldn't be in the driver's seat we are in now. However, we might have won a few more divisions along the way and have been to the playoffs sometime in the last decade.

Still, this year is feeling like no other I've covered on this site since the first one I ever covered (1999). 2004 came close, but we fell down at the end. This doesn't feel like that year at all. How far we get in the playoffs is an unknown, but at this point, I'm ready to say that we WILL get there, and I expect it will not be a first round sweep and out again. Overall, I think the team is too good for that.

I've been watching this show since I was a kid ("How about that?"), but this weekend's episode should be of interest to anyone reading this site.

The subject is the 2010 Texas Rangers. :)

MLB has some press about the episode here.

Hey, if you're on Facebook, and like baseball art, you should check out this page I ran into not too long ago. It's by a fellow named "Kyle Banister", and he does some great baseball art. Noticed about a week ago he had posted a nice picture of Josh Hamilton, and I had asked his permission to post it, and he was cool with it. You can see it here. He simply calls it "Hamilton", and it was hand drawn in colored pencil and black marker. It's quite nice, and I thought I should let others know about this guy.

While he doesn't have a website yet, all of his art and whatnot is up on the fan page for him on Facebook. So if you're on Facebook (who isn't these days), go check out the Kyle Banister - Baseball Art page, and "like" it. He's got a lot of good stuff there. I also particularly like his pencil drawing of Ubaldo Jimenez.

Here's a blurb Kyle has written about himself:

Before admitting he was an artist, Kyle owned and operated a successful sign and lettering company. For nearly 20 years Kyle used his talents to help others communicate and realize their dreams. In 2002 he gave up the sign business to pursue his own dream, to become the artist he was born to be.

While producing signage for others, Kyle learned and mastered a variety of mediums. And he uses all of these in his art today, often mixing them to achieve what he sees as the best look for a particular piece of art. That is why you may see an array of styles in one of Kyle's shows. He is just as comfortable painting with 1-Shot Lettering enamel on Plexiglas as he is digitally coloring an original pointillism drawing. Some have criticized Kyle's work saying that the use of so many mediums will slow his march to success. But Kyle is OK with that as long as he can stay true to himself, and his art.

Kyle's favorite subjects are History, Baseball and Women, not necessarily in any order. He loves to travel doing research for the many projects he has planned. His strongest asset is inexhaustible creativity, he never is at a loss for a new art project. Kyle says, "It's as if God leaves notes on my forehead after a nights rest."

Kyle's art is quite a journey. So come along and enjoy the ride.

This is a complete duplicate of a post I made back on June 10th, but given the Mariners today fired their manager, bench coach, and their pitching coach, I thought it was time to revive the post...

I'm playing catch up with some backlogged game reports, I hope to catch up with the Mariners series tomorrow. Having said that, I was curious to see what ussmariner.com had to say about tonight's game. They had a rather funny image posted there about the Mariners' season:

I prefer this image I posted a couple of years back, originally.

I am so stealing this from Scott Lucas. It sums it up pretty good. ;)

What a weird couple of days for me. I find out about two days ago that I was to start a temp work assignment in a few days (today, actually). That was cool, as I've been out of work for awhile. Then yesterday was a whirlwind.

The auction for control of the team happened. I hopped onto Twitter and followed the proceedings, starting at 9 am, and staying with it all the way through till the end at 12:50am. Was a heck of a ride but Ill write more about that later.

I'm posting this now because I haven't had the tine to writ about the Seattle settees due to family stuff, plus my church had its vacation bible school tis week (ended last night). Then today I stated my temp assignment, and on top of it, ive caught a cold.

But I couldn't let the day pass without saying something. I coiled not had be happier with the way the auction turned out. Bring in Chuck, Nolan, and the new stuff. Theres a ton to talk about there, and I will when I feel better. Promise. In the meantime...

Bring on August 12th! Goodbye Hicks, and take the remnants of the stupid Ameriquest bell with you!

Did anyone watch the old timer's introductions during the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies back a week or so ago from Cooperstown? I did, because to be honest, I was more interested in hearing those intros and to see who was there than the new player inductions. Not that I think the class of 2010 wasn't worthy, but I like the nostalgia angle more.

Anyways, there was an interesting remark by the fellow who was doing the introductions (George Grandy). It was most specifically his choice of words during the introduction of Hank Aaron. Here's his exact intro:

Our next Hall of Famer is, very simply, everyone's home run champion. He hit a home run on the baseball field, he's hit a home run in life. Let's welcome the Hammer, Henry Aaron.

At the moment he called Hank Aaron "everyone's home run champion", my mind immediately lept to Bonds, and all the discussion about is he the real champ, etc.. That someone from the National Baseball Hall of Fame would call Aaron "everyone's home run champion" was telling to me. Now it could be nothing - it could just be a speech and choice of words for sure. But I felt the choice of words was a small dig at Barry Bonds. Does it imply what the hall is thinking?

If you don't believe what I'm saying, click here - it's a pdf with the complete transcript of the entire induction ceremony, including Aaron's intro (which is on Page 43).

I figure on this day where Arod hit #600 at age 35, and provided he doesn't break down into his 40's will eventually pass Bonds, I thought it was interesting to make this observation.

Was watching some live late coverage on MLB Network tonight, and in the middle of their reporting they did an impromptu "Prime 9", only this time on the best free agent signings of the past off season. They had Vlad Guerrero as the #1 best off season signing. Here's the complete list:

10) John Lackey
9) Troy Glaus
8) ?? - I forgot to write it down
7) Carl Pavano
6) Matt Holliday
5) Aubrey Huff
4) Jose Valverde
3) Billy Wagner
2) Adrian Beltre
1) Vlad Guerrero

What bummed me out was that Colby Lewis wasn't in on this list. Huff and Glaus on there over Lewis? That doesn't seem right. And Carl Pavano should be higher than #7.

Still, it was nice to see a Ranger signing as #1 on the list as their best off season move.

Earlier today I was interviewed by nesn.com about the upcoming Rangers / Red Sox series. They wanted my perspective being a Rangers fan, and asking me some questions about the Rangers. Most of you who read this site regularly (hello nesn.com visitors!) will know most of this stuff already, but most Red Sox fans don't. So below are the questions and answers they had for me and what I answered with. Check it out.

There's more to this article than just my Q&A, so check out the full article over at NESN.com.

1) NESN.com: Considering both short- and long-term effects, was the Cliff Lee trade a good one for the Rangers organization?

Joe Siegler: On the short term, I think it's an obvious answer. It helps us. I don't think there's a club that exists that wouldn't want Cliff Lee for their team, especially in a stretch run. I mean, if we were the Pirates or the Orioles or something it wouldn't make sense, but heck yeah, Cliff Lee is great because of who Cliff Lee is and what he brings.

As for long term, it's harder to tell, as you never know how these things work out. We did import a good relief pitcher, and I expect most people figure he's all we'll have left next year (save for a few draft picks) for Cliff Lee (kind of like the Carlos Lee/Nelson Cruz trade the Rangers made with the Brewers a few years back). We'll make a run at Lee, I'm sure (once our ownership gets worked out), but if he signs back here, I'll be surprised. But the absolute best part of all this is that the Yankees didn't get him (at least for now).

2) NESN.com: Julio Borbon has had his ups and downs this year. How has he evolved as a player since his call-up toward the end of 2009?

J.S.: I remember late last year hearing that he was going to be a great center fielder. In our park, you need a guy who is fast out there, or at least could get great reads on balls. Last year, he wasn't so much a big power hitter that grabs your attention, but he did end last year with a .376 OBP. This year, his bat started off slow, but he's come on lately, and still has some work to do. But his defense has improved greatly since last year. I don't think he's an All-Star caliber player, but he does have speed, and is not someone you worry about their defense. So that's a big improvement.

3) NESN.com: Now that Justin Smoak has been traded, who will be the Rangers' first baseman of the future?

J.S.: Well, the easy answer is to say Chris Davis. This is actually an extension of your first question, because now that Smoak is gone, it's definitely Chris Davis for now. Until Smoak was moved, we had kind of a two-headed monster with Smoak and Davis. Both were projected high caliber, with Smoak perhaps projecting a bit higher due to him being a switch hitter (like Mark Teixeira). Davis however, is the better defender, so in an immediate sense, we're probably better off with Chris Davis, as he's a better defender and has some more major league experience.

Davis did crash and burn bad last year, though, and wasn't exactly hitting up a storm earlier this season. So I guess "of the future" comes down to whether Chris Davis ends up as one of those AAAA hitters. We went through that same thing recently with Nelson Cruz. The light finally came on last year, and he's living up to it. If Chris Davis figures it out offensively, he'll be the guy of the future as he's an awesome defender, just needs more work on offense. We'll see if his AAA tuneup this year did anything. If it's not him, a guy in AAA named Mitch Moreland (currently playing right field) would likely be the choice going down, unless we brought in someone.

4) NESN.com: What do you think the problem was with Josh Hamilton in 2009, and how has he bounced back to become an MVP candidate in 2010?

J.S.: I think a lot of 2009 was Josh thinking too much. Plus he was hurt for a decent part of the season. A lot has been made locally about him constantly tinkering with his swing. We do have a new hitting coach here in 2010 for the first time since 1995, so it's possible Clint Hurdle himself fixed Josh. Hard to tell, but the Rangers TV guys have talked a lot about how Josh has gotten rid of he toe tap in his swing, and since he did that, he's taken off again.

5) NESN.com: Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler have each missed significant time in 2010, yet the Rangers are still in first place. Who is the one player that Texas simply cannot afford to lose?

J.S.: Since it's hard to say just one guy, I'll go for one offensive guy and one pitcher. I'd say offensively, Vlad Guerrero. I've always liked Vlad going back to his days in Montreal, and I'm glad he's with us. I'm more glad he has bounced back, and isn't just one of those long time guys trying to hang on somewhere and under performs. Vlad's back. Losing him would be rough, as it would make Josh Hamilton somewhat vulnerable, and would take some of the swagger out of our offense.

Cliff Lee aside, pitching wise, we'd probably be a lot worse off if we lost Colby Lewis. Lewis has exceeded everyone's expectations when he returned here in the offseason. I think a lot of people (myself included) thought, "Well OK, he sort of figured it out in Japan, but that's Japan, and this is the MLB -- will it translate?" It certainly has. As you pointed out, we're in first place now, and that's before Cliff Lee. I say Colby Lewis is our pitching star this season (although I like Tommy Hunter, too).

6) NESN.com: How important is this series against the Red Sox for Texas coming out of the All-Star break?

J.S.: I think it's important that we stay strong out of the gate. That it's against the Red Sox isn't so much important because it's the "Red Sox;" it's not like the two teams have a big rivalry as such. It's more important for us to do well this series, as we need to hold and expand our lead. The Angels, while down this year, are still the team to beat, and I don't think anyone can take 'em lightly. The Angels are playing Seattle this first series, and Seattle has been a big disappointment. The Angels should handle them well, so we need to have a strong showing against the Red Sox to keep our division lead.

For more sports news, visit NESN.com (http://www.nesn.com/).

I'm playing catch up with some backlogged game reports, I hope to catch up with the Mariners series tomorrow. Having said that, I was curious to see what ussmariner.com had to say about tonight's game. They had a rather funny image posted there about the Mariners' season:

I prefer this image I posted a couple of years back, originally.

Those who visit my site know I'm a fan of Gar Ryness, the Batting Stance Guy. I'm particularly fond of his impression of Andre Dawson (he tries to intimidate you even when he strikes out is a particular favorite moment). There's a ton of others, too. But anyway, he's got a book out now, and he's running a commercial for it. I thought I'd plug it to those visiting my site.

I can't imagine how if you read this site and know baseball you haven't heard of Gar, but he is a guy who has the ability to mimic baseball players. Started off as a small back yard goof with his friends, and just ended up exploding on Youtube. Gar's held court for players, been on Letterman, he's made quite a name for himself doing this shtick.

Two of my favorite collections of his stances are the one I've embedded below which is nothing but Texas Rangers stances over the years. That's on Youtube so I can embed it here. Of particular note are his Hank Blalock, and at the end, Kenny Rogers. :)

The other one I really like was this segment from MLB Network back in January of 2009. Unfortunately, mlb doesn't allow you to stream their videos (why?), so you have to click over for it. But I guarantee it's worth your time to watch.

Anyway, Gar's book is full of his real life background as to why he likes baseball so much, including baseball card fascinations, and how he used to watch games back in the day. It's some cool reading. His stories about his travels are quite good, too. I urge you to check it out. You can click on the book cover image above to be taken to a page on Amazon.com where you can buy the book. It's also available on the Kindle too, which is where I got my copy. So Gar, if you're ever in Arlington, I guess I'll have to get you to sign my Kindle. :)

Check out the book. It's a blast.

The Rangers are calling Derek Holland up. This will definitely make Hannah Baugh excited for sure. In honor of all this, I've decided to repost something silly I did last season. :)

Hello Hannah! :)

The 2010 All-Star Ballot is available on mlb.com. You can vote now. I decided to cast my first ballot based on looking at the numbers, instead of my usual batch of homer votes, and a few based on merit. So here's who I voted for.

For the AL, I listed the Rangers player that's on the ballot, said a few words about them, and then said who I voted for. The NL, I just said who I voted for. Here goes. Any remarks?

American League:

1B - Chris Davis - Good defense, no real serious hitting threat. Won't even peak the top. I voted for Miguel Cabrera from the Tigers.

2B - Ian Kinsler - Hasn't played a game yet this year, shouldn't be on here. I voted for Dustin Pedroia. His numbers are the best now of any 2B in the league.

SS - Elvis Andrus - Off to an OK start, but "OK" doesn't get you voted in. As much as it pains me to vote for a Yankee, I voted for Derek Jeter.

3B - Michael Young - Off to a decent start, but not enough to take this. I had to vote for Evan Longoria, his stats are better. Almost voted for Young for the homer vote thing, but went with the MLB 2K10 cover boy.

C - Taylor Teagarden - Oh yeah, right. I have a better chance of charting in this category. Despite the surprising numbers of Jason Kendall in Kansas City so far this year, you have to vote for Joe Mauer. There really isn't another choice for AL starting catcher.

DH - Vlad Guerrero - He probably has a realistic shot at winning this. His numbers out of the gate were fantastic. But going by pure numbers, Jose Guillen is besting him, and Adam Lind is up there, too. But I had to vote for Guerrero. Homer vote.

OF - Nelson Cruz, Julio Borbon, & Josh Hamilton - Hambone is playing like 2009 again unfortunately, probably is too far removed from the HR derby to coast on that this year. Julio Borbon was dropped to ninth, and nobody outside of DFW really knows him anyway. Nelson Cruz is definitely deserving, I voted for him. Beyond him I voted for Shin-Soo Choo in Cleveland, & Michael Cuddyer in Minnesota. Vernon Wells is also doing well, this year but I picked Cruz over Wells. All three guys I voted for had their last names starting with "C". :)

National League:

1B - It's either Ryan Howard or Albert Pujols. Pujols will probably get elected anyway, so I voted for my Phillies guy, Ryan Howard.

2B - As much as I like to vote Phillies, you can't argue with Chase Utley's numbers. Utley is way out in front of everyone else, he should win this easily.

SS - This is a tossup for me. I like Troy Tulowitski overall as a player, but his numbers aren't huge. Rafael Furcal has the highest batting average (with the most at bats), but has no HR/RBI numbers to speak of. Orlando Cabrera in CIN has no average, but the other numbers. I ended up voting for Stephen Drew from Arizona. Had Jimmy Rollins not spent time hurt already, I probably would have voted for him.

3B - I was surprised when I looked at the numbers here. Mark Reynolds is who I thought I'd be voting for, and he has the power numbers, but a bad average. Going on numbers, it's a tossup between McGehee of MIL, and Placido Polanco from Philly. Polanco has a track record, so I went with him based on his veteran status, not because he's from Philly.

C - I'm sorry. I'm voting for Pudge. Not going to have a ton of chances to do that much more. He does have good numbers too, so it's not a total "Rangers homer" vote. :)

OF - Went with Ryan Braun from the Brewers, Matt Kemp from the Dodgers, & Josh Willingham of the Nationals. Look up the numbers. :)

I believe it's the first time I haven't voted for a Texas Rangers player in awhile. Granted, I did vote for Pudge, but he's over in the NL.

I meant to post this a few days ago when I first saw it, but I forgot about it. It's still relevant. Railing against the wave is always relevant. Chuck posted this over on Jamey Newberg's forums over the past weekend, and I wanted to copy it here for more people to see.

First off, let me add I cannot stand the wave. I think it is the stupidest thing ever created in sports. I cannot stand it, and it just shows me that people who do it have no interest in the game. In my opinion, if you do the wave, you deserve to be ejected from the stadium and never allowed to return. Unless you're a kid (like under 10) That I don't so much care about, but adults? No way. Get out. Now. Never return.

Anyway, here's what Chuck had to say, and I have to say it was QUITE refreshing.

Subject: Thank You and Stop The Wave

As we get ready to start the season, thank you for all of your support of the Texas Rangers during the off season. Lets all hope this turns out to be magical season for all Rangers fans.
Those can attend Opening Day, I hope you have a great time. Anytime you are at the ballpark, remember its a day at a ballgame, try to forget the bills, the traffic, work, etc., just have a good time, again, no worries, its a day at the ballpark. And as always, if you have a problem at the ballpark, shoot me an email and I will get you to the right people that can take care of your problem.

On another note, those of you that were at the exhibition game Friday probably saw a "wave" break out while we were hitting. This came up at Jamey's Dallas gathering, somebody asked Chuck Greenberg if he could stop the wave. This goes against my old school baseball thinking "that if you pay to get in, you can do whatever you want as long as it is in the confines of good behavior"...but I would like our fans to get into the games like they do in Boston, New York, St. Louis and save the wave for another time. So, I have enlisted the help of Drew Sheppard to build me a graphic that will ask fans to wave at another time other than when the Rangers are hitting. Most of you are familiar with Drew's work. There will be those that will be unhappy that we asked them to wave at another time...its okay to wave, just don't do it when we have men on and a rally going.

We will see how it goes. Again, have a great time at the ballpark when you come to the games and if you have any questions any time, send me an email to cmorgan@texasrangers.com

Thanks

Chuck M

What we really need to keep an eye on are people like this. I found this picture I took on a game I went to August 1, 2009. This Ballpark vendor was trying to start the wave. Uh, NO, doofus. I hope you're not still around.

Just a quick note. I haven't updated since last Monday, due to the fact that I'm out of town. I went home to visit my family in Philadelphia due to having a couple of really ill grandparents, and I wanted to see them.

Thing is I drove from Dallas to Philadelphia, and wanted to surprise them, so to make sure my cover wasn't blown, I didn't post here ahead of time why I was going to be away from the site for a week. :)

I picked up MLB 10: The Show for the PS3 on Tuesday (saved a gift card from Christmas for that), and started playing. The Rangers lineup is surprisingly correct. However, they have several older uniforms in there, going back quite awhile. They don't have the sleeveless one from within the last five years or so, though - I rather liked that one.

Anyway, Vlad is in the game with a totally tarred batting helmet which I found amusing. Check out this screen capture below (he doesn't stand that way in the box, I caught it in mid practice swing). One thing about the uniform, though. It's an older one, but it had a "4" on the armband. So whoever put the uniform together for the game for the Rangers team copied it from the year they wore a "4". Anyone know offhand who that "4" was for, and what year that was? Thanks. You can click on the thumbnail below for a larger version.

And it begins today. Rangers on the radio at 2PM.

Speaking of Radio.. I see Victor Rojas has left MLB Network to be the play by play guy for the Angels? Oh Vic. If you were just going back to play by play, you should have stayed here. Oh, you just don't love Texas. I see how it goes. :) j/k.

Hope it goes well for you personally, just not your new employer as such.

Batting Stance guy (Gar Ryness) is awesome. By far my favorite one of his is Andre Dawson. A ton of Gar's stuff is great, but for some reason his version of Hawk is spectacular. Watch this clip from Gar's appearance on the Letterman show last July. He doesn't do Dawson, but it's a great clip, as most of them are shticked up due to being on Letterman. :)

Finally, click this link to head over to mlb.com. It's a video from Gar's appearance on the MLBN "Hot Stove" program from last off season. At the 1:00 minute mark, he does Andre Dawson - this is my favorite single impression Gar's done by anyone.

Silly MLBam not allowing streaming of their MLBN video. That would be rather cool.

A bit early I know, but watch this video. It's really funny. Lots of visual gags, too.

The picture above is what a lot of people consider the best coaching staff the Rangers have had, because it's (for the most part) the one that led us to the playoffs in the 90's. The last direct link to that era is now gone. As you have to have known already before you read this, Rudy Jaramillo is out as the hitting coach of the Rangers. A lot has been made about the offensive problems this team has had in 2009. I can't blame that on Rudy.

A few times in the last two years I've wondered if a change in voice is necessary. I don't think anyone doubts that Rudy is one of the best hitting coaches around. But too much of a good thing isn't always the best. Yeah, it's a weak argument I make - I know that. But as much as I didn't want to see him go, I wonder what a change in voice will bring.

Which brings us to the obvious next question. Who will replace him? I can think of nobody better. The Red Baron himself, Rusty Greer. He's a Jaramillio pupil, so the overall message won't be that radically different. He's enormously well respected with the players, he's a fan favorite - still. I think he'd be a great coach. Of course, we had Ted Willams as a manager early on, and those teams couldn't hit either. But you have to replace Jaramillo with someone, and I think Thurman Clyde Greer III would go over well. Julio Borbon would have to give up his number, but I think they should have retired 29, anyway.

From what I can gather, it appears the Rangers offered Rudy a one year contract, I expect he thinks (probably so) that he's worth more than that, and declined. I'm sure the places that have been mentioned as needing a new hitting coach will splurge to pick him up.

If hitting gets worse in 2010, expect there to be a lot of noise about this move at that time.

EDIT: Evan Grant mentions Will Clark, too. That's a great idea, I didn't even consider him.

It's pretty bad when this picture below is the SINGLE OFFENSIVE HIGHLIGHT over the last four games. It's David Murphy rounding the bases on his HR trot from Wednesday night. It's the only run we've scored in the last four games.

Sunday: Lose 5-0 (Game 2 of DH)
Monday: Lose 9-0
Tuesday: Lose 6-1
Wednesday: Lose 4-0

That's just bad. Even the Pittsburgh Pirates aren't that bad.

.... you can bring back old giveaway items. My wife dug this one out of the closet, and we put it on my four year old. It's too big for her to wear as a shirt, but it fits as a nightgown. Hahahahaha. :)

One of my good friends lives in Seattle, and is a Red Sox fan. One of those ones who, if he could afford it, give up his job and follow them on the road like they were the Grateful Dead. ;) Anyway, he sent me this comment about the Rangers broadcasts. I wanted to pass it along, to let people know that others appreciate our guys here, locally.

The games notwithstanding, I had the occasion to listen to your radio team over the course of this series as XM only plays the home team radio broadcast. I liked the work those two guys do. I think they do a good job and were easy to listen to. Thumbs up.

UPDATE: After I posted this, I IM'ed the guy and told him I posted it. He then went on and had a few more kind things to say. From the words he used, he seemed to be mostly describing stuff Eric Nadel has done for years.

They really are (great) though, Joe. They paint a picture of the game, instead of talking about nonsense all the way through, with occasional game updates. I like guys that immerse me in the game, that's what I want, to have a description that lets me paint a mental picture. He described stances, swing types, weather, eveything. So, so good at his craft. And I mean that, craft. He is one of two guys that have ever told me that the team is wearing red tops today,as they do every Saturday at home. Only two guys in the league pick that stuff up.

Last night I was watching Baseball Tonight, and noticed that ESPN has no love for David Murphy. They were talking about how the juggling of the lineup last night produced something good for our team. Then they threw up this graphic of the lineup from two nights ago, and the one for last night.

Daniel Murphy? Man - someone obviously is asleep at the wheel over at ESPN on that one..

I got bored tonight. Got into Photoshop. :)

Different sized versions are available here.

Since you can't improve on God's word, I will just offer this small prayer for Josh Hamilton.

Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

Here's why I posted this.

Strikeout.
Strikeout.
Strikeout.
Sit on bench for a few minutes.
Strikeout.
Ground out.
Pop Up.

Boatload of pitches at 98-100. 30 in all over two innings. 21 for strikes. Not bad for a guy carrying a Dora the Explorer bag. Not bad AT ALL!

I believe we've found the reason why Chris Davis had so many strikeouts, and his batting average was down in 2009. It wasn't his swing, the league adjusting. It was the fact that he apparently is seriously into Mariah Carey.

I mean - check out this video below that was sent to me from the site "12 Angry Mascots". It appears to be some sort of stealth cam interview with Chris where he says how much he's into Mariah Carey.

Here's what I think about Mariah Carey. Really pretty girl. Has a chest that can stop time. Her voice? I have no problems with her voice. She can sing quite well. But the music she actually sings? Shoot me now. In even writing this news story, I've had to put on the new Black Sabbath album just to get through it.

I then decided to look into what else he listens to. Found out his walkup song when he was here was a track called "I Got it" by someone called "Gorilla Zoe". It's actually worse than Mariah Carey. As bad as Carey's music is, there's something nice to look at when you're (unfortunately) forced to look at it. This other song - no such bonus.

I've taken it upon myself to suggest a few pallete cleansers in the mp3 widget below. The first two songs are the Carey & Gorilla tracks, and then eight others I suggest would make far better listening. Some are metal, some are classic rock, there's a jazz song in there, too. Check it out.

I'll wrap up with this. I was going to suggest Chris talk to some other players about it. My first thought lept to CJ Wilson, as he leads the Guitar Hero things a lot, and then I went to his Myspace page, and saw he has Lady Gaga in his mp3 player. There goes that cred. ;)

In the best move I think we could have made, the Rangers did not send Derek Holland to Toronto for Roy Halladay. When the time passed, I heard Hannah Baugh being really excited from here.

I do have a question, how did you spend the time leading up to the deadline? For me, I was sitting in my living room with my laptop showing the live feed from MLB Network (they had it online), and also had mlbtraderumors in another window. (I was playing games on my Xbox 360 at the same time). What was cool is the MLBN video feed also has a combined twitter feed from all over the place, so you'd get flash updates from there at the same time.

How did you spend the afternoon watching the time leading up? Post in the comments, please.

I woke up at 4:30AM this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep. So in my coffee induced living coma, I decided to vote a ton of times for Ian Kinsler. I can't recall offhand exactly how many times I voted, but it was up around 100 or so, and that was just in this sitting.

According to latest story, Ian is still in the lead in the AL voting. Let's keep him there.

My NL vote is for Shane Victorino, by the way.

Ran across this picture when looking for something else tonight. It's too bad Andreas Galarraga is in this picture, otherwise it would be the "All 'Roid picture". Who would have thought Jose Canseco was more right than we wanted to believe?

Yeah, I know, it was never proven Pudge did anything, but he got awfully less "Pudgy" after he was outed in Canseco's book. Arod, Raffy, & Caminiti? No issues there.

Anyone hard about Andreas Galarraga lately? I haven't - I wonder if he's still cancer free.

This post was inspired by TR Sullivan's "Just for the heck of it...."

Was looking through some old photos today and saw this rather silly picture of Andreas Galarraga. :)

Well, OK, maybe just one of them who has a blog, anyway.

You know, whenever something like Lackey being ejected after two pitches happen, you expect one thing to happen. The fans will polarize around their team being absolutely rock solid in their opinions on the matter. You expect Rangers fans to say that it was the right call, and you expect Angels fans to scream bloody murder. I didn't quite expect this.

A guy with the nickname of "Rev Halofan" seems to put Randy Galloway to shame, and that's an impressive feat. First off, he leads off his story on the game with this:

The Texas Rangers play in the nation's 4th largest media market and it is obvious that MLB wants to get the ratings going to bring in baseball dollars amidst Footballville. They have the umps completely getting in the way of player's establishing their game and a first inning ejection of John Lackey was the most obvious indicator that baseball intends to hand a mediocre organization a competitive edge thru treachery in order to more firmly take on the NFL deep in the heart of Texas.

OK, that's mostly mild. Although thinking that MLB wants to hand a title to the Rangers is fairly dumb, it's a pretty harmless statement, you can let it ride. But then you get into some of the quotes on his comments page, and wow. Who gave this guy a blog?

I heard a rumor that the Rangers players put vaseline on all the toilet seats in the Angels locker room this morning. Lackey likes to read a chapter of Lord of the Rings son the crapper before each start and today he slipped on the seat and fell on his ass and it ruined his pregame ritual. Lay off the practical jokes, Rangers, don't you guys have girlfriends to occupy you spare time, or are all Texan women too crazy to date?

Mature? When the Rangers come to Anaheim and there is SARAN WRAP across the toilet bowls, your players are really going to regret it. Imagine how poorly Hank Blalock will play if he is interrupted reading his pregame Shakespeare Sonnet on the john.

Most of that thread is actually well thought out comments (inlcuding the graphic showing the strike zone and pitches thrown), but the guy running it.. That's just stupid. Even his own users are calling him out, that's fairly amusing, like this one from user "suboptimal"..

I get as angry as anyone about shit games like today's. It was a shit game. The Angels lost, I'm mad at the officiating, and Vicente Padilla is not that good. But there's a line between being angry about losing and just being angry at the other team, at their fans, even at the people who happen to live in the area. Even if this stuff isn't to be taken seriously, it still strikes me as a little below the belt.

And this one by Red114, which I can only say "What bloody team are you talking about? Only the Yankees act like that. Or the Dallas Cowboys. Not the Texas Rangers":

These fools were celebrating the division title in May

On April 14th, I altered my site header to have Jeremiah 29:11 in the header. Why is that there? Well, first off, it's a bible passage. From the NIV translation, it says:

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

If you've been following my site for awhile, you'll know something about me, one of which is my love for Jesus Christ. Something else I've talked about before on this site is Johnny Oates. I've always liked Johnny Oates. As you probably know, I grew up in Philadelphia. Back in the mid 70's Johnny was a Phillie for awhile. He was the backup to Bob Boone mostly, but there was one year where he was the #1 catcher (1975, if I remember right). While I don't truly remember the first baseball game I went to, I do recall Oates being a Philly at games I went to, so it stuck with me. Also, the baseball card image to me was one I always liked when I was a kid. The reason for that is back then you didn't see spring training at all. It's not like today - unless you traveled there, seeing video from spring training didn't happen. Or didn't for this kid. So I liked this card. It showed Johnny at the Clearwater facility the Phillies were at then. On top of that I always liked this card design as the years went by. So I latched onto this card as one of my favorites as I was a kid.

Fast forward to my moving to Texas. I was here for just two years when the Rangers announced that Oates was going to be the new manager here, and that got me into the Rangers. I had seem some games at Arlington Stadium in its final season. But I didn't really get into the Rangers until 1995 when Oates (and another former Phillies pitcher, Kevin Gross) were on the team. As his tenure went on, we had great success, and I found out more about him as I was now an adult. Found out about his strong sense of God. He believed, and wasn't afraid to say it. Makes me wonder what it would have been like had Josh Hamilton been a Ranger when Oates was still a manager. I would have loved to have heard some of those conversations. Even through his illness and death, he was extremely upbeat about God and Jesus. He never (to me) seemed mad at his situation, blamed God - he continued to praise him, which was awesome! I loved that more than the baseball stuff he was known for.

Anyway, over time I collected Johnny Oates baseball cards. A handful of them I had him sign personally (including the card image above). One of the ones I have of his was one of his final player cards, the Fleer 1981 card when he was with the Yankees. On this card, he signed Johnny Oates Jer 29:11. That's the source of the quote above. Given how much Oates meant to me baseball wise, and his strong connection to the Rangers site, I decided to stick Jeremiah 29:11 in my site's header and tell this story. I miss Johnny, his strength was a great inspiration to me, and when I was going through my recovery from my leg surgery, I thought about him and his strength when I was having problems with pain and moving around. It helped a lot. So God bless Johnny Oates, and his family for sharing him with us in the baseball world.

Furthermore, a few months ago I decided internally to talk more about God & Jesus on this site. I'm not going to go over the top with it, but if the discussion lends itself, I will use that. One of the things I've suffered from for awhile is "Spiritual Schizophrenia". That's where you believe in God, and then you "turn it off" in other parts of your life. That you are only doing "that church stuff" when you're in church, and the rest of your life doesn't have it. I've made a few comments along this line lately on my site, and I have to say - the feedback I've gotten since I started doing that was encouraging. I wasn't sure if people wanted to hear that, and then God moved some people to let me know that perhaps yeah - it is the right thing to do. I'm not turning this into a religious blog. It's still a Rangers site, and it will be baseball, but I won't be afraid to witness if the situation dictates it. I am me still, I'll probably still say things of a strong nature when my emotions carry me there.

A friend of mine who I told I was doing this said "You need to be careful if you do that kind of stuff". My thoughts lept to Luke 6:22 when he said that. He didn't mean anything bad by it, but I thought "You know, if people don't like me and my site because I'm not afraid to talk about the Bible and God's word, well, then there's worse things to be disliked for." For those of you who believe, may God bless you for believing. If you don't, and would like to talk about it, drop me an email, I'd love to talk to you about it. Maybe someday we'll get to tell Johnny about out ourselves. I want to close this out with one of my favorite passages:

I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. (Philemon 1:6)

While watching the Phillies game tonight, I was also checking out some sites, and ran across a site called "Keeper's League GM", where they talked about a bunch of things, including some talk about the MLB Network. Funny thing is what they say I agree with:

I am a huge fan of the MLB Network. Given what ESPN has become (i.e. 24hr ads for NYY & BOS), I welcomed this new network with open arms. I think we all did. HOWEVER, I do have some criticism. The camaraderie during MLB Tonight is obvious, but I am getting so tired of watching five minutes of former players laughing like little kids about inside jokes I'd never understand. I'm talking to you Sean Casey. Sure, it beats Baseball Tonight's inane shouting matches, but rule number one in TV is, don't make each other laugh, make ME laugh.

It would also be nice to see some real analysis and real criticism. Guys, not everyone is "in line for a bounce-back season." I know these are your friends you are discussing, but this is the MLB Network. Show some balls and tell it like it is or I'll start fast-forwarding through the commentary. Way it is.

I have to agree about Sean Casey. I don't like him there at all, and he's almost always a "fast forward" when he starts talking. He needs to go. Replace him with Jamey Newberg or put Victor Rojas back more often than he has been.

I was at the exhibition finale today in Arlington, and of course, I couldn't resist taking a bunch of pictures of the new scoreboard stuff. Given this is a long article with a lot of pictures, I'm breaking most of the content off onto a secondary page, so if you're reading this on a feed reader or something, you will have to click through to the main website to see everything.

UPDATE: That is seriously funny timing. Two hours after I posted this, the HD schedule was released today. Here it is..

As I now have an HDTV, and this will be my first full season with one of those, I'm most interested in the HDTV plans for the Rangers. If you go to their website, this text appears on the "TV Broadcasts Page"...

FSSW High-Definition For the second consecutive season, the majority of Rangers games will be presented in high-definition on FOX Sports Southwest HD, KDFI My27 HD and KDFW FOX 4 HD where available. A complete Rangers HD schedule will be announced once it is finalized.

The actual broadcast schedule page has nothing about HD, just whether it's Ch 27 or FSSW.

So my question is this. Where is the HD schedule? It's now six days from the home opener, and five days from the overall season opening game on Sunday night. I find it hard to believe this schedule doesn't exist. My TiVo has guide information til about April 15th or so right now, and so far, every game the Rangers are playing is on a HD channel.

Has anyone seen the actual HD schedule published anywhere? If so, where? Please tell me.

I've talked about MLB Network a few times before, but I just got done telling my wife one of the reasons I enjoy watching the MLB Tonight show.

I'm watching the Seattle Mariners version of "30 Teams in 30 Days", and the topic on the table was Ken Griffey Jr and how he would impact the 2009 edition of the Mariners. The guys talking at the table were Matt Vasgergian (sp!), Harold Reynolds, Sean Casey, & John Hart. As I'm sure you know, Reynolds played on the Mariners when Griffey came up.

The bit I really enjoyed was when Harold Reynolds was talking about Griffey, and the graphic that came up was one from Ken Griffey's debut with the Mariners. Leading off that game was Reynolds, who the graphic said went 0-4 with a strikeout. That graphic came up, and Reynolds stopped mid sentence and said "What is this?", which prompted Matt V to say "And Griffey batted behind a guy who went 0-4". The other guys started laughing. It's that kind of sense of humor between the show and it's on screen talent makes this work for me. I laughed out loud when Reynolds said "What is this?" Hahahahaha.

The other thing I wanted to say was about the Rangers' John Hart. Like most Rangers fans we were overjoyed when Hart was removed from the Texas GM job and booted upstairs. Since that happened, you almost never heard about or from him (the latter being the same behaviour as when he WAS the GM). Anyway, he's usually the guy who comments on what team management's perspective is on whatever the story at hand is. I have to say, I've rather enjoyed him as a commentator on MLB Network. There was some talk that he might be a candidate for the vacant GM job in Washington DC. If that happens, he's off MLBN for sure, which would I feel be a loss for the commentating crew.

What would NOT be a loss is the departure of Sean Casey. He's the first guy they've put on the network that I wished would not come back. I'd rather Al Leiter stay there all the time. I've enjoyed the heck out of Al for the "former player" perspective.

If you're not regularly watching MLB Network, you should be. I don't think I've watched more than 10 minutes of ESPN's Baseball Tonight since BBTN has come back on the air early in spring training. Watch it.

The gods don't want us to have local beat coverage, do they?

First this offseason we lost our DMN beat writers. In a cost cutting move, it was decided to do away with the DMN guys, and go with just the Ft Worth Star Telegram guys. Which is fine, so long as someone is doing it.

Then tonight came the news that the Ft Worth Star Telegram may not survive the current recession! That has all kinds of larger implications, but the amusing part about it to a Rangers fan is that those guys just picked up the banner of local coverage.

Fortunately, we have D Magazine to thank for picking up Evan Grant for beat coverage, but one would think if the Telegram goes away, the DMN beat guys would get rehired. I would imagine if the FTST goes away, the DMN might expand to be a metroplex wide newspaper, I can't imagine Ft Worth without a newspaper at all.

The red & blue mixed color batting helmet got mostly negative reviews at the press conference when the new uniforms were shown off. I'm kind of indifferent towards it, it's not great, but it's not totally awful, either.

I was wondering what happened to it during spring training. By all accounts, the players are wearing their names and numbers on the backs of uniforms this spring at the request of Nolan Ryan. That's a move I really like - I never liked the fact guys didn't have numbers on their backs in spring. To me, it reinforced the notion of "this isn't real baseball going on, they're not worthy enough to wear their real uniforms". So I'm glad. I was also hoping to see the new helmet, but I haven't seen that in any video clip or picture coming out of Arizona. Either they're saving that for the regular season, or it's been abandoned. Anyone know either way?

Edit: After I posted this, Chuck Morgan emailed me and said the batting helmet won't be used until the regular season starts.

Edit 2: Since I posted this story originally, it was announced that the Rangers are now no longer going to use the two tone batting helmet. It's being abandoned for just all blue and all red. I dunno, I kind of liked it in a "this looks weird" sort of way.

In a related note, last night I borrowed the new MLB 09: The Show for my Playstation 3. They have the new 2009 uniforms for the Rangers, although I did not see the red one. They did have the red and blue helmet. I'm including a couple of screen grabs from my PS3 below of Josh Hamilton (who struck out in the game thanks to my skill). Check 'em out:

Saw this amusing post on a Reds Blog.

Did anyone else notice that our starting rotation,

H arang
A rroyo
V olquez
O wings
C ueto

Spells HAVOC!

Tried that with our guys. It doesn't spell anything. First off, there's no vowels. :)

Millwood
Padilla
McCarthy
Harrison
Feldman

MPMHF

Line Score
ML  FINAL
                    1  2  3   4  5  6   7  8  9     R  H  E
                    -  -  -   -  -  -   -  -  -     -  -  -
TEXAS               1  0  0   0  4  0   0  0  1     6  9  0
HOUSTON             1  0  1   0  0  0   0  0  0     2  5  3   (FINAL)

BATTERIES:  TEX - DARREN OLIVER, PAT MAHOMES (7TH), MARK
                  PETKOVSEK (8TH), JEFF ZIMMERMAN (9TH) AND IVAN
                  RODRIGUEZ
            HOU - SCOTT ELARTON, JAY POWELL (8TH), JOE SLUSARSKI
                  (9TH) AND BRAD AUSMUS

             WP - DARREN OLIVER (6-2)
             LP - SCOTT ELARTON (4-7)
           SAVE - NONE

HOME RUNS:  TEX - ALEX RODRIGUEZ (20) OFF ELARTON IN THE 5TH, 2
                  ON
            HOU - CRAIG BIGGIO (8) OFF D OLIVER IN THE 1ST, 0 ON
                  CRAIG BIGGIO (9) OFF D OLIVER IN THE 3RD, 0 ON

     TIME:  2:51     ATT:  43,277

PROBABLES:  ANA - SCOTT SCHOENEWEIS (6-4, 3.71)
            TEX - ROB BELL (NR)

            COL - PEDRO ASTACIO (5-7, 5.28)
            HOU - SHANE REYNOLDS (6-5, 4.94)




Box Score
TEXAS (6) VS HOUSTON (2) - FINAL

TEXAS                  ab  r  h rbi bb so lob   avg
Catalanotto 2b          4  1  1  0   1  0   1  .306
I Rodriguez c           5  2  2  1   0  1   2  .286
A Rodriguez ss          4  1  3  3   0  0   0  .327
R Palmeiro 1b           3  0  0  0   1  1   1  .257
Sierra rf               3  0  0  1   0  1   2  .319
 Petkovsek p            0  0  0  0   0  0   0  .000
 Je Zimmerman p         0  0  0  0   0  0   0  .000
Kapler cf               4  0  0  0   0  0   3  .276
Lamb 3b                 4  1  1  0   0  0   0  .250
Ledee lf                4  1  1  0   0  2   1  .167
D Oliver p              2  0  1  0   0  1   0  .400
 Mahomes p              0  0  0  0   0  0   0 1.000
 Porter rf              0  0  0  1   0  0   0  .293

Totals                 33  6  9  6   2  6  10

BATTING: HR - A Rodriguez (20, 5th inning off Elarton 2 on, 1
out). S - D Oliver. SF - Sierra, Porter. RBI - Sierra (24), I
Rodriguez (33), A Rodriguez 3 (60), Porter (3). Runners left in
scoring position, 2 out - Kapler 2. GIDP - I Rodriguez, R
Palmeiro.  Team LOB - 5.

FIELDING: DP: 1 (A Rodriguez-R Palmeiro).

HOUSTON                ab  r  h rbi bb so lob   avg
Biggio 2b               4  2  2  2   0  0   1  .307
Lugo ss                 4  0  1  0   0  2   0  .263
Bagwell 1b              3  0  0  0   1  2   1  .277
L Berkman lf            3  0  2  0   1  1   0  .330
Alou rf                 4  0  0  0   0  0   4  .355
Hidalgo cf              4  0  0  0   0  1   0  .276
Castilla 3b             3  0  0  0   0  1   0  .238
 b-Vizcaino ph          1  0  0  0   0  1   0  .277
Ausmus c                3  0  0  0   0  0   0  .210
Elarton p               2  0  0  0   0  0   0  .083
 a-C Hayes ph           0  0  0  0   1  0   0  .189
 Ja Powell p            0  0  0  0   0  0   0  .000
 Slusarski p            0  0  0  0   0  0   0  .000

Totals                 31  2  5  2   3  8   6

a-walked for Elarton in the 7th; b-struck out for Castilla in
the 9th.

BATTING: HR - Biggio 2 (9, 1st inning off D Oliver 0 on, 0 out,
3rd inning off D Oliver 0 on, 1 out). RBI - Biggio 2 (30).
Runners left in scoring position, 2 out - Alou 1, Bagwell 1.
GIDP - Alou.  Team LOB - 5.

FIELDING: E - Lugo 2 (13, ground ball, throw); Ja Powell (1,
throw). DP: 2 (Lugo-Biggio-Bagwell, Bagwell-Lugo-Ja Powell).

--------------------------------------------------
    Texas          - 100 040 001  --  6
    Houston        - 101 000 000  --  2

--------------------------------------------------

TEXAS                        ip       h   r  er  bb  so  hr    era
D Oliver (W, 6-2)             6 2/3   5   2   2   3   5   2   5.96
Mahomes (H, 3)                  1/3   0   0   0   0   0   0   7.30
Petkovsek (H, 4)              1       0   0   0   0   2   0   6.17
Je Zimmerman                  1       0   0   0   0   1   0   3.58

HOUSTON                      ip       h   r  er  bb  so  hr    era
Elarton (L, 4-7)              7       7   5   5   2   5   1   6.52
Ja Powell                     1       2   1   0   0   0   0   3.93
Slusarski                     1       0   0   0   0   1   0   8.40

Ja Powell pitched to 2 batters in the 9th.

WP - D Oliver.  Pitches-strikes: Elarton 124-82; Ja Powell
19-14; Slusarski 12-8; D Oliver 102-68; Mahomes 4-2; Petkovsek
19-12; Je Zimmerman 9-7.  Ground balls-fly balls: Elarton 14-2;
Ja Powell 3-0; Slusarski 1-1; D Oliver 7-8; Mahomes 0-1;
Petkovsek 0-1; Je Zimmerman 1-1.  Batters faced: Elarton 29; Ja
Powell 6; Slusarski 3; D Oliver 27; Mahomes 1; Petkovsek 3; Je
Zimmerman 3.

UMPIRES: HP--Chuck Meriwether. 1B--Brian Onora. 2B--Mike
Fichter. 3B--John Hirschbeck.
T--2:51.  Att--43,277. Indoors.

ML       TEXAS AT HOUSTON
         NOTE:  THE HOME RUN BY HOUSTON'S CRAIG BIGGIO LED OFF THE BOTTOM
                OF THE FIRST INNING.  THE HOME RUN EXTENDED BIGGIO'S
                HITTING STREAK TO 17 GAMES.

I originally posted this video back in July of 2008, but I wanted to bump it up again as I was showing a friend of mine some BSG stuff, so I thought I'd bump it back up and add on.

Thanks to my site visitor Baldwin Smith for pointing out the embedded video above. It's a rather amusing video of the "Batting Stance Guy" doing his take on various Texas Rangers players both current and past. His rendition of Hank Blalock made me laugh out loud. Same thing for his Kenny Rogers one at the end of the video. :)

Thought y'all would want to see this.

UPDATE Feb 2009: Batting Stance Guy's website can be reached at well.. http://www.battingstanceguy.com. He has several team specific videos besides this one. However, one video I urge you to watch is the one linked here. BSG made an appearance on the Hot Stove program on MLB Network back in January where he talks about how he does all of this. He also runs through a bunch of players called out by the three MLBN guys (Victor Rojas, Harold Reynolds, & Mitch Williams). His take on Andre Dawson is quite hysterical, and to see him do Harold Reynolds right in front of him is great. Of course, he does Joe Carter in front of Mitch Williams as well. Definitely check out this video (and go watch MLB Network).

UPDATE #2: BSG was on again Feb 25th, and did all Reds in front of Barry Larkin & Sean Casey. Check this one out, too.

I am sick of talking about steroids. I have declared my Rangers website to be a steroid free zone going forward. I've also tweaked my header graphic to take note of this. I'm not writing about steroids again.

So. Alex came out today and admitted he did steroids for all three years he was in Texas. He claims he hasn't done any since then. There's no positive tests to combat that since then. However, given he lied about doing them here in Texas, who knows what the real truth is?

I actually kind of buy into his logic that he felt he needed to live up to the contract. I remember there being an awful lot of talk in that direction when he first signed here. How he chose to try and live up to it.. Ever since he left Texas (09 will now be his sixth season since he wore a Texas uniform), I've always personally thought he held up his end of the bargain by delivering on the field. I'm not sure what I think now.

However, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. In looking around for a pic of A-Roid to use in this story, look what I found in the archives. I had forgotten about this - it should have been so obvious!

One of the lesser used pages on my site is my archive of Texas Rangers pocket schedules. I've been collecting them since just before I started this site (Dec of 1998), and a few years ago I decided to fill in the holes and get every one ever made. The problem with that is that my research has turned up a lot of alternates. There's Spanish versions, multiple English ones, spring training schedules, etc... So a list of what the complete archive comprises is not available. Still, I've been trying to at least get all the years represented. Today I've done that.

Before I get to that, I wanted to draw attention to the first 2009 edition that I've seen myself. Features Josh Hamilton inside the ballpark. It shows off some of the more prominent tattoos on his arm, and given how great of a season he had in 2008, he probably deserves to be on the pocket schedule for 2009. That image is shown here. Based on what I've seen, there will be other 2009 variants, too. If any of you reading this are going to spring training in Surprise, can you pick me up a pocket schedule for spring training? They've had them in the past, and if they have one this year, I'd like to get one. Thanks.

As for the archives, I was fortunate to be sent an email from a Claude Jacques recently which completed the task of getting all the years on my archive. Claude runs a website dedicated to collecting pocket schedules. He's got just about every team in every sport, in every level of majors and minors you can think of. It's QUITE extensive. He was kind enough to send over everything he had relating to the Texas Rangers. After I went through and weeded out the duplicates of things I already had, he gave me 28 pocket schedule images I did not have before. I now have every year from 1972 through 2009 represented, and that's pretty cool. Of the 28 new ones, below are a few highlights of ones he sent over that I liked the look of.

Make sure to check out my archive of schedules where you can see everything I have. As usual, if you have a variant I do not, or you have a larger/better quality version of something I do have, please drop me a line. Thanks.

Pocket schedule design has come a long way from this one in 1972, eh?

I don't know how many of you made it out to any AirHogs games last year, but I made it to one. The last home game of the season, when they clinched a playoff spot. It was a nice place, and I had a lot of fun there. Hope to go back in 2009 again.

Anyway, I was looking through some pictures tonight, and ran across some I had taken for the purpose of putting together another panoramic picture. I did that tonight, so if you've been out to the place, here's a panoramic shot I took standing directly next to the batter's eye in center field. Click on the picture below to be taken to a larger version in my online photo gallery.

Additionally, I've published a few articles on my website containing other panoramic pictures I've taken of the Ballpark in Arlington, PNC Park, and Citizens Bank Parks. You can check out these stories here and here.

I have to say, once I got past my major irritation at not being able to get MLB Network on Time Warner in Garland, I have to say the channel is a major home run. I've really been enjoying the heck out of it. They recently announced their upcoming programming for the month of February, so I decided that I'd say something now that they're reaching the end of the first month of programming.

I don't watch everything there, as I'd have a hard time doing anything else in my life. As it is the nightly baseball news show is a season pass on my TiVo. It's called "Hot Stove" (although that will change to "MLB Tonight" once games start). It's basically four guys at a desk (from a rotating crew of guys) with some support staff in studio talking about the issues of the day, and other things like commentary on free agents, things of that nature. It's similar in feel to Baseball Tonight in that regard - but this "feels" somewhat different. I'm not sure how to describe it. Perhaps it's because the MLBN program is on at a time when Baseball Tonight is not - they generally are off once the World Series stops, so we shall see how viewing habits go once BBTN gets rolling again. Anyway, "Hot Stove" has segments where they interview players and other baseball related folks. I've seen real major league players in there, I saw Scott Boras in there, John Hart once, Nolan Ryan, and even Batting Stance Guy. A lot of times on Baseball Tonight, I tend to skip the "segments", but on MLBN I generally don't. That's not to say I haven't - if I'm particularly disinterested in a guest, I'll skip over it, but for the most part, I'm interested in Hot Stove from front to back. Maybe it's the personalities, who knows? I admit Victor Rojas is a major draw for me, and I've always thought BBTN made a mistake by dumping Harold Reynolds. There's been a rotating crew of other guys (Al Leiter, Mitch Williams), and whatnot. Really have enjoyed the "feel". I still think the set behind them is a little too busy with video screens, but I can live with that. This show is "new" on Monday through Friday at 6PM here in Dallas. It's repeated SEVERAL times during the day to help fill the 24 hours of programming, so even if you don't have a TiVo you should be able to catch it.

There are several other series on here. Shows about ballparks, specific "years" in baseball history, classic games, and all kinds of things. But one other thing I'm glad is on here is "Ken Burns' Baseball". I saw this originally when I rented the flicks from Netflix some time ago. As with a lot of people, I got my first taste of Buck O'Neill and the Negro Leagues from this show. Oh, I knew about the Negro Leagues before that, but it was a bunch of "black guys" playing baseball to me before I got to see more detail. I'm grateful to Ken Burns for bringing this to the light for me. I haven't seen this in awhile, and they've been running it every Tuesday night - this past Tuesday was Episode 4, talking about the 20's and Babe Ruth, mostly. Fantastic show if you've never seen it. Of particular interest is the fact that they have Ken Burns in studio with a recorded clip to go with each episode. It's him talking for about 5-10 minutes or so about the particular episode on that night. It's nice to have this new insight. But the best part was the news that they're doing a new episode. When the series first aired, it was right after the players went on strike in 1994, so that's roughly where that series ended. The new episode will pick up where the series left off, and go through 2008, so I'm glad to see a new one of those coming up.

But one show I am looking forward to is one that will started on February 20th, called "30 Clubs in 30 Days". It will be a one hour series detailing a preview of the upcoming season for that team. I expect this will be a good way to learn about teams that we might not know a lot about otherwise. I'm not sure if I'll watch all 30 of them, but I will definitely catch more than just my hometown Phillies, and my adopted team the Rangers. :) I did look ahead on their programming, and it appears the Texas Rangers episode will air on Wed March 18th at 5PM Central Time.

This 30 Clubs show speaks a lot to why I like this network so much. It's not like ESPN where they seem to have an affinity for just the Yankees & Red Sox. Last week they spent 20 minutes talking about the Royals, saw the Giants another night, and the Indians yet another. Sometimes I think ESPN forgets there's more than just Boston & the Bronx.

If you aren't watching this channel, you should be. Especially if you're stuck with Dish Network.

With the signing of Omar Vizquel this week to a minor league contract, it occurred to me that he might have been the second oldest player to sign with the Rangers. The oldest would be Nolan Ryan of course, but I thought Omar might be second, so I decided to look it up.

Broke out baseball-reference.com which lists the age of players in a calendar year. As I started looking into it, I found some interesting stats about the ages of Rangers players. Here's some bullet points (this also assumes Vizquel will play in Arlington in 2009):

• The oldest player period was Nolan Ryan. He was 46 years, roughly 7.5 months when he threw his last pitch in 1993.
• Omar Vizquel was the second oldest signee for a first time Ranger at 41 years, 9 months.
• If Omar Vizquel plays as a Ranger on his birthday, he will be just the third second player to play at age 42 (the first being Charlie Hough, the second being Nolan Ryan). If he wants to overtake Hough, he'd have to play as a Ranger in 2010, which is unlikely, as Hough was 42 yr, 8 mo, 3 weeks old when he played his last game as a Ranger on Sep 28, 1990.
• The number of players who have played in a Rangers uniform at age 40 or older is smaller than you think. Just eleven. I thought it'd be more than that.
• There were a couple years with more than one 40+ Ranger at a time. Not surprisingly, they all involved Nolan Ryan. They were 1992 (Nolan/45 & Brian Downing/41), 1991 (Nolan/44, Downing/40), 1990 (Nolan/43, Hough/42), & 1989 (Nolan/42, Hough/41),.
• The first player ever to play as a Ranger at 40 was Gaylord Perry in 1980 when he was 41.
• When the team was the Senators, there was never a 40+ player.
• The "youngest oldest player" was aged 34. This happened in four seasons (66-68 & 71). Oddly enough, they were all years in Washington. The Rangers have never had a 34 year old be the oldest player
• Some notable names that appeared on my research as "Top 3 Oldest Players for that Year" are.. Minnie Minoso (37, 1963), Don Zimmer (34, 1965), Frank Howard (35, 1972), Rico Carty (33, 1973), Toby Harrah (37, 1986), Goose Gossage (39, 1991), Mickey Tettleton (36, 1997), Mike Morgan (39, 1999), Sammy Sosa (38, 2007)
• Sandy Alomar Sr (34, 1978) & Sandy Alomar Jr (39, 2005) are the only father/son duo on this age list. :)

Here is the complete list of players who have played as a Ranger at age 40 or higher. Again, this assumes that Omar Vizquel will play as a Ranger after April 23rd.

46 - Nolan Ryan (1993)
42 - Omar Vizquel (2009)
42 - Charlie Hough (1990)
41 - Brian Downing (1992)
41 - Gaylord Perry (1980)
40 - Kenny Lofton (2007)
40 - Kenny Rogers (2005)
40 - Andreas Galarraga (2001)
40 - Tony Fossas (1998)
40 - Rick Honeycutt (1994)
40 - Tom Paciorek (1987)

A caveat about the above information. While bbr is the source for my data below, it doesn't seem to take into account the age of a player if his age changed in the season. I just went with the bbr number, as it would have been far too much work to see what the birthdate of every Rangers player was and figure it out that way. :)

Click through to the full story, as I included the complete research data from the entire franchise here. I chose the top 3 ages for each season, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. :) If you're reading this on a feed reader (or one of those sites that steals rss feeds to make their own stories), then you need to visit my site to get the whole thing.

Those of you who follow my site know that I put together an annual Yahoo Fantasy Baseball League. I will be doing that again this year. However, Yahoo has not opened up signups yet. So I have a question to those visitors of mine who participate.

Would you prefer a draft date as early as possible, or something closer to the start of the actual season, or something in the middle. Let me know ASAP, as I expect these things to open up for the 2009 season shortly.

2K Sports is deciding to use their official MLB license to produce another game beyond the annual "regular game" (this year being MLB 2K9). They've also had a pretty good side game called "The Bigs", as well as a downloadable game for the Xbox 360 called "MLB Stickball". However, coming in a week or two is a new one, called "MLB Front Office Manager".

If you're familiar with the game that EA put out called NFL Head Coach, you have an idea of what this is about. I know there's a group of people here who might be interested in this game due to the annual folks who play the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball league. This is a "Run every stinking little detail about your team" type of game. It's not a true "play the game" type of baseball game. This is not out yet, so I can't do a review on it, but I've always loved the game "Baseball Mogul" for years, and this seems like a snazzy version of that, so I'll probably be into it.

The primary reason I'm doing this story now instead of when it comes out is something about the game that just popped up. As you're probably aware, the Xbox 360 game has "Achievements" - little awards if you will that you get for doing things inside games. Every Xbox 360 has them. It's a requirement. Anyway, the list of achievements for this game came out today, and the game has taken the mickey out of the Texas Rangers a bit. Some of the achivements are standard things like...

• Complete an entire Amateur Draft.
• Manage a minor league game from beginning to end.
• Successfully sign 50 free agents to your team in Career mode.

However, the reason I'm posting this is because of this achievement:

Win the Rangers their first World Series in Career Mode.

Grrrrrrr. ;) In all fairness, they have the same achievement for eight other franchises, too - they're not solely picking on the Rangers. But thanks for the reminder that we haven't won a World Series guys. Appreciate it.

The game is coming out on three platforms. Xbox 360 (my preferred), Playstation 3, and PC. I have links to purchase all three here. The 360 version is above, and the other two are shown here:

Below is a video diary from the 2K Sports Website showing some of the gameplay. Check it out.

Today I managed to get my hands on a spring training roster. The cool thing about this roster was that it included uniform numbers. Those who follow my site know that's something I care about, so I took the opportunity to update my uniform number history section of the website with the 2009 number assignments. This includes everyone on the 40 man roster, as well as all the current spring training invites.

If you've never visited this part of my site, I have the history of each uniform number going back to 1972. I have the info from the Senators days, but I never seem to find the time to get that all in there. :)

Anyway, a couple of guys had changes in this list, they are:

• Joaquin Arias changed from 4 to 3, due to Jackie Moore's now having 4.
• Travis Metcalf changed from 30 to 15, due to Gerald Laird's departure.
• Josh Frasier's 66 was taken by Netfali Feliz. No idea what Frasier is wearing, or even if he's bullpen coach again.

Well, yesterday was the launch of the new year. It was also the launch of the new Girl of the Year Doll over at American Girl. I spent a few hours there with my daughter and my wife, it was a lot of fun (even if the place is seriously pink). :) It was also the launch of the new MLB Network, of which I have a few things to say.

First off, it was a great joy to see Victor Rojas up there. I didn't want him to leave - I frankly would have preferred he take the lead TV play by play job here, but I can understand from Vic's standpoint why he left here to go to northern New Jersey. He was sitting at the desk with Harold Reynolds, Barry Larkin, & Al Leiter. Harold I was glad to see again, as I always enjoyed him on Baseball Tonight. Particularly his sparring with John Kruk, so perhaps he can develope that same kind of rapport here with someone on MLBN. Assuming the duties we saw last night hold up, it appears Vic is the main "anchor" of the broadcast of the nightly news show.

The studio itself looked pretty good, although I do have one complaint. When they are showing a wide shot with all four guys in view, it was hard to see them. The screens behind them are fairly busy, and their heads got lost in the shot. When on a closeup of one guy this, was not an issue, but showing all four guys at once was hard to see any of them due to all the info that was going on behind them. Kind of like losing the ball in a bunch of white shirts. That's kind of what I felt. But that was the only negative I had to say about it. Seemed pretty good, and most of the on air talent had little to nothing to do, but that was just the first hour. I'm sure things will change in a month when spring training gets going.

There's a news scroll detailing current stories and events on the botom of the screen, much like is what is on ESPN's channels. This is on all the time, so if you're watching some of the older footage and non live programming hours, you can get updates there, too.

I watched most of the Don Larsen perfect game coverage. Was kind of cool to watch that. The game had a different feel back then. Really "feels" different with no camera behind the pitcher, and no closeups, and virtually zero graphics. On top of that, seeing the old commercials from 1956 was quite a blast, too. If you get a chance to watch this, it definitely shows you how different TV coverage is now.

I think it's a great idea, and should garner a lot of eyeballs for baseball fans. Once all the kinks are ironed out. Apparently, the launch has had some technical problems getting going on some carriers. I'm not talking about carriers that aren't carrying the channel (like Dish Network, although if you're on satellite you should be with DirecTV anyway). But some carriers like Time Warner here in the Dallas area are having some issues. I can attest to this myself, as I'm having some problems with the channel. The short of it is I have two TiVo's. One is an older Series 2 unit that uses a Motorola Cable box provided by TWC. The other is a TiVoHD unit that uses a M-type CableCARD. The Series 2 box can see the channel, but that's because of the Motorola box. My TiVoHD cannot see it. I called TiVo today and spoke with them on the phone for roughly an hour trying to resolve the problem. After speaking with more than one tech there, they concluded the problem was with TWC, and filed an official report with them over the channel. So basically, I can see it on the old small TV in my bedroom, but not out in the living room on my big TV with all the fancy HD stuff. :) I did some research online and happened upon this article over at bizofbaseball.com. It details some problems other carriers are having. It appears there's some techie stuff relating to TiVo units that use CableCARDS (that would be me and my TiVoHD), that prevents them from seeing the channel. Oh great.

At least I can see the channel on my old TV. It's not optimal, but at least I can see it. Hopefully this gets straightened out in short order, as I really wanted this channel in my living room on my big TV. Of course there's a separate issue of TWC Dallas not carrying the HD feed at all, but I'm trying not to get TOO worked up over this issue.

Anyone else in the Dallas area with a TiVoHD (or Series 3 or something like that) have the channel? Do you have a CableCARD?

I've been pretty busy dealing with various "real life" things the last few days, a kid who is sick, my own recovery, and a wife who is heavy into the 24 hour version of morning sickness. :) A few links that were sent my way I haven't had a chance to point out, but I'll do so now.

Sully Baseball

First up is from a blog called "Sully Baseball". It's named that because the guy who runs it is named Paul Sullivan. In his own words, here's why this link is of interest to folks who frequent my site... "I've been comparing the all time homegrown roster versus the all time acquired roster for each team. I've done a bunch of them and I just finished one for the Rangers.". The fellow is an admitted Red Sox fan with "Not a lot of knowledge of the Rangers". He did however, put together a decent cross section of all time homegrown players for us.

Here's his team for home grown Rangers:

C - Pudge
1B - Mike Hargrove
2B - Ian Kinsler
SS - Roy Smalley
3B - Dean Palmer
LF - Juan Gonzalez
CF - Oddibe McDowell
RF - Jeff Burroughs
DH - Ruben Sierra

SP - Kevin Brown
SP - Kenny Rogers
SP - Bobby Witt
SP - Rick Helling
SP - David Clyde

RP - Tom Henke
RP - Darren Oliver (Oliver was a starter with the Rangers, I thought)
RP - Danny Darwin
RP - Jeff Zimmerman
RP - Steve Foucalt

BENCH - Pete O'Brien
BENCH - Mark Teixeira
BENCH - Rusty Greer
BENCH - Tom Grieve
BENCH - Jim Sundberg
BENCH - Hank Blalock

The only major complaint I have is that Rusty Greer is not a starter. :) He also lists a starting lineup for imported players. What do you think of his choices?

Dallas Observer

The other link comes from the Dallas Observer. It's entitled "A Wishlist for Jon Daniels". He talks a lot about the details of what the team needs (it's a pretty good summary), but does have a point by point list which I'll get into.

Ben Sheets: They get so far as to say "don't eff this up". I agree, while not the sexiest signing, it could have a big benefit for us. His pitching coach is here, and Nolan Ryan is here. I think this can work, and think we should sign him. The fact that we have not so far tells me we're playing games over money. We've lost a bunch of guys like that in the past, I hate playing the game of contract chicken.

Randy Johnson: I think this would be OK if we sign him, but I don't think a ton would be different if he did not. As I've stated before, I'm indifferent towards him being here.

Ian Kinsler to LF: They say "Wise up and realize that Ian Kinsler sucks as a second baseman. Then, bite down hard and move him to left field." I can't agree with that. We have enough of an issue in the outfield without moving Kinsler there. His defensive numbers are better than his reptuation seem to make him out to be. Besides, if you move him to LF, then we need someone for 2B. I don't think Young wants to go back there, and my gut says that Elvis isn't ready. Plus we still need a full time 3B, I can't see how this would work.

Byrd & Salty to Boston for Buckholz: I can't see Boston moving Buckholz at all. This is s stupid idea on the grounds they won't move Clay at all. The deal I'm OK with, but since Boston has stated "no way", I think it's silly to just pile on more players to get him.

Keep your options open: Ran out of ideas eh? This is such an open ended vague remark, that it tells me they ran out of ideas to put on the list. Every GM "keeps their options open". Kind of a dumb remark, if you ask me.

While I like the free-form start of this article, the individual points aren't things that will work, or are realistic for the most part. Still, you should definitely check this out if you have not.

Today the Mariners hired Rick Adair as their pitching coach. I don't care.

I'm too pissed off at who they hired as their bullpen coach. John Wetteland. I've been saying for friggin YEARS since he retired he needs to be our bullpen coach. But no, we piss around and put other guys in there who didn't really want to be there. Let him get away and get hired by Seattle.

Way to drop the ball on that one Rangers.

I'm trying to clean out a lot of crap from my office today. I'm going to lose this office to the pending baby my wife and I are having next summer. To that, I'm going to be periodically putting things up here that some Rangers fans might be interested in.

I found two new still in the box bobbleheads.

One is the 2005 American League Batting Champion version of a Michael Young bobblehead. Presumably from 2006.

Another is a Hank Blalock bobblehead - the bottom of the box says (c) 2008.

If you're interested, make me an offer. I'm not looking to give them away for zero, just for something fair - you also pay for shipping (unless you're local and want to pick 'em up). Drop me a line. Thanks.

I know this is a Rangers site, but I wanted to pass along that you can pre-order the World Series DVDs / Blu-Ray discs now through Amazon. :) If you don't see the links, turn off your ad blockers for www.rangerfans.com. I don't run ads here, so there's no need to block me. :)

Here is a list of the extras that are going to be on the disc.

There goes Mark Cuban's chance to buy the Cubs. The Wall Street Journal is saying he was charged with insider trading.

Well, the World Series is over, and my home town Phillies won. It was quite a surreal feeling, my franchise is not used to winning. Yeah, you heard a lot about how we won in 1980, and that was awesome. I was 15 at the time. I thought it was great! Then the years went on, we got teased in 1983 with the Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, & Tony Pena mostly Reds Phillies team. We got teased again in 1993 (Friggin Joe Carter can TOUCH THIS!).. But overall, the Phillies are a historically bad franchise. They lose. A lot. So when I sat there on Wednesday night watching the three and a half inning game, I didn't know what to feel. I couldn't go much of anywhere, since I"m confined to a recliner or the bed due to my surgery, but at least I got to experience the World Series in High Definition (save for game 1, which was in a hospital bed). The parade is going on now as I write this. ESPNNEWS is carrying parts of it, but not the whole thing, which disappointed me. Hopefully the eventual DVD of the World Series will have the whole parade on it. To finish up on that, I'll quote a sign I saw in the stands right after the game was over. "Mitch, we forgive you!" :)

Anyway, now that the World Series is over, the other stuff starts. The off season. As with every Rangers off season, we'll be looking to shore up pitching. That seems to be the story every season. I'm sure we'll also hear a lot about how bad the Rays were last year, and they went to the World Series. While of course, anything can happen, I can't see the Rangers doing that. The Rays seemed to have a better foundation of pitching. We have too many holes to fill. Oh sure, a perfect storm of pitching would be great, but I can't see it happening.

Yesterday, the first batch of Rangers filed for free agency. I'll say something about them below. My gut feeling is no big name comes in here, if we do have any inbounds, it will probably be a name like a Joe Blanton that the Phillies got - no name that will set the world on fire, but someone who is "good". Might be via Blalock, who knows. Here goes, the Rangers who have filed for free agency:

Hank Blalock: I must not understand the technicalities of free agency filing, as the Rangers hold an option on Blalock. I was under the impression that he isn't a free agent unless we decline his option, which is unlikely to happen. I think everyone in the world expects the Rangers to pick up his option for 2009. After that, who knows - but I think there's a decent chance he'll get traded in the offseason for some sort of startng pitching. However, if Bradley doesn't return, it could make Blalock more attractive to keep - put him at DH, and play Chris Davis at first.

Milton Bradley: Milton has been making a lot of noise about how he will retire unless he gets a multi-year deal. Yes, he had a career year in 2008, and I have to admit, I liked him when he was on the field. But that's his big question mark. He missed a decent (if not a lot) amount of time on the field, and there was a scramble at the end of the season for him to get qualifying at bats. That is not the mark of a truly healthy player. I would love to have Bradley back, but the only way I see him back here now is if nobody will give him a multi-year deal. I could see us offering him a one year with a team option, but my guess is his ego won't allow him to accept that. Shame.

Bradley was also declared a Type B Free Agent on Friday. That's not as good news for the Rangers, as they were hoping for an A I'm sure. The Type B means that the Rangers wouldn't get a good pick if someone else signed him after we offered arbitration. As a Type B, the Rangers would get a supplemental pick only. Oh well.

Ramon Vazquez: He has been fantastic for us here, and the only way I see him returning would be if they decide to play him as a regular third baseman under the Chris Davis scenario I mentioned above. If his slot would be utility guy, I can't see that happening - he won't want to do that again, I'm sure, and he deserves a better spot. Plus we have some other guys who can do the utility thing a lot cheaper (Joaquin Arias, German Duran). I don't see him back. In memory of the 2008 season, I'll take one last lift of the finger under my nose in his honor.

Jamey Wright: Jamey has been a decent, if not spectacular reliever for us. However, it's always been on a minor league deal that he's made the club on last cut. I don't have any hard numbers or facts to back this up, but my feeling is that he won't be back in 2009, they'll want to take a chance on something or someone different.

Jason Jennings: Well, that didn't work. Guy was hurt all the time, made just six starts. Hard to judge. The local boy makes good story was a good touchy feely thing, but it didn't do squat on the field. Major unknown - I could see them offering him a minor league deal pretty easily.

That's about it for the first wave of moves. I'm going to try and be more forthcoming with my thoughts this season. I said that going into 2008, and I stuck with it for awhile, but kind of fell off. I guess with guys like Adam, Joey, & Jamey out there, I sometimes feel my little opinions aren't worth much.

But the reason I'm giving it a try is the folks who wrote me during my surgery and said they liked my site, and had been reading for awhile, enjoying what I do. Thanks to all who wrote in during my recovery, and a big thanks to all who prayed for me. I'm a big believer in the power of prayer, so to have random folks I don't really know that well pray for my recovery... it's a great blessing. Thank you.

Here is an email my wife wrote to several of our`church friends on Wed evening. I'm home now and am pretty much confined to bed.

Hello everyone,

What a long long day. First off, if you feel lead to forward this message on to others, please do so. I'm so tired at this point, I know there are others that I wanted to send this to.

Joe's surgery went well. We were at the hospital at 7 am for admitting into day surgery. They took him back quickly, then it was "hurry up and wait" time. Fr. Lawrence and Fr. Jeff from our church came out and blessed us both, which was great, and a huge emotional help to us. They took Joe upstairs at 9am, and I thought, okay, this is it, but the nurse came and got me again. More hurry up and wait time in a bigger room with more questions. Finally, around 10:15 (an hour 15 late) Joe was taken into surgery.

The doctor came out and talked to me, and said that the actual surgery lasted about an hour. Joe had a huge 4 inch cyst that was eating into the tibia bone. A sample was sent to pathology, but the Doctor felt that it was benign. He explained that he used bone chips and "bone marrow asperate" taken from Joe's hip to fill up the hole. The bone marrow asperate is suppose to encourage new bone growth. He basically described cutting into Joe's bone a little trap door, filling it up, and shutting it closed like a casket (his words NOT mine). This was a rare surgery.

Anyways, Joe is now in a full leg brace to keep his leg stable, and to keep his knee from bending. He will be in this brace for several weeks, this part is unclear, it depends on how his recovery is going. Joe got back into his room around 1pm, very groggy. He was feeling nausous, so they gave him more drugs for that along with good ol' morphine. He was out for a few hours, during which I went home to get him some things, and to check on Samantha.

He was up a few times, but he needs to use a walker for awhile. They will be sending him home tomorrow with one, along with some more drugs for pain. After dinner, he did take a nap before his Phillies were on tv in the world series.

I have to say, we had some of THE NICEST nurses ever at this hospital. Not only were they caring of Joe, but they were beyond kind to me. This hospital was an icecube, and one nurse brought me a blanket. When Joe's dinner came, they brought ME a dinner too. I didn't ask for one, but they said, "Oh, this one's for you too". I teased Joe that this was our anniversary dinner as our 12th wedding anniversary is this weekend, but we cannot celebrate this year. What a way to get a day to ourselves. :)

I stayed until 8:30, and then had to get home. I plan on going back early tomorrow as it is unclear when Joe will be dischared.

Samantha had a wonderful day with her Grandma, and Grandma took care of her the entire day. They played "Doctor Who" toys for several hours, and didn't even have to pull out all the art supply stuff that I had gotten as a distraction. Thanks be to God that Ellen came down, I don't know what I would have done, as Joe really needed me with him.

Thanks to all of you who called today, either on my cell or at the house. Thanks also to all of you who were praying for us during the surgery. It truly helped to know that so many of you were keeping us all in prayer. Please continue to lift us up in prayer, as recovery is going to be hard.

Good night, and blessings to all of you,
Lynn

Hey gang. Just a reminder I won't be around tomorrow, or much the next week or so. I'm having surgery to remove a bone cyst from my left leg (the tibia right below the knee). I'll be in a hospital bed watching Game 1 of the World Series.

I've been ordered off my feet, and off a chair in front of a computer for awhile, so I have no idea what my update capability will be like. Hope to have some new posts sooner than later. :)

Some general info about the problem:

I have a cyst inside the bone just under my left knee. It's what has been causing me so much pain lately. They were unable to 100% confirm that it was due to the fall I had a year ago, but he said it's possible. The reason they don't know for sure is because they would have had to have had a reference Xray from right before the fall. I saw the Xray myself - there's no mistaking it, it's quite noticeable in there. They're essentially going to be clearing out the cyst stuff, and then effectively "filling it with cement". That's obviously not what they're actually doing, but I'm a little unclear as I sit here right now what the material they're going to actually be putting in there is, but they did use the phrase "bone graft", which has an ugly sound to it. I was told they "don't take stuff from your hip and put it in there anymore like we used to", I believe it's some sort of synthetic something, but again, I'm not sure. There's some pictures and details about the condition and operation here:

http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00081

UPDATE 9/17 @ 8:15AM: The elimination number is now just three! Come on, let's bury the Yankees!

I took a look at the standings tonight, and noticed that the Yankees are 79-70, and in FOURTH place in the AL East. There's no chance they'll end up in the cellar, the Orioles have a firm grip on that.

But to see the Yankees in fourth was a surprise. But what I really enjoyed was seeing their "Elimination Number" at just 5. I'd say the Yankees being eliminated from the playoffs completely will happen before the weekend. The Yankees play the White Sox this week, and the Rays play both Boston & Minnesota. Might not happen on Wednesday like I'd like, but I figure the Yankees will probably be eliminated on Friday.

That will be a great moment - no Yankees in the playoffs for the first time in ages.

Unfortunately, they'll probably overreact and try getting every high dollar free agent for next year.

I'm also not sure exactly what day it happened, but I did also notice the Rangers were officially eliminated from the post season, too.

I'm a bit busy at the moment, and don't even have time to handle the smallest of updates. Will catch up in a few days.

That thing in Boston last night. Holy crap!

Since I know Jamey has been looking for this. Sorry buddy, but it's the best I could do. :)

Remember these? There was a series of kids' comic books in 2001 that were given away at the ballpark. Kind of amusing now looking back at it in 2008 that all four players had their name tied to steroids in some way. On top of that, the images on the book look pretty roided up. Yeah, I know, its artistic license for the superhero theme of the comic book, but still.

• Alex Rodriguez was the least connected, just a supposed rumor by Jose Canseco.
• Pudge was named in Canseco's first book, then got noticably skinnier after that.
• Rafael Palmeiro apparently lied to Congress about using, got busted, career ended in disgrace.
• Ken Caminiti. Well, he died of a drug overdose

Was looking through some old entries on my site, and saw that picture. Does anyone actually still have all of those?

I have a pair of tickets for Thursday's game which I cannot use.

Was wondering if anyone wanted them. They're in Section 325, Row 14, Seats 20 & 21 (end of the row).

I'm looking for $16 for the pair. If you're interested, please email me.

Last week I was interviewed by someone from the Dallas Morning News about my attendance at baseball games. Early in 2007 I did an article about attendance and the team's record. It included a graph, and the fellow from the DMN liked this, hence how we got to talking. The interview ended up with me generally griping that it's too bloody expensive to go to a ton of games, unless you're part of what a friend of mine calls "the boob job and cocaine crowd".

This article is out in today's Dallas Morning News paper, and is actually the lead story on the front page of the newspaper. The angle of the piece is "Why is attendance so bad?" I had a lot more to say in the interview than what was used, but that's fine - I know how newspaper interviews go. You say about 200 times more than what is actually used. They seemed to like my quote about "It costs $28 before you even buy your ticket". I did have a lot more to say about several other things to the DMN guy. The rest of this article is pretty much what I talked about.

I also had a lot to say about the 7PM start times. I hate them. Given that the article does say I live 33 miles from the ballpark, you have to consider my route to the Ballpark. I get done with work at 6PM, and for me to leave work at 6, drive through that nightmare that is rush hour traffic downtown, get out to the ballpark, park my car, walk to the stadium, get through to my seat, and IF I AM LUCKY I will be in my seat for first pitch. One other thing I said in the article that I was hopeful would make it in was that given how expensive these games are to attend, I want to see the whole darn thing. The 7PM start times make that near impossible for me, and I don't want to run around like a chicken with my head cut off just to MAYBE make it there in time. If I can't see the whole game, the heck with it, I'm staying home.

This is hindered by one major change in 2008. Parking. The team has screwed up the cash parking really good. Given that I used to go to so many games for over a decade, I knew all the good parking tricks.

That is the 2008 Parking map. The dirty little secret was that you used to be able to park with cash parking lot A. This was the best place to park, provided you got to the game about an hour ahead of time. If you got there too close, it would have been filled up, and you'd get stuck. But Lot A was the way to go for cash parking. Not anymore, it's been replaced with all voucher parking (meaning the common guy is blocked). In 2007, they did add a new lot, it is "Lot M". That actually wasn't too bad in terms of walking. I didn't mind that so much. Not as close as "Lot A", mind you, but not too bad. But in a brilliant maneuver, AFTER JUST ONE YEAR OF USE, it was deemed too nice of a lot, and also taken away from cash parking (per the map I'm showing here). That leaves cash parking all the way out behind the darned Siemens building. ANother really stupid move - take away parking for an OFFICE BUILDING. Brilliant maneuver. There is "Lot H", which is not all that bad in terms of walk to the park. It's a bit longer than I'd prefer, but it's hell of a lot better than the N, I, or G lots. Forget the H & F lots - I will never park there. Just ain't happening. I don't want to have to park, and THEN TAKE A BUS. Anyway, "Lot H", isn't so bad, but the problem is getting out. You're essentially trapped there, and when I parked there opening day it took A FRIGGIN HOUR AND A HALF just to get to Route 30. It's not so bad now that the season has started, but you have to leave the ballpark THE SECOND the game is over to make that a viable exit. If you don't (meaning use the bathroom, visit the gift shop), it will then take you 45 minutes to an hour to get to Rt 30, because all the other cards have clogged the roads in front of you. So yeah, Parking was SERIOUSLY screwed up in 2008, and that too has contributed to my not enjoying going out there anymore. It also contributes to the feeling that there's nothing to do out by the ballpark. There really isn't, but when you feel you have to get in your car immediately to keep yourself from spending the better part of an hour just getting to the highway, you don't WANT to stay there. You want to get out as fast as possible.

The biggest thing I seem to think that baseball teams have in their mindset is that they view the price of the ticket as the ultimate cost to attending a game. It is not. Not even close. The Rangers are right though in that the majority of their tickets are moderately priced. With all the deals and packages out there, it's not that hard to get a decently priced ticket. But understand this, Mr. Hicks/Nolan Ryan/Chuck Morgan/this year's guy who is supposed to increase ticket sales... THE COST OF TICKETS IS NOT THE PROBLEM - It's all the other bloody costs associated with the the entire Major League Baseball experience. As the article pointed out, it costs $28 for me to just get to the park. You buy the cheapest decent seat to sit behind home plate up top, and it costs $16. That makes it $44 for one game, and that's assuming you go by yourself, and don't buy anything at the park. Here's a list of costs..

• Ticket - $15.00 (in upper deck behind home plate, or $19 for things like Yankees/Red Sox) - but this is a wildly variable number. $15 is the low end of the spectrum. Yes, I know there are $6 seats, but nobody REALLY wishes to sit there, you sit there out of cost only)
• Gas - $16.00 (for me, I know this varies for people, but it's a real cost now)
• Parking - $12.00
• Large Soda - $5.50
• Hot Dog - $4.50
• Beer - $6.50 (could be $6.25 or $6.75, I forget which right this minute)
• Program - $5 (although it can be $3 if you use the coupon on your parking stub)
• Fitted Baseball Cap - $32.50 (yeah, there are cheaper ones, but the quality is nowhere as good)

That's just one of each of these things. Bring more people, and that cost rises exponentially. I know the "All You can Eat Seats" are an attempt to address the food cost issue, and that is a good deal, but for those of us who are already of uh, "portly build", it's actually embarrassing. "Oh look, the fat guy is in the All you can eat seats - I wonder how many hot dogs and nachos he'll pound down?" So no, I don't use this option. I also know you don't buy a cap every time you go, but one thing that gets talked about a lot when cost of baseball games are brought up is the "family experience". If you bring a couple of kids, and you can only go once or twice a year, then yeah, "stuff to buy" is a viable cost, too.

So yeah, with gas at $4 a gallon, and milk at roughly the same price, with everything else going up because of rising fuel costs, the $5 Racetrack gas gard is a nice idea, but it's like spitting in a swimming pool. It disappears immediately, and doesn't have any true lasting impact. To cover my gas going to one game, there would have to be four people coming out, and that's a lot of extra cost.

Yeah, I'm a bit angry about all of this. Because I now feel both priced out of the game, and squeezed out due to the mess that parking has become. Don't get me wrong, when I'm out there, and actually in my seat, I still love going to MLB games. But all the crap that surrounds getting me to my seat makes it impossible to enjoy it as much as I used to.

What would solve this for me? High Speed rail to the ballpark. I was hoping that when Jerrylandâ„¢ moved in next door, we might get some sort of light rail option out to the area. No such luck. When I grew up in Philly, I averaged a TON of games - on the order of 30 or so a year. The reason was cost. With a GOOD mass transit system, all you had to do was get on ANY bus in the entire system, and somewhere they would connect to either the Subway or the High Speed elevated train. The El would connect to the Subway, and you took the Subway in Philly to the end of the line. Get off the subway, and you were RIGHT THERE. No parking, no gas, no fuss. At my peak, I went to 45 games a year - almost all of them on mass transit. That would knock out a massive cost of attendance, and would allow me to go to more games. Yes. Guaranteed - put in light rail, and my attendance would go way the heck back up. But noooo. The City of Arlington had to get all pissy about paying for Dart, so there's no option there at all.

The article talks about my "church commitment". For the record, my church is building a new building, and we're currently in the "raising funds" part of that procedure. I went and took the cost list above and averaged it out via my personal spending habits at Rangers games, and worked it to be roughly $50 a game. I multiplied that by the number of games per year, and decided I'd rather give that money to Jesus Christ and the church than to Tom Hicks and the Texas Rangers. Its' going to serve a far better purpose bringing people to Jesus, than bringing people to the Ballpark. While I'm enough of a baseball fan that I can't go completely cold turkey and not go to any, my average of about 20-25 games has dropped to a projected attendance of six this year. I have just two more games I plan on going to this year. For the 2008, 2009, & 2010 seasons, my "Texas Rangers" money is going to my church so we can build a new facility. We're an Anglican church, and if you're in the Garland/Mesquite/Rowlett area, come visit us, we'd love to have you.

To sum up, yes I am donating a huge amount of money from what used to be my Texas Rangers "budget to my church. But even if I was not, I still would have not attended as many games due to all the other problems I've detailed above. Major League Baseball is always saying how "good" things are, and how much money the overall sport is making. Of course it is, they're making it on the backs of the peons who love the game, and are being totally squeezed out due to mostly cost. I know I am.

UPDATE: There was a photographer out at my office on Friday from the Dallas Morning News and took some pictures of me. That did not get used in the article, but I was able to get a copy of the picture that was submitted for the article. Had it been used, this picture would have been in the article:

Those of you who know my life outside the Rangers site know that I work for a video game company. I work for a company that puts out third person shooters (recent vintage would be Prey, and we've done Max Payne, and going further back, Duke Nukem). Anyway, I've been playing video games for quite some time, going back to my first system, the Atari 2600 in 1977. I've played just about all of them since then, and if there's one thing I do on a new console, it's play baseball games. I can't say I've played every single one, but I've played a great percentage. This past Christmas when I got a Playstation 3 from my company as a Christmas present, I immediately started looking into the situation regarding baseball games on this new console. I had played The Bigs on my Wii, and have been playing the 2K Baseball game on my Xbox console since it was called something else on Xbox 1.

The Playstation 3 console had the 2K game ported to it, but due to contracts, the only company who could make a PS3 specific game is Sony themselves. So I checked into the MLB 07 The Show game, and it had decent reviews, but from what I could gather was not the "killer app" baseball game for the console. Since this was mid December, the early remarks were out on the next iteration, MLB 08. They were looking pretty good, and since it was only for the PS3 (well, for the PS2 & PSP as well, but that's not germane here), I thought it would be a lot better. Console specific games usually are, since they don't have to worry about multiplatform issues, and can truly harness the power of a specific console. So I got excited about this release.

So we get to March, and the game hits the stores. I actually walked out of the store with a copy of MLB 08 the Show for the PS3, and MLB 2k8 for my Xbox 360. Brought them home, and fired 'em both up. I know the 2K series, having been with it for years, and the newest iteration of that game feels a lot like the same thing more or less. Oh, I know it's not, but it FEELS that way having bought and played every version for about five or six straight years. Then I hit MLB 08 The Show, and I have to say it felt like a breath of fresh air. Let's hit some "official" bullet points about The Show...

• MLB 08 The Show is the long running officially licensed baseball title available exclusively on all PlayStation platforms: PLAYSTATION 3, PlayStation 2 and the portable PSP.
• MLB 08 The Show is available exclusively for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable consoles.
• MLB 08 The Show is the best-selling and most realistic baseball simulation available.
• MLB 08 The Show for PlayStation delivers the closest experience possible next to actually playing in the Majors.

Most of that sounds like corporate selling stuff, but I will buy into the most realistic baseball simulation available. That is not corporate stuff. It's quite true. MLB 08 The Show kicks MLB 2k8 in the head pretty darned well. 2K had some major frame rate issues (which were helped, but not solved) with a patch. The Show was quite fluid from game one, and has remained so. I do not have an HDTV (yet), but even in standard def, The Show's graphics are way better. Also, something else I should point out. In this day when most games are gearing towards HDTV, they take very little care into how the game looks on SDTV's. 2K has some text that is COMPLETELY unreadable on my TV set - it's just too small. On an HDTV, that might not be a problem, but on my TV, it's rendered useless. MLB 08 The Show has no such problem. All the screens are rendered beautifully, and are totally readable.

One of those "intangible" things is the "feel" of the game. It's not something that I can pin down and say "OK, this menu does "X, and the other game does "Y" so I'm saying this game is better". MLB 08 The Show's menus just "feel" solid. Some games you look at the menus, and it looks pretty shoddily designed. Again, no such feeling here with The Show. The menus don't feel like you're going to break the game, they don't chug, and they perform like you'd expect them to. Basically I don't feel like I'm fighting the interface to find what I want here. I know most people don't care about the feel of the menus, but I do - and this excels perfectly.

One other thing I tend to notice about a lot of baseball games is not a lot of care is taken in how the fonts and lettering on the back of uniforms look. A lot of games look well, WRONG. The Show has no such problem. Check out these couple of shots, and they look right to me. You can click on either of them to see a larger image.

It's not just things like fonts on the player uniforms that look better. Ballparks, player models, umpires, everything just "looks" great. It's hard to quantify it, and give you the words that will make you believe this, but if you play it, you'll see it. Again, here's a few screenshots to show you what I'm talking about.

That's just graphics. The game play is solid, too. It took some getting used to the first few games I played, because I was so used to 2k's way of doing things, but once I wrapped my head around it, I had no problems going forward from that point. Hard to talk at length about controllers - they either work, or they don't - and this works. :)

The announcers I like a lot. The guys in the game are Rex Hudler, Matt Vasgersian and Dave Campbell. Dave Campbell was a guy I thought who was underused on Baseball Tonight, and Rex Hudler you know from the Angels. The other guy I admit to not knowing who he is, but that's not a problem. Hudler is "Hud" in the game, too. Has some goofy comments - try swinging at a pitch that you have no hope of hitting, or throwing to a base where nobody is, and you get a good chance at a "Hudism" being thrown your way. The Show also suffers far less from repeat announcers. A problem a lot of games have is that once you play them a lot, you hear the same "bits" over and over again. I've heard some repeating here for sure, but nothing even close to being in the same ballpark (har har har) as some other games (yeah, I'm looking at you Joe Morgan in 2K).

Probably the most hyped feature of the game is "Road to the Show". This is actually cooler than it sounds, provided you pick the right position. Basically you start this game by creating a player, and giving him specific abilities, you can customize just about everything about the player. One's initial thought would be to create a roid raging freak-a-zoid, and have him called up to the Show after his second game in the minors, but you can't just max out everything, you have a limited number of skill points you can distribute around, so it's more fair in that regard. I created a few players, and played this way for awhile. It's pretty cool, because your manager will berate you if you play like crap, and will bench you. You have to negotiate your contract in the offseason, and while I've never been outright released, I imagine that's in there somewhere if you play like a complete moron. One other thing about this is that the mode is geared around a single player, and actual in game play reflects this. YOU ONLY PLAY ACTUAL PLAYS THAT INVOLVE YOUR PLAYER! This is important, because if you pick what's regarded as a boring position (left field perhaps), not much happens. One time I picked first base, and 95% of my plays involve just running to first to have another player throw me the ball. That was really not very exciting, to be honest. If you are benched, the game might skip two or three games before you get called up as a pinch hitter. That's another drag - if you are playing a RTTS game with a bench player, the game has to load all the graphics, and all the sounds you normally would to play a game, just for one at bat. You spend more time loading than you do playing in that scenario. Don't get benched, you'll spend a lot of time loading. That nit aside, it's a very cool feature, and one of the stronger points of the game.

Some other minor things which are important is the ability to save in the middle of the game. For some reason, baseball games don't let you do that, but you can here. There's a really strong replay feature that is called "Replay Vault", which lets you go back to any play in the game and check it out. There's also customized personal music, really detailed stats on players, real life scores from MLB games in a ticker, MLB news, and the usual gameplay modes you see in baseball game (season, franchise, playoffs, etc). Franchise mode is where I spend most of my time, although RTTS was a really cool one that draws a lot of attention too. Anyway, Franchise has things like controlling player time, which you don't often see in that mode.

Players generally look more like themselves than other games I've played. There's also a boatload of personalized player moves, the umpires aren't generic, and the coach names are the right ones, too. There are a TON of features that I don't have time to get into here. I suggest checking out this Sony press release about the game - it goes into a lot more detail than I can here.

One other thing that I really like is the game has had weekly roster updates. It's pretty darned thorough, so if you're into having the current guys on your team, you'll probably be into this, big time.

There is one thing I wanted to say that I feel MLB 2k8 is superior to The Show in. That's a feature where you can collect and trade baseball cards. 2K has this thing where they have Topps baseball cards and you can collect them by achieving certain "objectives" with a player. You can also trade with others online, collect packs, and all that kind of stuff. I really REALLY liked that feature. In fact, if MLB 08 The Show had that feature, I would have NEVER played 2K's game at all. MLB 08 The Show's baseball game is far superior to 2k's now, and if either 2K did not have the cards, or the Show did have the cards, I never would have played anything but the Show. Hey, if the Show designers ever read this, stick in the card thing. Guarantee you it would get used.

My review of the game is based on my experiences playing the Playstation 3 version. The game is also available for the Playstation 2. My guess is the game is the same, just the graphics (for obvious reasons) aren't as strong. As for the PSP version, I have to image it's mostly the same but with FAR less sophisticated graphics. I can't speak to the PS2 & PSP versions, I have not played them.

If you have a Playstation 3, and never got the game, I strongly suggest buying it - it is by far my favorite baseball game right now. Below are some ordering links you can use to buy the game (click on the cover art). If you have one of these consoles, and like baseball games, I recommend it very highly. Back on April 11th, I asked about whether or not you had a PS3, and I gave away a few copies of the game back then, but I still have some left. If you have a Playstation 3, and have not played this game, please drop me a line. First two people to send me a PSN Friend request (to Joe3DR) will get it. Thanks. The remaining copies are spoken for.

Here are a few Youtube videos showing various aspects of the game. Check 'em out, they're quite cool.

I wanted to apologize to Ayn over at BNC for taking so long in getting this done. I was originally supposed to do this back in March, but as time marched on, I got more embarrassed at how long it took me to do this. Sorry about that!

There's been a lot of talk about Hank Blalock this year. Injured and off the field for the most part. Had a switch to first, and a not completely voluntary switch back to third while he was hurt. His second half stats have been not that good the last several years he's been on the field.

It feels, by reading all the local writers, that it's a foregone conclusion the Rangers will not pick up his option for 2009. Whether the team lets him walk, or trades him, I think most people feel he won't be here.

What do you think? I finally got around to changing the poll on the main page of my site, so if you're reading this from the RSS feed, please visit my site and vote in the poll. You can also leave a comment while at the site.

Was not Josh Hamilton's home runs. It was these guys in the back of the bleachers. :)

After beating the Atlanta Braves today, we head back out on the road for more Interleague play. We're about to hear a lot about how the Rangers were the "Washington Senators II" during the time they played in DC. As I've pointed out a few times, the Rangers are NOT the second Senators. They're the third team with that moniker (technically the fourth, but more on that in a bit). Most people will tell you the Minnesota Twins were the original Senators, and when they moved out of DC, the Rangers franchise became the second. All of this completely ignores the real original Washington Senators, who played from 1891-1899. While I admit, it wasn't a major team in the overall scheme of things, it did exist for about a decade. I guess it's not sexy enough to bring this up, which is why we never hear it.

As long as I'm totally nitpicking here, the 1890's Washington Senators wasn't the original Washington Nationals, either. There was a team that played one year - 1884 as the Washington Nationals. But that's seriously obscure, and since that was a completely different league, I'm not counting them as the first.

To sum this up, I wonder if this will be brought up, too. When the Montreal Expos franchise moved to DC and took on the moniker of the Nationals, they wanted to use the old red "W" cap that our franchise used to wear. Since the Senators team moved here, Tom Hicks still owns the legal rights to the "Washington Senators" name, which includes logos, uniforms, etc.. The Nationals franchise had to pay Hicks money to let them use the cap. Gotta love THAT. Baseball is now feeding off of itself in terms of places it wants to make money. :)

In the last few days, the Mariners have fired their GM, fired their Manager, and there's been a lot of talk about them dumping a bunch of players, and they have the worst record in baseball after being tagged by many to win the division. I think this image is appropriate. :)

There's a site I frequent quite often, it's called "The Biz of Baseball" run by a fellow by the name of Maury Brown. If you are interested in the business dealings of the sport, it's an invaluable site (even if you're not interested, it's just good reading). Anyway, in December of 2006, they ran an article called "32 Voices on the State of the Game". It was an article with a sort of free flowing stream of consciousness from several completely different viewpoints. It was quite compelling. Well, they've done it again.

Out today is the next installment, entitled "The State of Major League Baseball 2008". The odd thing (to me) about this entry is that I was asked to contribute to this new article. That was mind boggling to me, as I consider myself a small fry when it comes to things like this. But Maury persisted, said I was someone he definitely wanted a "a new voice that was a fan perspective". So I sat down and wrote. If you're familiar with this site, you know I can tend to "go off" on tangents, and just get mad at stuff. That's kind of what I did in my piece. So check out the new article, not because I am in it, but because there's a lot of good thoughts in there.

I still feel a bit "tingly" to be in the same piece with some heavyweights and big names like Chuck Armstrong (President, Seattle Mariners), Jerry Crasnick (ESPN Author), Jeff Erickson (Rotowire), Brent Gambill (Producer, XM Satellite Radio's MLB Channel), Jeff Passan (Yahoo), and of course Ken Rosenthal (from everywhere). Thanks Maury!

Edit: After getting permission from Maury, here's my piece from the full article.

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." (1 Timothy 6:10)

I'll start off with a theft from Will Carroll. It comes from the first Voices entry of this series.

"Saying what's right and wrong with the game is an exercise in hubris and futility."

Will's right. It's hard to have a good, honest list as to what is right and what is wrong that covers everything, which everyone can agree with. Even if you could make the list, would you want to? The flaws are what make the game. Baseball is a confusing game to "figure out". You think you have a handle on how it should be done, and then find out that you don't. But as humans, we tend to complain about things first. Most of the complaints you hear about about baseball are "too expensive" or "steroids".

The bigger complaint is about money, though. There's lawsuits about statistics (who owns the numbers), so much advertising that the head spins, a cost of parking and gas that is more than tickets in some places, and the price of concessions? Ha! Heck, the mlb minimum salary ($390,000) is so far out of whack with the "real" minimum wage ($12,168, assuming 40 hr work week) that it's mind boggling how far removed from reality MLB seems to be when you talk about money. Everything is about the "Baby Ruth Home Run Challenge", or the "DHL Pregame show", or the "Monster.com All Star ballot", to things like whatever the name of the Giants park is this week, and all that. You could take up the space that all 30 of us are using to talk about corporate naming issues. Heck, I saw a McDonald's logo ON THE PITCHER'S MOUND in PNC Park when looking at it in Google Maps. My kid's bobbleheads have half a dozen logos on them, nothing can get out there without being sponsored. I'm surprised there aren't some sort of logo inside the men's urinals in the bathrooms - or on the hot dogs themselves! We have so much money floating around the game that if baseball gave a religious tithe like Jesus commanded, we could probably do away with a lot of poverty in places. Don't even get me started on the extortion of cities that is building new stadiums.

On top of the things with money, then there are the things that are just confusing. For example, MLB made a major stink recently about how games are "too long", and they want to shave some time off. I think I read where the average time is longer by a matter of single digit seconds. Not minutes, but seconds. So what comes out at the same time? The note that we will have instant replay for home run balls, and for balls by the foul pole. They make a major deal about games being too long, then add a time suck like instant replay. Want the games to move faster? Call the bloody strike zone the way it is defined in the rule book. There's several rules that are already on the books that if actually ENFORCED would make the games go faster. Man, that's just perplexing.

A lot is made of the fact that it's a game meant for kids, but so many ancillary things around the game are things we have to "explain" to kids is a major hassle. As the parent of a three year old, I'm enjoying teaching my kid that a home run is not just when they "run" around the bases - they have to hit the ball over the fence. If I had to get into why Barry Bonds looks like a horse, or why she keeps hearing the words "performance enhancing", I don't know if I'd try to get my kid into baseball. There's so much business around the game, that it almost doesn't feel like it's for "kids" anymore. We're teaching kids to get ahead, get the biggest signing bonus there is, you'll "strike it rich with Scott Boras", etc, etc, etc.. That's why I'm enjoying Josh Hamilton now. A man who has discovered God, and is not afraid to show it. Good for him. Oh, he's not the only one, but he is a local one to me, so I hear about him the most. When you hear so much bad about the sport all the time in the media, it's nice to hear something nice like that.

What is The state of baseball? The state of "baseball" is fine, despite all the negativity above. The sport is too good to kill, but if you're reading the website this article will appear on, you probably know this already. The most vitriolic complainer will still love sitting out at the park watching the game. Baseball will sometimes go and do something very nice - like the recent Negro League player draft at the recent MLB draft. I enjoyed that moment a lot. So yeah, there's good there, but there's SO MUCH negative it feels that it's hard to find the good (outside the actual game itself).

P.S. I would like the return of scheduled doubleheaders - heck, give me a tripleheader!

OK, Michael Young is at 22. I wonder how much longer until the Dallas Morning News creates this series of graphics. You guys remember this?

Funny thing about that graphic is that when the DMN was doing that, they pre-made the graphics up to like 32 or something like that, and they were all just sitting on their server. If you found out the actual URL for the file, you could manually see the ones beyond 28. Was amusing to me at the time to see how far they thought the streak would go. :)

There was a nice article in the Dallas Morning News in Saturday's paper about Tom Grieve, his career, and his forthcoming cancer surgery. Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to it online. If you know where it is, please post a link to it in the comments. As his surgery is in the next couple of days, I'd like to lift up a prayer for Tom. I don't know how to contact him personally, so I will have to use this site as my vehicle for prayer.

Dear God, our father in Heaven, I'd like to lift up Tom Grieve to you. His surgery for cancer is this week, and you are a God of healing. You are a God that can do anything. I pray that you will be in the hearts, minds, and hands of the Doctors who will be performing the surgery on Tom. I pray that your will be done during the surgery, and that your mighty hand will be with Tom, and that any cancerous cells be removed from his body, never to return again. Tom has brought so much joy to so many through his body of work with the Texas Rangers baseball team that I pray that the love and joy that is your nature be with Tom's family at this difficult time. I pray that his recovery be speedy and swift and that Tom is able to return to the life and the place that you have put him in for the enjoyment of all of the fans of the Texas Rangers baseball club. I pray all this in your son's name, Jesus Christ our saviour. Amen.

Tom, I'm hoping you will see this before your surgery - I know you're a busy man, and know that I will be in prayer for your recovery from the surgery this week.

As you've noticed, I haven't updated for the Rays series. I just haven't had time. I planned on doing that this morning, but got handed a huge project at work, and can't now. I'll try and catch up over the weekend on those - although it might be my first series skip of the year if I get too far behind. :)

Update: I ended up taking the cheap way out and I didn't do updates for the Rays series. I did go back and add marker pages, because the new way I do the site means that if I don't have a marker page with at least the win/loss & score, the schedule page won't have any results for that date. :)

I had someone email me about what appears to be an old promotion of some sort. I told him I didn't know anything about it, but I thought I'd harness my website, and post his email here. Does anyone know anything about this? Get back to me, and I'll pass on what you said.

Hello, my name is Tom. I am in Minnesota, I was wondering if you knew anything about 2 records that I have, They are 45 records, the song is ( Nolan Ryan, hes a hero to us all) the artist is jerry jeff walker, date of records is 1990, the cover also says, limited edition no. 003846 of 5000.available exclusively at Arlington stadium or through tried and true music. Anyway just wondering if you have seen these before, or if they are worth anything to ranger fans, please e- mail back , Thanks!!

The official rules of Major League Baseball are available on their website here.

However, does anyone know if there's pdf version available? They have several other documents available in pdf format, but I've yet to see the official rules that way.

If anyone has seen that, please let me know where to get 'em. Thanks.

I was going through my photo gallery today, and this picture came up at random. Whenever I see it, I think this should be a legitimate sign, and not a fan made one. What do you think?

Whenever my wife sees someone wearing #7 or #29, I usually hear "That's not Pudge" or "That's not RUSTY!"

I get a decent collection of emails in my almost 10 years running this site. Most are pretty nice, and occasionally, I get some that are somewhat rude. Like this exchange. Last night I get an email from a guy. I won't name him, but let's call him Oscar for the sake of this discussion. Unsolicited last night Oscar sends me this email:

I don't know about you , but the Rangers are bad enough on their own , but that pissant announcer Josh Lewin makes me sick while I watch a horrible game

So I wrote back a couple of hours later with this:

I can't help you there. I like Lewin. Also, "pissant" won't foster many good conversations, really.

One other thing I should add is all the emails I send out have a bible scripture in the signature. I change it from time to time, but the current one is Philemon 1:6, which reads, I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. This will come up in the next sequence.

So this evening, I get another email back from Oscar, saying this:

Ok , Joe , I apologize for offending you . Looks like a clear case of me barking up the wrong tree . My mistake by writing a letter to a person who has a ranger baseball site but is not that much into baseball . Josh's penchant for talking about anything other than baseball is ludicrous , but if that's your cup of tea , more power to you . Maybe one day you'll appreciate the great game of baseball for what it is , the national pastime , NOT a forum for lame comedy acts.

BTW , Jesus never played the game

Now, I know Josh Lewin isn't everyone's cup of tea. I realize that. I like him, but I don't go around calling him a pissant, or assuming people's appreciation of the game is based on whether or not they like a particular television play by play announcer. That seems quite out there, and is the reason I'm posting this. The entire exchange seems quite bizarre. Anyway, I sent this back to him...

>>Ok , Joe , I apologize for offending you . Looks like a clear case of me barking up the wrong tree . My mistake by writing a letter to a person who has a ranger baseball site but is not that much into baseball .<<

I'm very into baseball. Moreso than I think you possibly realize or assume.

>> Josh's penchant for talking about anything other than baseball is ludicrous , but if that's your cup of tea , more power to you . Maybe one day you'll appreciate the great game of baseball for what it is , the national pastime , NOT a forum for lame comedy acts . <<

I'm 42. Been paying attention since I was 7. Thank you for assuming you are aware of all the facts of my life and that you know enough about me to assume you know what's going on in my mind and how I appreciate things. Insulting me merely because I like something you don't is a pretty narrow minded view of the world and people. Grating emails like that don't make me want to explain myself to you. Just makes me want to stick you on ignore, so I don't have to see you again, but I won't do that.

>> BTW , Jesus never played the game <<

No, but there's a lot to learn from Jesus about anger and poor attitudes towards people.

I really am perplexed by this. I will pray for understanding on this Oscar, as well as for your rather open hostility towards me.

Someone care to tell me (besides Oscar) if I'm off base here?

UPDATE: Friday evening, I got this back from our buddy Oscar. I don't quite understand him at all.

why waste your time responding to a person who obviously is beneath you ? I've got all day , but your message of hope is wasted on cretins like me. Strike me from your reply list

So I gave him this in reply, but I think I'm done here unless he wants to discuss the Gospel some more.

It's not my message of hope. It's Jesus' message of hope, and it's never a waste of time. If you'd like to talk about it, I'd be glad to. Here's one that I think applies to you.

"This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (Romans 3: 22-24)

Dear Mr. Hicks.

We suck.

Lovingly,
Joseph M. Siegler

P.S. You should have retired Johnny Oates' number when he was alive.

A friend of mine sent me this video, which he found on one of my regular Anglican news websites. Anyway, it's a video where some folks turned a random minor league game with 10 year olds into something resembling a major league game.

If you have a kid who plays ball, you'll probably find this amusing.

I was curious to know if you are a visitor to my site if you have a Playstation 3.

If you do, I was wondering if you've played MLB 08: The Show.

If you have a PS3, please leave some feedback to this post, even if you have not played the game. I will explain why shortly.

One of the lesser known things I have on my site here is my archive of pocket schedule images. I say that because I myself neglected it, and never updated it with the 2007 images. Now that I've been out to a game, and obtained the 2008 pocket schedule, I scanned it in, and put it on my page of images, which you can check out by clicking here.

I've been collecting these myself since about 1996 or so. I moved here in late 1992, but never saved them until a few years later for some reason. Also for some odd reason I don't have the 2005 pocket schdule.

The collection is definitely not complete, there's holes in the past. A few times I've gone out on the net looking for images. Most of the stuff I have up from the 70's and 80's is there because it was on an Ebay listing. I would like to get really decent quality copies of the entire past, but I know that's a big deal. The Rangers themselves might have copies in their archives of the old ones, but they wouldn't be open I'm sure to letting me borrow them to scan (rightfully so, I wouldn't honor that request if I was them).

That's why I'm posting here. Do you the reader have copies of Rangers pocket schedules that are not on my page, or have a better quality copy of one I do have? If so, please drop me a line. I'd love to hear from you. But even if you don't, check out my archive of old pictures. Interesting to see how the layouts have changed over the years.

In case you haven't seen it, there's a very good interview with Chuck Morgan over at the Ft Worth Star Telegram. You should read it. It's nowhere near as long as I would have liked, but it was definitely a good read.

I hope there's a much more in depth interview with Chuck coming in the program this year. There's some really good interviews in the program the last few seasons; I hope they give Chuck a good article in the program this year as the 2,000 games milestone is a good one, and should be

Chuck has been here for awhile, and like Bob Sheppard, I hope he's here for a very long time into the future. The only thing I personally want to happen when Chuck eventually hangs up his mike is to hand pick his successor. The last time the Rangers tried to pick someone (or more specifically this ownership group tried to pick someone), it was a seriously long ride on the fail train. Chuck is as much a part of Rangers baseball as anyone on the field. They simply cannot make the same mistake again. Does anyone even remember the name of the guy who handled the mike when Chuck was in Kansas City for a year? I certainly don't.

That's an idea - how can we get Chuck Morgan into the Rangers Hall of Fame? I assume it would be the same conditions as Tom Vandergriff. As Chuck partially runs the thing (at least I think he does), I doubt he'd be thrilled with putting himself in there, but someone has to do it. Anyone else think this should be done?

A few seasons ago, Chuck was kind enough to invite me into his office for a look around during some pre-game down time. I have had some pictures of that up for a long time, but I thought I'd take this chance to point them out. Click here to view some pics of Chuck's setup. Granted, these pics were taken in 2004, but I doubt it's changed all THAT much. Here's a sample... This is what Chuck sees out his window.

Oh look. Galloway is bitching about the Rangers again. Is anyone else sick of this guy's constant complaining?

Now I'm not saying he should be happy all the time, but he just bitches and bitches - and it's turned me off from wanting to read him anymore. Now I know he's been at it a long time - he covered some truly BAD teams (some of that is detailed in the wonderfully written book "Seasons in Hell" by Mike Shropshire), but I'm just tired of his constant complaining about the Rangers.

Funny thing is I grew up in Philadelphia, and I saw where that can lead you. A once great sports writer there by the name of Bill Colin has turned really vitriolic towards his local team in his old age, something that Galloway will probably be if he's still doing this in another 10-15 years or so, although it might take less time.

One positive thing is that Galloway at least knows baseball, something that Jean-Jacques Taylor at the Dallas Morning News doesn't seem to have - every time I read one of Taylor's piece, it makes me think he feels like he's the same as those call in guys on post game shows that go "Hey, how come we don't spend some money and get some pitching?" - you know the oft repeated, not very well thought out questions.

Sigh. Don't even get me started on The Ticket. If either Galloway or Taylor read this, I'm sure it will be dismissed as just "one of those bloggers", but screw that. I'm a fan before I'm a blogger, and I tire of reading nonstop complaining about my team.

They should all be fired and replaced with Jamey Newberg.

If you read my site on an RSS reader, you might notice some repeat entries. This was because I discovered this morning that I forgot to cover a game last week, and as such, my game count was off. I had to adjust the "game numbers" for about 5 game recaps, and as such, it changed the URL's for a few entries, and put them back into the RSS feed. Sorry for the confusion.

You know, if the Rangers were in the National League, it would provide Josh Lewin with a lot of reasons to talk about the Mendoza line. Having Luis Mendoza bat, and having his average below the Mendoza line would be something we'd hear about all the time. Don't you think?

Back on Sunday, Joey Matschulat over at Baseball Time in Arlington posted this..

Don’t think a tornado could ever hit Rangers Ballpark in Arlington while a game was in progress? Think again. The National Weather Service has confirmed that an EF2 tornado swept through downtown Atlanta on Friday night, sideswiping the 71,000-seat Georgia Dome during an SEC tournament basketball game between Mississippi State and Alabama and tearing multiple holes in the dome’s roof with 2:11 left in overtime.

One can only shudder to think what kind of havoc such a traumatic weather event might create at an outdoor sporting event.

Well, that's been done already fictionally. Some time ago, the Discovery Channel ran a show called "Perfect Disaster: Supertornado", and they had a digital representation of what would happen if an F5 tornado hit the Ballpark in Arlington. They use actual footage from the park, and refer to it as "Dallas Stadium", but Rangers fans know what this is.

It's fairly horrifying to watch, even though it's completely fabricated. Not so much from gross things on the screen (they do not have people flying around in the tornado, but you know that would happen), but from the possibilities it rases in your mind. If things like that disturb you, you might not want to play this.

I've written a few times about baseball cards on this site. Those who know me know that one of my all time single favorite cards is the 1976 Topps Philadelphia Phillies Johnny Oates card. That card has been with me a long time, and even made it to the Oates HOF retirement ceremony a few years ago.

Anwyay, I ran into an article on ESPN tonight I wanted to draw your attention to. It's about baseball cards, but it's not the usual angle you run into. It's about baseball card photographer Gregg Forwerck. Gregg has been taking photos for Topps for the last 19 years.

I was into getting cards when I was a kid, but mostly I just wanted my Phillies cards, the rest meant nothing to me. I've chronicled that too, as I would always get Julio Franco cards for some reason. He was my most "repeated" one, to the point that I would get mad when I got them. Even after I stopped, I always checked out a pack or two, and around 1990, I'd still get his Rangers cards. Stupid Julio Franco. I wasn't a bicycle spoke collector, I would get them and put 'em in a box - doing the trading thing and all that. I got back into it around the time I got married, and have been collecting sets since then. So I've seen a lot of pictures. I always wonder who takes them. This article speaks to that.

According to the article, Gregg's first job was for $100 in 1989 for Topps. The article talks about his rise to be what he is now, and some of the more famous players he's taken pictures of. One of the more interesting stories is one he tells about Nolan Ryan throwing a ball at the dirt in front of all the card photographers once. The article is written around Gregg's appearance in Surprise to take pictures of Jarrod Saltamacchia & Josh Hamilton this spring, so there's a Rangers connection to the piece, although it's not really about the Rangers as such. If you ever collected baseball cards, this is an article for you. Definitely check it out.

One other thing about baseball cards I thought I should point out. In the last two years, Topps has started a disturbing trend of photoshopping cards. I noticed it last year, but didn't say something. Since I've already started talking cards, I thought I'd bring it up. For the longest time, you'd get Series 1 of a year's set right around the start of spring training. You'd get Series 2 in the middle of the season, and the update/traded set for that year around the time of the World Series. I guess someone at Topps decided that they didn't want players with the wrong uniforms in their "Series 1" cards. All the guys who were traded or signed elsewhere during the offseason generally didn't get picked up in Series 1 as being with their new teams unless it happened early enough before the cards went to print. This started with the Series 1 set for the 2007 year.

Topps started photoshopping them at this time. The problem is that I know there's NO WAY they could have player pictures with real game action in the uniform they were in on the card. It just strikes me as fake. For the most part, the photoshop jobs aren't all that bad. But you KNOW they're fake, so that takes it down a notch in your mind. Sometimes they're quite obviously fake, like the 2007 Topps Derek Jeter card having Mickey Mantle in the dugout with him, and George W. Bush in the stands - uh WHY? What was the point in that?

As for "why" those two were in there, I can pass it off as a gag, since they're so obviously out of place. But other stuff is more bothersome to me. Am I just being a baseball card snob and not wanting people to mess with the pictures? I wonder what folks like Gregg Forwerck think about stuff like that? The Topps 2007 Frank Catalanotto card is a fake. His card came out in Series 1, and at that time, he had not yet played for the Rangers in his second go around. If you look at the card, it just looks like a bad photoshop edit. His forehead seems too big for that hat. Couldn't they have found a better pic to edit? Look at this:

I've always felt this Cat card looks bad. First off, I know it couldn't have existed, since they wouldn't have used a picture from the last time he played with the Rangers in 2002. Plus the batting helmet just looks really fake there to me. I've always thought this, but have never expressed it on my site here before (I think). Am I alone in this? Am I really the only person who thinks this looks like crap?

Another thing that's bugged me about baseball cards is how they're picked. I know not every player gets in, and that's fine, but what's the selection criteria? You have to include the big names obviously, but how does Topps draw the line as to who doesn't get a card? With all the rookies and whatnot that we'll never see beyond their card, one wonders what the guys who DO get to the show feel when they don't get a card, and all these minor leaguers do. Then you get things like Edgar Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Steve Trachsel of the Orioles. In the 2007 Topps series, they both got two separate cards. Base card number 462, as well as 296 in the update set for Gonzalez and base card 558 & update set card 5. I never quite understood that. Why two cards for the same guy? Aren't there some other players who didn't get a card at all that could have taken that slot? Heck, there's Elizardo Ramirez who is in camp with the Rangers now who got two cards (84 & 554) in the base set. If someone was in base and the update set, and HAD been traded, I'd buy that. It would make sense. But when both cards were on the same team, it doesn't. If someone from Topps actually reads this, I'd be curious to hear an explanation. The baseball card blog "Stale Gum" has written about this subject a bunch.

But the fake cards bother me more than the multiples in the same year. About this time last year I was going to do an article about the 2007 cards, and had kept all the fake ones out so I could compile a list, but I had forgotten to do it, and now all of the ones I had picked are lost (although the Soriano as a Cub card comes to mind). But this trend has carried on into the 2008 Topps series. I've had Series 1 for about a month now, and have noticed them doing this again.

Is it really that bad having Miguel Tejada in an Orioles uniform, or Miguel Cabrera & Dontrelle Willis in Marlins uniforms while the cards say Astros & Tigers respectively? It really can't be.

The Andruw Jones ones doesn't look quite as bad as the Catalanotto one above, but it isn't that great. If you look at the larger version of the picture (you can click on any of the cards below to see a larger version), you can clearly (I believe) see that the outfit has clearly been altered. Not only that, but if you pay attention like I do, that's Jacobs Field behind him in the picture. The Atlanta Braves played in Jacobs Field in 2007 in interleague play. The Dodgers did not. That means one thing - FAKE CARD!

I wonder what Gregg Forwerck thinks of all this. I think I need to find an unedited version of Billy Ripken's 1989 Fleer card, however. That made me laugh. :)

I would love to hear from some of you who collect cards about this. What do you think about the "fake/photoshopped" cards? Does this matter to you?

Still taking a short break from updating. What I didn't mention the other day since at that time I wasn't ready to talk about it is that my wife and I lost our baby. We were pregnant. Not anymore, unfortunately.

I wrote about it at length at my personal blog. You can read about it there if you'd like.

I hope to be back and running again over the weekend.

I know it's early to do this, but I have to take a break for a couple of games.

My wife is having outpatient surgery for something today (why I don't want to get into here), and it's going to knock her out of "mommy" commission for a few days. My mind will be elsewhere, so I'll catch up when things are slightly more normal.

TR Sullivan's weekly mailbag for the official Rangers site is up. Normally I don't point those out, because I figure if you're reading my site, you're reading the official site, too, and don't need me to tell you that. This time, however I want to point it out for two reasons.

First is the fact that there are no stupid trade scenario emails. TR Sullivan (Rangers/mlb.com) & Evan Grant (Dallas Morning News) handle the two biggest weekly Rangers related email newsletters. And the one thing that's bugged me about both of them have been the persistent inclusion of totally stupid non thought out trade proposals. Now I'm not beyond my own goofy trade ideas, but these guys are pros. They know these things are dumb or unrealistic. What I want to know is why they keep publishing them? Are they that short on submissions that they need to publish those? Anyway, I'm glad this one didn't have any, TR, let's try and keep it that way, eh?

Second, there was a good question asking about the organization of the Rangers' minor leagues. Now to someone like Jamey, that was a "skip" when reading I'm sure, but I thought it was good information, so I'm going to replicate it here. Thanks for that one, TR..

The Rangers have six farm teams. Let's go from bottom to top with general but not necessarily strict guidelines:

Arizona Rookie League Rangers -- This team starts in June right after the First-Year Player Draft. It consists of high school players from the Draft and young Latin players in the United States for the first time. Almost all players are 20 and under.

Short-season Class A Spokane Indians -- This is another league that starts right after the Draft. Most college-drafted players start here, plus players up from the Rookie League.

Low Class A Clinton Lumberkings -- Each team has two full-season Class A teams in one of five leagues. The Midwest (14 teams) and South Atlantic (16 teams) leagues are considered the low Class A, which simply means the players are younger and less experienced. Clinton (Iowa) is in the Midwest League.

High Class A Bakersfield Blaze -- The California, Florida and Carolina Leagues are the high Class A. Bakersfield, of course, is in the California League. The competition is a little tougher.

Double-A Frisco RoughRiders -- The jump from Class A to Double-A is the biggest jump in the Minors. This is where you really can tell if a player is a serious prospect.

Triple-A Oklahoma RedHawks -- This is the last stop on the Minor League ladder and some players skip this level (Ivan Rodriguez) and some (Young) only stay for a limited time. Many teams stock their Triple-A team with former Major League players to provide depth in case of injury.

One last thing on the trade proposal thing. If you guys are putting them in there for mocking the request, that's fine, but you don't seem to be harsh enough. I absolutely loved Steve Busby on the old KRLD call in show, as he'd mercilessly mock callers who spouted off stupid stuff - and there were a lot of them. If you're not going to mock a stupid user submission email, then don't publish them. :)

As I wrote about a couple of times in recent months (February & November), I've written about cheerleaders in baseball. I've never considered myself a "purist" or "traditionalist", who object to any change. Several things added have been good (wild card leaps to mind). But the one thing that I think doesn't belong in baseball is cheerleaders. It just doesn't "seem right". I like mascots for sure, but cheerleaders seem like a bad idea.

Now having said that, a lot of the women in the first two articles I wrote on this subject look quite hot. Let me remind you of that first. Here is a picture of a "Marlins Mermaid", one of the women who do the cheerleader thing for the Florida Marlins..

OK, now that I've shown you that, I need to apologize in advance for what I'm going to show you next. You see, I saw this come over the sports wire a week ago or so, and wanted to mention it to you.

This is a picture of tryouts for the "Florida Manatees". This is a secondary set of cheerleaders that the Marlins will trot out in 2008. As much as I don't like cheerleaders in baseball, what's with this? It can't be that serious - basically it's a bunch of fat guys (well, mostly) getting out there and dancing. Can it be any better than Gene Gene the Dancing Machine from the Gong Show? (That ought to date me). I cannot imagine it will be taken seriously. This just seems to be a complete mockery and a total joke. I'm sure it won't be PRESENTED that way, but I suspect that's how it will be perceived.

I called Chuck Morgan when I saw this, and I could see him shaking his head through the phone. The scary thing that Chuck Morgan mentioned to me was the rule in baseball that if someone is successful in something, others will copy. It's bad enough it's on the Marlins, but if it spreads elsewhere, I just have this to say:

ACK! I need someone's help. I had one person bail out of my fantasy league #1 which is drafting tomorrow night! That leaves us with an odd number of teams, and Yahoo won't draft a league with an odd number of teams; we'll lose our draft slot in that case.

League 1 ID: 10215
Password: sosa600
Live Online Draft: Sat Mar 1 @ 8:00pm CST
Unique URL: http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/rangerfans

It's been taken care of - thanks to the guy who signed up to pick up the slack.

Something I try to do every year to bring the site up to speed is update my roster pages. I started this site in December of 1998, and unless a player is a "cup of coffee" guy, I create a roster page for them. As they move to other teams (and even other countries), I try and keep them up to date. The problem is that as the years have gone on, and I've amassed more and more former player pages, it becomes harder to make a pass through them. I have a total of 226 pages at the moment. I try and keep all the links the same, so two years ago when I decided to add a Wikipedia link to the roster pages, I had to go through and edit all the pages for that. A few years I never made it through the "pass", but this year I did.

I've gone through all my roster pages, and updated everyone. There were bunch of players from last season I never created pages for, and they're all up to date now, too. As is the case during spring training, I don't add pages for everyone, since most of the guys in camp aren't breaking camp with the big club, and they'll likely not be seen again, or won't be seen for awhile anyway.

So at this point unless we trade for a major player who has a guaranteed major league contract, or sign a guy who will be on the big club, I'm not adding any more pages until the 25 man roster is set in late March.

One thing though - all the current player pages I've added a new widget thing from ESPN - it has individual stats and news on players. Here's an example of two: They're free, so I figured why not. :)

Now that Nolan Ryan is our president, I wonder how plausible this might be..

In a couple of years, Pudge Rodriguez will likely be on the back end of his career. He's still pretty darned good now. Not the Pudge of the mid/late 90's, but he's still a great catcher. Of all the former Ranger players from the championship teams that went and played somewhere else, Pudge is probably still the most beloved.

Juan Gonzalez is in the Cardinals system trying to hang on, most have retired, but Pudge is still pretty active. He turns 37 after the 2008 season, so I wonder.. When he's no longer a frontline catcher, I wonder if the Rangers will bring him back to be the backup catcher/part time DH. Nolan caught Pudge back in the day, and I wonder if that might spark something on either side for a career ending reunion.

Other Ranger players have done that kind of thing at the back ends of their career. Jim Sundberg came back in 88/89 to finish off his career after spending a few years in Kansas City and Chicago. Jeff Russell came back in 95/96 after a couple of seasons in Oakland, Boston, & Cleveland. So it could happen.

I was at Pudge's final game as a Ranger. It was quite the love fest, and when he's returned with Florida and Detroit, he's always warmly welcomed by the fans.

Wouldn't surprise me.

It's February 7th, and it means we're about four weeks away from the annual release of this year's crop of baseball videogames. I'm an old school gamer, and I've been playing baseball games on just about every platform there has been since my first system in 1977 (the Atari 2600).

Anyway, since we're in the buildup for the new games, we're getting the usual bunch of screenshots and all that. Saw this one today, and thought I'd pass it on. It's from MLB 2k8, and shows Ian Kinsler at bat at the Ballpark.

2K's "MLB 2k8" is the latest entry in their series (which started back a few years ago when it was World Series Baseball, and going further back than that on the Sega Genesis). One of the things that has plagued the 2K series has been the player models. That's supposed to be Ian Kinsler, and it sorta looks like him, but not exactly. 2K is the exclusive "third party" baseball game maker. That means that Sony can make one for the Playstation, and Microsoft can make one themselves for the Xbox 360 (likewise Nintendo for the Wii), but nobody outside the console maker can make a MLB baseball game other than 2K. With that in place, you'd think they'd do a better job of getting the players right. The last couple of entries in this series have been a little more "miss" than "hit", so I'm hoping they rebound in this latest edition.

This year I have a Playstation 3, and will be checking out Sony's "MLB 08 The Show" game. Everything I've read about that makes me think it might dethrone 2K's game as the best baseball game around.

I wrote about this a bit when MLB 2k7 game out last year, and I'm bringing back a screenshot that I used then from the baseball game from Atari for the 2600 in the 70's. We're a long LONG way from that.

Yahoo's fantasy baseball is open again. I'll be running the usual league I do, but someone posed this question to me..

What about doing a paid league? Where folks had to pay to play? Yahoo has a pay league which has more in the way of stats, and all that. If the league was made up of folks who paid, we'd be likely to keep the league together towards the end.

I'll still have a free league whatever I do, but is there enough interest in putting together a paid league?

The league costs $125 to buy the whole league, which would be not too bad if we spread it out amongst everyone who joined. Is there enough interest from those of you who regularly play in the leagues I put together?

Please let me know.

Back in November, I wrote about cheerleaders in baseball. As a red blooded normal American male, I find them nice to look at, but as a baseball fan, meh. Like crying, they don't really belong in baseball, do they?

When I last wrote about this, it seems that when there are cheerleaders, it's in Latin ball mostly. Turns out that's not an exclusive thing south of the United States. I saw an article today talking about the cheerleaders for the Florida Marlins, The Mermaids. Heh. Given the community in the Miami area, it makes sense I suppose, but I can't say I recall seeing them on TV. Not that I see a lot of Marlins home games, but you'd think they'd turn up somewhere.

What do you think of the concept of cheerleaders in baseball? A lot is written at places who write a lot better than I about what "baseball has become". The game itself sometimes seems like a sideshow to all the other "stuff" that is going on in and around the park. A lot of teams have faux cheerleaders already - ushers that dance, groundscrew that dance, and the Rangers version of that, the "somethingorother six shooters" - girls that play games with the crowd, shoot t-shirts into the stands etc. They're "fakey" cheerleaders.

When I was in Florida in March 2007 for spring training, the Phillies had Hooters girls (in full regalia) as ball girls. Ball girls are a bit different than an actual cheerleader, though. Makes you wonder at what point some major team will take the leap from all these "almost" cheerleaders to actual cheerleaders. I mean besides the Marlins.

Or heck, with JerryLandâ„¢ being built next door to our little ol' ballpark, I wonder if we'll be seeing the Cowboys cheerleaders at games now. I mean if you go to a Rangers game, which of these two pictures would you rather see live in person? It's a harder question than you think. :)

It could be worse, though. It could still be "Rootin' Tootin' Ranger". :)

Was looking through some pictures I've collected, and ran across this one of Johnny Oates. It always makes me laugh. Looks like an overly enthusiastic call to the bullpen. :)

Lots of Rangers sites/blogs and newspapers have written about the possible return of Nolan Ryan to the Texas Rangers as president. It's an office that has had much ridicule from fans in the know since Tom Schieffer departed as president of the Texas Rangers not long after Tom Hicks bought the team.

Since then it's been a bunch of guys who didn't seem to care much about baseball or the fans, they were mostly hockey guys thrust into the role (Jim Lites, anyone?) who were a victim of Tom Hicks' attempt at synergy some years ago. He eventually (sorta) figured out that you can't run a baseball team like a hockey team. The other "joke" I used to laugh at was the one president (forget his name at the moment) who would have a video clip on the (not so Jumbo) Jumbotron at the Ballpark talking about how he wanted the fans to contact him. Even went so far as to give his email address, and said that every email sent to him would get answered. Oh yeah, RIGHT! Way to lie to your customer base every single night. That did not help the perception of monolithic business in the front office.

So anyway, at the end of this past season, the team moved Jeff Cogen back over to the Stars President's role (snicker - that further proves the hockey analogy), and the post has been left open. Any Rangers fan reading this site should already know that. Been a lot of talk about bring Nolan Ryan back in the role of President. It does raise an interesting role, the office of President has traditionally been one that was involved in biz only. The "baseball" side of things was kept separate. If Ryan comes back, I don't think he'll be some sort of dictator president, but it will be interesting to see how well he works with Jon Daniels. Of course, Ryan has owned two minor league baseball teams for awhile now, and that brings me to something I haven't seen discussed much.

Ryan is the owner of the AAA Round Rock Express, and the AA Corpus Christi Hooks, both teams in the upper two levels of the Houston Astros minor league system. What I've always wondered was if this would be a conflict of interest. Could Ryan exist as being the president of one club, and an owner of two minor league franchises for another? I always figured if he took the Rangers President post, he'd have to divest himself of his Astros minor league holdings, or at least put 'em in trust for his kids, or something like that.

So I decided to pose the question to Maury Brown of the very informative site "The Biz of Baseball". I figure he'd know, since he seems to know more about oddball baseball minutiae than almost anyone else I know. Here's some relevant bits from an email exchange we had:

Joe: The Nolan Ryan story has been playing locally since late last week. It does raise a question. If he became President of the Rangers, wouldn't he have to divest himself of his ownings of the two Astros minor league teams? I can't see MLB allowing a team president to own minor league teams for another franchise.

Maury: Try this... The Red Sox (Fenway Sports Group) recently purchased the Salem Avalanche of the Carolina League. There's more on that in this link. The Avalanche are an Astros minor league affiliate. Based upon that, it appears that Ryan would not have to divest himself of the Express or Corpus Christi Hooks.

Joe: So that's a no then. :) I would think they would perceive that as conflict of interest.

Maury: One might say that, but it's at the minor league level. MLB rules forbid owners from owning shares of more than one MLB team. Yet, at one point (a short period, mind you), John Henry owned parts of the Marlins, Yankees, and the Red Sox at the same time.

So it would seem that he wouldn't have to, although I would have to imagine we'll hear "conflict of interest" if he is hired as the Rangers President. With Sundberg being in the upper management team, and with a possible return of Nolan Ryan, it would help restore Hicks' image a bit with the fans, I think. I always kind of felt those images of Hicks celebrating championships in 1998 & 1999 were kind of "riding the coattails of the previous regime" (much in the same way that Barry Switzer rode Jimmy Johnson's coattails). I think a hiring of Ryan would be a good move, both from a baseball standpoint, and most CERTAINLY from a PR standpoint.

Still would like to see how the conflict issue I raise here would be officially dealt with.

Makes you wonder if "Nolan Ryan's All Natural Tender Aged Beef" would be a Texas Rangers sponsor, too. Heh. :)

For no good reason, here's that clip of Nolan Ryan & Robin Ventura. Thanks to Tim McMahon for the timing of his post referencing the clip right before I posted this. :)

Do you spend a bunch of time listening to mp3's on your computer, or on your iPod or something like that?

If you do, you might want to check out a service called "LastFM". It's a social network for music fans. You install a plugin on your machine, and it keeps track of what you've listened to lately, and gives you reports based on your listening trends, what your friends are listening to, etc, etc, etc. I use iTunes as my primary mp3 player, but there's plugins for Winamp and Windows Media player, too. It's quite cool - I've been doing this for about three years now, and have quite a playlist history. Check out my profile page here.

Anyway, I've started up a group for visitors to this site. As I JUST started it, there's not much there, so I'm hoping to get some of you to join the group, as one needs 10 members before it will generate any playlists. I think it would be cool to see what some of the readers of this site listen to.

There's more info about LastFM on the Wikipedia page for it, and on their own site, too.

The annual Rangers Winter Carnival is on Saturday the 26th from 9AM to 5PM.

However, I have another personal obligation that day, and cannot attend. I have a free ticket for it that was sent to me by the Rangers which I cannot use. I'm therefore sticking it up here. First person who emails me and asks for it will get it.

All I ask is this. Please don't email me unless you're actually going. I'd want this to really be USED, not "I might just go". Please don't ask unless you're honest to God planning to go.

It's also good for $5 admission for others in your party (so says the letter that came with it).

Since all the Rangers fan sites seem to be crying in their coffee over the game last night, I'd like to offer a different opinion.

Thank you Eli Manning for not having your usual 4 interception game. And thank you Dallas for so many penalties. Enjoyed it.

You know, I love how the Rangers are "close" on signing people, but haven't actually signed them.

Kazuo Fukumori was "signed" back on December 14th, but still technically hasn't been finalized. They even paraded him in front of cameras with a uniform. What was with that if he wasn't actually signed (technically)?

We've been "close" with Eddie Guardardo for a couple of weeks now it seems.

Then yesterday we are "close" to signing Jason Jennings.

And this morning we get word that we're "close" on bringing back Jamey Wright on a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. (I thought he did better last year than a minor league deal with an invite).

Anyway, what's with all these "close" deals? Are we that hurt for news that we report on incomplete deals like they're done? These have all had stories on the Rangers official site, which for awhile there was actual, factual, completed news. Guess it's turning into mlbtraderumors.com over there at mlb.com.

No, I haven't quit. Still here. Just taking a break like I said I was going to in September to deal with my burnout issue.

I've already posted more this off season than I thought I was going to. :)

I rather liked this message from Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria which I read earlier this morning, so I've decided to replicate it completely on my site...

----

Christmas is here again despite all covert and overt attempts to wish it away. The celebration in remembrance of the love of God in giving the Saviour to the world is so important, it cannot be wished away.

Though few human beings rejoiced at the birth of the baby Jesus, the Gospels tell about multitudes rejoicing in the heavens, about a bright star leading wise men to worship the new born king, and they also tell about the trouble his birth brought to those unwilling to have him as their Lord and King.

The incarnation is the divine condescension. The birth of Christ which we celebrate is the decisive divine intervention into human history. By it, history is measured and judged. Before the birth of Christ, all of history is categorized as era ‘Before Christ’ (B.C.) and since then, we have been in the era of ‘the year of Our Lord’ (anno domini, A.D.)

Today, multitudes of human beings join the angels to rejoice. Christians shining as light lead many to Christ and there still exists, great trouble among those who would not have Jesus. Efforts to turn Christmas into a mere holiday season continue unabated all around us. ‘Christmas Greetings’ are replaced with ‘Season Greetings’ as if it possible to have a Christmas without Christ. ‘B.C.’ and ‘A.D’ are changed to ‘B.C.E.’ (Before Common Era), and ‘C.E’ (Common Era) all in an attempt to conceal the fact that Jesus came to save an erring world from sin and eternal condemnation.

The cross of Christ which is the main reason we boast (Gal. 6:14) remains a stumbling block and a symbol of offense to those unwilling to receive God’s free gift of salvation. (Romans 9: 33) Under the guise of political correctness, symbols of Christianity in our daily lives and history are being challenged and subtly removed. All these subtle and calculated attempts of the non-believing world to mislead the unsuspecting believers and make them deny Christ should not deter us from celebrating for we are confident the efforts are bound to fail. As we celebrate Jesus’ birth this year, let us be mindful of the activities of the first celebrants; the joyous angels who while celebrating proclaimed the Good News to the shepherds.

We should also be bold to proclaim to an increasingly secularized world, the good news of the Saviour-born. We call on all Christians in positions of authority and indeed all ministers of the Gospel to vigorously resist attempts to remove Christ from Christmas and His centrality and importance in human history. We should be vigilant and avoid being misguided and misled by their seemingly innocent and socially acceptable philosophy. In being politically correct, we should not join in denying Christ his rightful place. Let all of us unashamedly proclaim the news of the greatest gift of all, the love behind the gift and peace the gift brings to all. Jesus the Christ is our Saviour, Lord, King and the best gift ever given by God to humanity. (John 3:16)

May God incarnate, give you true joy as you celebrate Him this Christmas and throughout the coming year.

Every Blessing,

Signed

The Most Revd. Peter J Akinola, CON,
Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of all Nigeria.

I know a lot of baseball sites run "open game threads", where people watching/listening to the game can have immediate responses about what's going on. I toyed with that a year ago, and decided against it - I don't think I have enough of a following to pull that off. Having just a couple of posts in an "open thread" for a game is pretty sad.

Anyway, something that's become more prevalent the last couple of years is sports game blogging. I've seen a lot of newspapers sports blogs do that kind of thing. Now for the most part it's not individual play by play level of blogging (that's what the aforementioned open threads tend to do), but there are generally a lot of reports from games anymore. I always wondered what the various leagues thought of that type of thing, as a lot of them (Hello NFL, and a wink to MLB) tend to frown on almost anything that they don't control themselves.

To that I read this article tonight saying the NCAA wigged out and told people to stop liveblogging their games. At one point, they actually ejected someone from the stadium, and revoked their credentials. That seems a bit bizarre to me, even with some of the overly anal things I've read about the NFL doing.

It does make me wonder when the leagues might take a stance against that kind of thing. The article mentions the ejected guy's lawyer arguing against the concept, claiming that it was commentary, not a simulcast, which would probably be in violation of something, although I'm no expert.

It probably won't actually come to pass, but the concept of a league deciding that liveblogging is something to be stopped can't be completely ignored, either. Go read the article, some nice food for thought.

I've been doing this site for awhile now, and over that time, there's been several sites that have been helpful in my collecting of info. I'm not talking about Texas Rangers specific stuff (like the Newberg Report, Baseball Time in Arlington, etc), I'm talking about larger scope sites, but not things on the level of ESPN & MLB's site itself. I use a feed reader for almost all of my "site browsing" anymore, as I like them all in the same place (It's Google Reader for the record).

Anyway, it occurred to me this morning as I was doing my reading that I should take a moment and point them out. If you're reading my site, and have for awhile, you've probably heard me talk about them, but I wanted to take a moment and draw some attention. They are:

• MLB Trade Rumors: This site is run by a guy by the name of Tim Dierkes. This is kind of like what I used to enjoy watching on ESPN's Trade Rumors page before it went behind the pay wall. MLBTR is a collation of trade rumours, news, and other player movement rumors. Granted - they put "rumors" right in the name, but don't let that fool you. A lot of good news has come from there. I know some more "serious" writers tend not to like sites like this, but I love this place. They have really broken it down in detail by team and by player. You can actually get an RSS feed or a category down to an individual player. For example, click here for a news archive on rumors related to the pitcher we just signed, Kazuo Fukumori.
• The Biz of Baseball: This site is run primarily by Maury Brown. This is a site that speaks to something that has grown in my personal interest the last few years. The business side of baseball. This site has a wealth of obscure information relating to, well.. the "business" side of the game. As the game had an income of something like six billion (cue Dr Evil pinky finger) dollars last year, there's a lot of "business" to be talked about. From payroll lists, to contracts you can read, the site includes other fun such as stadium deals and info, drug policy info, basically anything relating to "not on the field play" (although some of that is touched on from time to time). This is a great site if you're into the back end of the sport. Most definitely worth a read. BTW, the domain name has confused me a few times. The name of the site is "The Biz of Baseball", bizofbaseball.com - without the "the" in the URL. That's burned me a few times - I thought the site had disappeared. :)
• MLB Contracts: A really cool blog run by a guy who doesn't ID himself on the site, but some emails have said is Jeff. This is a site that exists to detail contract numbers for every player that you can think of. It's not 100% all inclusive, as his info appears to come from submissions and watching the news, but it's RARE that I go there to look up a player and can't find the info. This isn't one I visit regularly like a news site, but it is an awesome reference site.
• Baseball Reference.com: Most everyone should know about this one now. This is the king of obscure information - I've been linking to this site for years. If you're looking for some weird piece of old information, then this is where you want to be. In more recent years it's gotten fairly current as things are happening, but to me, this is where you go when you're trying to think of a team's record from 43 years ago - who played on that team? The depth of information at this site is spectacular. A surefire don't miss.

I've added these four sites to a new sidebar block on my site called "Favorite Sites". Again, this does not mean that I don't think any of the local Rangers related sites are not "favorites". This is for non Rangers specific sites.

Let me know if you use / know of these sites in the comments. Thanks!

This had better not be true.

Scott Rolen as a Texas Ranger? Wow, if there ever was a player to bring IN to the team that would get me to NOT want to be a fan, that would be it.

If you want to know why I feel that way, just remember where I grew up (Philly). Fuck Scott Rolen. I'd rather be a Braves fan, leading the "chop". I'd rather be a Yankees fan than have Scott Rolen on my team.

The fact that we'd have to trade Hank Blalock away would make it even worse.

Something that's been on my mind lately has been corporate sponsorships. The majority of parks these days have them. The owners and the reps from said companies make these grandiose statements about how it's "great for the community", or "our partnership will bring such and such" to the fans, and all that. But we all know what it's really for. Lining the pockets of the owners with some more money.

OK, OK, it's probably not all for the owner's personal jet fuel bill, or the wife's shoe budget, I'm sure some of it goes back to the team in some capacity (extra management salary, perhaps? - yes that last bit was sarcasm, Dave), but I've yet to run into a fan that honestly thinks these things are a GREAT idea. Most every one of these parks that has a corporate name almost invariably has it's nickname ignored by the people who matter the most. The fans.

This is a Rangers fan site, so I'm most familiar with our own corporate shill name (which is now fortunately gone), "Ameriquest Field in Arlington". You ask any fan of the Rangers, and did they call it "Ameriquest Field"? Heck no, they still called it "The Ballpark", after it's original name "The Ballpark in Arlington". I admit I was one of those people who was not at first a fan of the park's original name. I wanted Vandergriff Field, or perhaps something to do with Nolan Ryan, but over the years, "The Ballpark" really grew on me. I like that name a lot. It's simple. It works. These corporate names are frequently not simple, and they almost never work - the majority of them are fingernails on a chalkboard. Very few truly blend in - off the top of my head, the only one that does is the name of the Reds' current home - "The Great American Ballpark". For two years after it opened, I didn't even know it was a corporate name, I just thought it was a really cool name. Oh well. That's one against my argument, but it is very much the exception.

Lately I've been thinking of all the parks, and it made me wonder how many of them do not have any sort of corporate sponsorship at all. So I decided to run down the lot of them, and come up with some more information about their names, their former names, nicknames, etc... I'm organizing them by age, from their original opening to the newest parks. I'm also adding a few thoughts of my own unrelated to the corporate sponsorship issue I raised here. I realized once I got started that I have a few thoughts on these places, even though I've not personally visited the huge majority of them.

The stadiums I've been near, but not been to games at are Fenway, RFK, Tropicana, & Turner. (My wife has been to Skydome, but not for a game). The stadiums I've actually seen games at are: Oriole Park, Ballpark in Arlington, Minute Maid, PNC Park, Citizens Bank. Stadiums that aren't around anymore that I've seen games at were: Veterans Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium, The Astrodome, Mile High Stadium (Rockies 1st season).

So sit back and prepare to bask in my opinions on corporate sponsorship deals around Major League Baseball, as well as my thoughts on the various ballparks that make up the major leagues. If you are reading this on an RSS reader somewhere, you will have to visit my site to get the whole article. It was too large (at 18,100 words or so) to stick in the rss feed. :)

While I'm sure most baseball fans would be agahst at the concept of cheerleaders in baseball, they're apparently in Latin ball. If there's one thing that I've liked in reading and seeing about latin ball games is that they're a lot more "fun" than our games. It just seems like a party, something our games are not like.

Whatever you think about that, there's no arguing that these cheerleaders look good. :)

There's more pictures of baseball cheerleaders here and here. Check 'em out. :)

I was going through some pictures, and found some snaps I took at PNC Park in August of 2001. My wife and I were up there visiting her family, and of course to see the new PNC Park. I had taken these intending to make a panoramic picture, but never got around to it until today.

You may recall I posted some panoramic pictures back on September 28th of PNC Park, as well as the Ballpark in Arlington. Check those out as well. This picture I posted here I also uploaded to Wikipedia, and added to the PNC Park page there.

Definitely am not interested in the Red Sox winning this. Go Rockies. It'll be portrayed as a David vs. Goliath kind of thing, I'm sure, and I'll be rooting for the Colorado team. I saw the Rockies play in their inaugural season in 1993 when they played in Mile High Stadium. I wish I still had my Rockies hat I bought that day, but it's gotten lost over the years.

I don't want the Red Sox to win, mostly because they've become the Yankees. They're the overspending high priced expected to win team. The only difference between the Red Sox and the Yankees now are the total number of World Series rings. Besides that, I view them no differently. I used to love going to Red Sox games in Arlington, except since 04 when the Sox won their series, their fans have grown more obnoxious than Yankees fans - something I didn't think possible.

My prediction is Red Sox in 5, although I would like the Rockies to win - don't care how many games.

Rudy Jaramillo is the last remaining link to Johnny Oates' original coaching staff from 1995. He's the longest tenured coach, and is widely respected and loved by his hitters. It does seem however, that 2008 will be the first year he's not here in quite some time. That will feel odd.

Tim McMahon over at the DMN Rangers blog links to a rumour post that says that Jaramillo will go to the Mets as the hitting coach. As you recall, Rudy was a runner up to current Mets manager Willie Randolph, and the GM there (Omar Minaya) goes way back with Rudy.

If this does happen, who would you want to come in here? My personal choice for a hitting coach would be Rusty Greer. I think it would be a wonderful way to get him involved again - you know a lot of fans would make a big deal out of him being back in uniform. Plus with Mike Wood not a Ranger anymore, uniform number #29 is open again. Plus I bet Zack Minasian wouldn't give out #8 next year, either.

Seriously though. If Rudy Jaramillo is gone, who would you want as a hitting coach? Leave a comment here - would like to see some feedback. Danke.

There were a bunch of roster moves today. Mostly all procedural. The only real fallout of this is Mike Wood, who declined his assignment to AAA, and took immediate free agency. Below is a list of all the moves today. But before we get to this list, I wanted to mention this funny piece from last June with Mike Wood.

It was the video CJ Wilson made with various members of the bullpen. It's darned funny. If you've seen it before take another look - it's a funny piece. Check it out.

• IF Joaquin Arias reinstated from the 60 day DL
• P Akinori Otsuka reinstated from the 60 day DL
• P Josh Rupe reinstated from the 60 day DL
• P Willie Eyre reinstated from the 60 day DL
• P Willie Eyre signed to a 1 year minor league contract for 2008
• P Willie Eyre outrighted to AAA
• P Mike Wood outrighted to AAA; Wood took free agency
• C Chris Stewart outrighted to AAA
• OF Kevin Mahar outrighted to AAA [ Link ]

Sports tonight was most definitely a mixed bag. Big time. My emotions were all over the place. Such highs. Such lows..

It was the best of times..

It was the worst of times..

Even as bad (and I do mean BAD - it was really really awful) as that third picture was, I can still take solace in the fact that

THE YANKEES LOSE! THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YANKEES LOSE!

In an unrelated comment to either of these. Is it just me, or does Chip Caray sound just like Joe Buck? I kept thinking Joe Buck was working the game, and I remembered this wasn't Fox.

I don't know if you know of a game called Baseball Mogul or not. It's a rather fun baseball game where you get to uber-micro manage a team. Set contracts, lineups, hot dog and ice cream prices, build a new stadium, move your team, etc, etc, etc. It's a (mostly) text based game, and is a great way to pass some time if you're into baseball.

You can read some more about it on Wikipedia here or on the official page for it here. Please note that this link will not get you the free game, just read it for info - the free link is later on in this post.

Anyway, to celebrate the playoffs, the program's author (Clay Dreslough) has decided to give away last year's edition of the game (2007) for free. All you need to do is go to the website and download it. The current edition is the 2008 version, but there's nothing wrong with the 2007 edition if you don't have it, or perhaps have an older version. The catch is that once the World Series is over, the offer is gone. The page with the free download is here.

I've been a fan of this game for many a year, and have bought many editions of it. If you've never tried it, I suggest grabbing the free download here - it's the full game, just not the 2008 edition. There is a demo available for the 2008 version too, but that is limited to one season; this 2007 is the whole shebang.

If you're into stats, numbers, and "sim" games - then you will probably like this. Give it a try.

Have you played this game/series? Let me know in the comments here.

I got sent a very cool picture a few nights ago, and wanted to share it with y'all. It was sent to me by Matt Speer. His friend Wally Tirado took it on Sunday the 23rd's game at the ballpark. Here is a small thumbnail you can click on which will take you to a larger version in my photo gallery.

I've taken a few of these kinds of pictures myself over the years. Here's the ones I have online.

The Ballpark and JerryLandâ„¢, taken Jul 24, 2007:

The Ballpark, taken during Winter Carnival 2003 (Feb 1, 2003)

Mark Holtz Lake:, taken around 1997 or 1998, before they started screwing up the parking lots with office buildings and all that.

My first real attempt at a panoramic shot: It had some problems, but wasn't too bad.

My first ever attempt at a panoramic shot: It sucked.

Here's two panoramic pictures at PNC Park in Pittsburgh I took. They were in 2001, the year that stadium opened. One was taken inside the stadium, and the other was taken looking out over the Allegheny River.

A big thanks to Matt Speer & Wally Tirado for sending in the first picture in this group. Thanks guys!

UPDATE NOV 4: I found some more images I turned into another panoramic picture. You can view the newer image here.

Congratulations to Michael Young on another 200 hit season. That's something 26 of them in a row now.

Update: Sep 18, 2007 @ 5:15PM:

Well, after thinking about it for a few days, and listening to the feedback I got, I've decided to not end the site. At least not yet. What I'm going to do is finish out the season, and then stop. I'm not going to update for a couple of months after that, and see how I feel. Perhaps it's just supreme burnout, but I've never felt quite like that at the end of a losing season. As I've pointed out before, this is the end of the ninth season since I started doing this site. Only two of them have been winning seasons (1999 & 2004). I doubt it's burnout for THAT reason. Remember, I grew up in Philly, and rooted for a franchise that has now lost 10,000 games in it's overall existence. :) I think it was born out of frustration at seeing lower than expected audience numbers.

I did run the logs as I said I would, and found these numbers for accessing the xml files that comprise the news feeds for the various aggregators out there:

Jun 2007: 9,026
Jul 2007: 9,561
Aug 2007: 8,589
Sep 2007: 4,044

Now those aren't true numbers, because it doesn't count all the calls made on the files by the various aggregators checking to see if anything new has been added. There's no (quick) way to tell unique feed reader stats on those numbers, but it's still larger than I figured. The overall pageview numbers are fairly respectable, too:

Jun 2007: 107,706 (3,590 a day avg)
Jul 2007: 82,156 (2,650 a day avg)
Aug 2007: 79,980 (2,580 a day avg)
Sep 2007: 20,637 (1,213 a day avg)

Again, things like Googlebot and Yahoo Slurp spider will inflate those numbers - I'd say about 10% of that is search spider pageviews. That's a completely unscientific stat, I did not properly research it, I admit. Still, they're decent (if not great) numbers.

So there is an audience after all. Some of the feedback said that since I went to a "no immediate comments" system with the blog, they're having problems. Let me address that briefly. The reason I did that is to combat spam. Comment spam is a major problem on blogs everywhere, and with the new system here, there are better tools, but I decided that I didn't want to deal with the problem, so I turned off anonymous comments. I was getting about 200-250 comment spams per day before I did that, now I'm at zero. I'm sorry if this gets in your way, but it makes life a lot easier. There are multiple methods for you to login for. I suggest using Typepad. It's a unified login system that is recognized by any blog using Six Apart's "blogging software" packages like this one (Movable Type), as well as their other stuff like Typepad itself, Vox, and LiveJournal). It's free, and you can use it on all of those things.

Anyway, to sum up I will finish out the season, and take a break, and re-evaluate at some unspecified part of the off season. I don't know what I'll do then NOW, but I'll probably continue on, I think I just need a break.

My original post from Saturday is still here in the extended version of the post. If you're viewing this on a feed reader, you'll need to visit the main site to see it.

Thanks to TR Sullivan for pointing out that it was 34 years ago today (Sep 9, 1973) that Bob Short, the man that brought the Rangers to Texas (as the owner), fired Whitey Herzog, and replaced him with Billy Martin.

Given my age, I know Martin from his dirt stomping fiascos in New York. When Martin was a Ranger, I was 8 years old, and if you weren't the Philadelphia Phillies, I didn't care. Billy Martin should get credit for the first really good Rangers team 84-76 record and second place, and won Manager of the Year. Of course in typical 70's Rangers fashion he was gone the year after that. I wonder if Tom Grieve will mention this during Sunday's game, as he did play for Martin as a Ranger.

On a more generic topic, I wonder if there will ever be a video produced chronicling the managerial history of the Rangers. I admit to knowing the names of our managers in the 70's for the most part, but not much about their time here, tell you the truth. I'd love to see something like that, especially if it included video clips of all the guys. I wonder if any video even exists of Eddie Stanky's game.

I got hit by a bomb of projects all at the same time - been working on them almost non stop for the last several days. I'm going to put placeholder pages for the games I missed, but I won't be writing commentary for them, and if it keeps going, probably not for the series that starts tonight either.

Gotta love it when several projects all come up at the same time. No spare computer time! :)

In my getting the old entries from my site into the blog software, I ran across this link from 2003. It was an article talking about Hank Blalock, and includes this quote from Buck Showalter on Hank...

Hank Blalock will reach his potential. Rangers Buck Showalter will make sure of it. "His progress is a priority for me," the Rangers skipper said.

That reminds me a lot of the remarks that Ron Washington made when he first became skipper of the Rangers, and his "He's mine" comments. I know Hank's been hurt most of the year, but I'm still hopeful for that. My gut feeling says 2008 is a make or break year for Blalock. I have no big list of numbers to back up that feeling, just one of those things you "feel".

I didn't write this to dump on Hank - I like him a lot, but the Showalter / Washington remarks seemed somewhat similar to me. :)

Check this post out over at Oriole's Hangout. On the headline from the main page of their site, they had the line Paul's Game Recap: (curled in fetal position) - that made me chuckle. He included some classic comments like this:

MAKE IT STOP. Please. Anyone. I'm begging you. This is the most torturous game I've ever witnessed. I cannot believe what I'm seeing. I feel like I'm about to burst into tears-- or flames. I want to go home, yet I'm stuck here watching this nauseating train wreck.

I don't want to be a recapper anymore. I'm questioning my entire life as I know it. Why am I here? What have I done to deserve this?

After thinking about it some more, I think this video applies. :)

I don't know how many of you follow the site "The Smoking Gun", but it's a site that regularly posts court documents and things that are generally supposed to be sensitive. Most of the time it's stuff I don't care about, but every once in awhile a real doozy comes along. Like this guy... Jonathan Lee Riches. He filed a lawsuit in court against Barry Bonds, Bud Selig, and Hank Aaron's bat. Check out this summary from the site:

In his lawsuit, Riches, weaves an intricate conspiracy theory involving television ratings, steroids, the cracking of the Liberty Bell, Colombian narco-terrorists, and secretly recorded conversations for which journalists Robert Novak and Judith Miller have transcripts.

Some other amusing stuff is that he claims that Bud Selig is Barry Bonds' steroids dealer, Barry Bonds personally bench pressed the guy, and of course Bonds used Aaron's corked bat to crack the Liberty Bell.

Go check it out, it's quite amusing.

Testing again.

The final release version of this software came out this morning. It's installed now, just wanted to test it, make sure things didn't explode. :)

A really good site to read regularly is "The Biz of Baseball". It talks about well.. business related issues to baseball. Anyway, this morning I noticed an article about the Rangers, specifically about the "You could use some baseball" ad campaign.

I wrote about this some time ago - the ads are generally funny, and reflect little "moments" we have when we realize that our entertainment choices aren't great. The only one that's a little bit of an eyebrow raiser is the one I talked about back in February about "First base has nothing to do with kissing". Explaining that to a small kid could be odd, but nothing to really get bent out of shape over. ;)

And unlike some people who take any opportunity to bitch about Tom Hicks, I wanted to say I liked the article a lot, and the ad campaign made me laugh, so yes. It worked. Although I don't think it would make me attend any more games, no advertising would work on me in that regard. :)

Go read the article at bizofbaseball - it's an enjoyable read.

I'll have more to say about tonight's game some time tomorrow. It's late, and I don't feel like writing right now. However, I did want to say this. Really nice to see Rusty out there again. Nice tributes and letters. However, I wanted to post a few pictures I took. I have them up in my photo gallery here.

However, this one was worth noting. After the ceremony was over, and Rusty was taking his "lap around the ballpark", he got near where I was sitting, and he passed Michael Young. Michael Young tipped his cap to Rusty as he drove by. Most folks will not have seen that, but it was a great moment. I almost got a shot of it, but got it just as Michael put his cap back on his head. Here's a thumbnail of that:

Was also nice the folks who made their own "retired number" sign for Rusty Greer in left field:

Does anyone else have the same reaction on TV when Josh Lewin says "We go to Jim Knox"? For me that means hitting the fast forward button on the TiVo. I'd rather watch the staff clean up the ballpark after everyone's gone home.

I actually switched over to watch a minute or two of women's basketball. Actually was waiting for the Giants/Nats game to start on ESPN2, but some women's basketball game is in double overtime. Surprised they're sticking with that, and not showing Bonds.

Is there anyone else secretly wishing that Vicente Padilla doesn't come back from his injury at all? As a human being you don't want to see someone hurt, but as a baseball fan... I kind of like what we have now.

Anyone else feel the same way?

As you may or may not know, my day job is in the video game industry. Been working where I am since December of 1992 - a long time. Anyway, I ran across an article on the MLB website today which talks about videogames and major league baseball players. Enjoyed reading it. You can check it out here.

Just in case you didn't know about the bridge accident in Minneapolis, go read this.

If you are seeing this message, then you are seeing the new look for my site. The look that I used to have was not one I was terribly happy with from the moment I launched it. A few weeks back, Six Apart, the folks who make the software that drives this site (Movable Type) launched a new v4 beta. It's got a boatload of new features that would make the way I do this site an awful lot easier.

One of the things in the new software package was a bunch of new themes, and I took the opportunity to use that as a key to redesign the site. This is mostly stock software actually - the theme has some customizations (the header graphic, the baseballs), but is mostly "out of the box". Their "out of the box" is a lot better than it used to be. :) Big thanks to Thijs Leenders for his help with the graphics.

One of the larger more updated sections is my seat selector section. It's something I started on my own in 1999 on this site, years before the Rangers did it themselves. But this new version lets me cut a lot of waste out of the site. You see in the old version I had three editions of the seat selector (regular, large, extra large). There was an HTML page for each version, because I used to show the images as a pop-up. There are 177 sections in the ballpark, with another 25 or so hidden areas, so there's roughly 600 HTML pages. This new version does it very differently, so I could drop the popups, saving myself conversdion of 600 HTML pages. Plus the new version of the site just looks a lot cooler.

I've cleaned up text formatting, just done a lot of cool stuff to make everything look nicer. I hope you think the same.

One change though - if you were reading the site's updates via an RSS reader, you may need to resubscribe, as the rss feed url has changed depending on which format you were using in the past. Additionally, if you want to leave comments, you will have to log in and create an account. For some reason Typekey isn't working, that could be a bug, as this is still technically beta software. If you have any questions about using the new software, let me know via email.

I'll also be looking at the forums and the gallery to see if I can style them the same and make 'em look more like the "main site". I also need to fix the captcha issue in the forums, as well as here. Edit: Nevermind - fixed it on the forums. Now I need to fix it in MT.

Thanks again for visiting. Glad you took the time to come.

OK, Teixeira has been traded. I can't say that surprises me in the least. Even with the Boras factor ignored, I don't think many Ranger fans thought he was going to stay here. Those comments he made a couple of weeks ago regarding "fun conversations with Baltimore in a year and a half" were pretty damning. I can't speak to his "happiness" here, as I'm sure we'd get the Bull Durham lines about wanting to help the team win, etc... But I think most everybody seems to think it was inevitable that he would be moved.

So OK, that leaves a few possibilities. First, we keep him through his final arb year of 2008 and let him walk at the end for draft picks. That was so seriously not likely to happen, I can't even fathom it being thought about. Second, we trade him. If you trade him, that gives you three realistic options. Trade deadline now. Trade deadline in 2008, and the off season between 07 & 08. If you are going to trade a player like Mark Teixeira, you want to maximize the value you get for him. That's actually what you generally want to do in any trade, but especially for something like this.

So OK, we're trading him. You go out and see who wants to take a player who will likely get $12 million in arbitration next year, the final year of his contract, where it's widely expected he will go out on the market and not just automatically resign. That kind of rules out trading at the deadline in 2008, since it would be for just two months, and you're not going to get a ton of value if you trade him 12 months from now. I also don't think the offseason is the best time, the best time to trade him if you're trading him at all is now. At least this way we can have a handle on what other pieces we might need in 2008 when we go into the offseason in October.

OK, we've arrived at now being the optimum time to trade him being now. So you go out there and see who wants him? While he is under control for next season, as I said he's arb eligible, which means he's likely making $12 million next year. That fact alone limits some of the teams. Plus not everyone will need the player as they have others there already. So that narrows it down. The widely talked about teams in this trade scenario were the Braves, the Angels, and the Dodgers. Heard the Diamondbacks in the last couple of days, but my gut says that wasn't a realistic option.

So OK. You then look down what each team offers. I know most people will scream "pitching please" as a return. As would I, but one has to be realistic about it. Are these teams going to send us their best pitcher or pitching prospect for Tex? No, they're not. So you look at the best option for all of them. For the Angels, the best option for pitching I saw was Ervin Santana. Eh. For the Dodgers, the word was that the Rangers wanted Clayton Kershaw. By all accounts, that would have been a spectacular move. But LA didn't want to give him up. I probably wouldn't have, either. That left the Braves and their package.

There's also the issue of trading Tex inside our own division to the Angels, something that I would have a hard time dealing with. It's always annoying when you trade a fan favorite and a good player away, but it's worse inside your own division. We would have to have been absolutely bowled over with an offer from the Angels to trade him there. That didn't happen, so I'm glad about that.

So Teixeira is traded away with Ron Mahay for four players. One major leaguer, and three prospects. By all accounts the two named ones are great prospects (not marginal ones), and the fourth is unknown yet, rumored to be another pitcher. First, let me say breaking down individual players is not my strength. That is a strength of Jamey Newberg, so I'll defer to him on the actual playing abilities of each of the guys we get. But I do have a few words.

Inbound we get a switch hitting catcher Jarrod Saltamacchia. I kept hearing that he can play some first base. In trading away a player of Mark Teixeira's caliber for a player who is primarily a catcher, the immediate first thought is What about Gerald Laird?. There was some talk a day or two ago that we were looking at trading Laird & Mahay to the Cubs for Felix Pie. I find that hard to believe - while Pie is supposed to be a stud, I can't see where that trade makes much sense from the Cubs standpoint. Anyway the question will be where will Salt play in Texas? Laird is our front line catcher, and we did just bring in Adam Melhuse, so we don't really need another catcher, although Salt is a switch hitter with a lot of power. Do we play Salt at first base? Does that bump Wilkkkkkkerson back to part time duties in the OF? We'll see.

The others are infielder Elvis Andrews, who is supposed to be a very good infielder, but he's at A ball, so he's awhile away from making a big impact. There's also pitching prospect Neftali Feliz, who has some decent numbers, he is in rookie ball. Even further away. The fourth player is unknown, but supposedly pitcher Matt Harrison, but there's some injury concerns, which is why he's likely to be a PTBNL in this deal.

As for Ron Mahay, while he's pitched OK for us, I can't see him being here super long term, either - and he's what 37 I think? Nice guy, but I don't think will be seriously missed.

Is this a blockbuster trade? No, probably not. However, all things considered, we probably got the best we could get. Yeah, there's some question marks about the minor leaguers, but when isn't there about minor leaguers - honestly? You're not getting a team to give up a front line starting pitcher here, so this is probably the best you can do. My overall opinion is probably "eh", but I think that's more based off of the fact that you knew Tex was going to go anyway, not the players back. Once those remarks about "fun conversations" came out a few weeks back, you kind of knew this day was coming, and that's where my feelings come from. I'm OK with the players in return, just annoyed we had to trade him in the first place.

Why did I write all this? I'm just tired of knee-jerk reactions of people in call in shows who say things like "No major league pitching? This automatically sucks". I detest sports call in shows, because most of the people who call in generally have no friggin clue about the larger picture. This post won't change that behaviour, but at least will get some steam out of me. I wish Steve Busby was back on the KRLD post game call in. I loved how he would mock people calling in with that kind of attitude. I miss that. Busby had some balls on the post game show.

I do have to admit to being curious what Michael Young's remarks about the trade will be.

In addition to the photos I took of the Ballpark out at the doubleheader on Tuesday, I also took some photos of Jerryland, which is being built next door. The panoramic shot posted above was actually four jpgs I stitched together to make what you see. I took them standing at the back of the Dr Pepper Youth Ballpark which was right on the other side of Mark Holtz lake. For those of you who had any doubt, this definitely qualifies as a "next door" neighbor. If you've ever been to Baltimore or Pittsburgh and seen games there, then this will feel the same. If you stand in Oriole Park, and look out the upper concourse across the parking lot, you can see the Ravens stadium. Same in Pittsburgh. Stand at PNC Park, and you can see the Steelers' home (Heinz Field) on the far side of the parking lot.

Jerryland and The Ballpark in Arlington are separated by more than just a parking lot - but not much more. I hope that when it's all done, they won't put things inbetween like buildings that will block the view. My guess is Jerry won't want people to not be able to see Jerryland from the Ballpark anyway, and that's unlikely to happen. :)

The shot below was taken where my seat was, which was the last row in Section 326 behind home plate. I did zoom in a bit, but not much - the place is pretty darned close. You can click on either photo in this entry to be taken to the respective page for that image in my photo gallery. You can check out significantly larger versions of the photos there.

Well, last night was the All-Star game. I didn't get to see any of it. Why?

Late in the afternoon my wife told me the air conditioning broke in our house, and as such we were dealing with that - which mostly involved trying to keep our two year old cool and happy. I also was fixing a leaky faucet underneath the sink in teh bathroom.

Between two trips to Lowe's and the baby, and being hot.. All I really got to watch was the player intros, and I did get to see a few minutes which included Ichiro's inside the parker. That was it. The game had been over for 45 minutes by the time I actually got to sit down where I could watch it if I wanted to. Didn't want to, I was too hot and too upset from the day's events.

The only reason I'm even posting this is I saw a comment saying something like "..since you don't have an All Star Game post...". :)

Michael Young did not get in the game, but that's OK with me. His time was last year. Ron Washington was out there as third base coach for awhile, that was nice to see.

You know, when I was watching the Home Run Derby tonight, I have to admit at the start wanting Ryan Howard to win. First because I'm a Phillies fan, and second because he was the defending champ. However, after the thing got started, I have to admit that I wanted Matt Holliday to win the thing. Something about him seemed like "nice guy". Not that Howard or any of the other guys aren't, just wanted him to win. But I've always been a Vlad Guerrero fan, going back to his days in Montreal. So I was glad he got it.

I did not start watching the Derby until about 9:30PM. This is a good thing, as it allowed me to skip all the garbage in between hitting the balls. It's toned down a bit, I really detested the accosting of the player coming out of the batters circle to ask them what they thought. GAH - hate that! Thank God for TiVo so I can skip all that, and just watch the balls being hit.

And speaking of the balls, did anyone else have serious issues simply finding the balls in flight? I could barely see most of them in flight, it wasn't until you saw people again that you could pick up the balls.

Chris Berman seemed to be much more toned down than in previous years. Much less of "back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back " on home run calls. That's good. I don't mind that shtick by him, but it really has gone overboard in the last few years or so. Nice to see that pulled back.

I still would have loved to have seen Bonds in this thing. I actually don't totally mind his stated answer as to why he wasn't doing it, which I heard on XM today as "I feel it's time for the young kids to have the spotlight" (I'm paraphrasing there, but you get the idea). Nice PC answer, but still a bit of a surprise to hear that.

Also, what is with the disrespecting of Albert Pujols I think it was by spending most of his time at bat yakking to Arod about the Yankees? Who cares? I actually watched that in 2x speed so I could still see, and not have to listen to that. Ugh.

There were some really nice overhead views of the Giants park. To anyone reading this who has actually attended games there... Is that really nice view of the water even viewable from the lower deck seats? From the way the stadium is constructed, I would think you'd have to be in the upper deck to get that great view.

And speaking of "views".. Check out these shots I saw of all the boat guys in McCovey Cove (was nice to see Willie McCovey out there, too)...

Honestly - it seems stupid to be in the mosh pit like that. I imagine people getting stuck under capsized boats. And what's with the last one? Do they see the ball coming and all back away or something? If not, how does the ball find that little spot of open water in between all those boats like that? :) The funny thing about all those guys out there was the fact that I don't think more than 3-4 balls were even hit out there. I can only recall one for sure, and one that might have gone in there. There had to be more than just 2, right? :) Oh, and they should have had more shots from Kenny Mayne's camera. That was pretty amusing.

And finally, this has nothing to do with the Home Run Derby, but.. Did you see the footage from the Rockies / Phillies game on Sunday? The footage of the tarp being blown around by high winds? It was quite amusing to see the Phillies players all run out on the field and help out the grounds crew by holding the thing down. Not sure why the Rockies players didn't do that, but the footage was quite amusing, although it did look like some of the grounds crew could have seriously been hurt. Check out a story about it, there's a video clip, too.

P.S. back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back

Saw this today on a trade rumor site. The source is Ken Rosenthal at Fox. He's usually pretty reliable. Here goes.

The Rangers and Brewers were close to a trade: Akinori Otsuka to the Brewers for Tony Gwynn Jr. Rosenthal seemed to dislike it, but I think it made sense for the Crew. Regardless, Bill Hall's injury thwarted the deal as Gwynn will be needed to man center.

Good thing Bill Hall got hurt, as I would have hoped we'd get more than Gwynn Jr for Aki.

This was funny. I laughed rather a lot at this video. It's "Dinner Bell", and was produced by CJ Wilson. CJ has his own blog over at the official mlblogs site. If you've never read it, you should. It's good stuff, and is in my daily RSS feed reader.

Anyway, this is one of those silly videos produced with appearances by the majority of the bullpen, a few of the starting pitchers, and a voice over by Tom Grieve & Josh Lewin. Good stuff.

And you thought the regular old eephus pitch was bizarre. Check this out.

Quick note, as I'm about to drop off and go to bed...

There's an interesting article over at "The Hardball Times" about the AL West, and how it breaks down in their eyes. Check out this chart from their article. It's a pretty quick visual representation of how the season has gone so far.

I also know I'm behind in game updates, I'll catch up tomorrow morning. Too tired now to start to write.

I know we'll likely be active in the trade market in July, but I wouldn't think we'd be bringing players in. Especially Jacque Jones. An article in the Chicago Sun Times seems to imply the Rangers are interested in Jones. If we're bringing in outfielders, I'd want someone a bit higher quality than Jones. Now he's not bad at all. But if we're importing, I want someone like oh Torii Hunter.

I can't see where this move makes a ton of sense for us. Course if guys like Nelson Cruz would take the job that was essentially handed to them on a silver platter, this talk likely wouldn't even exist.

You know, I keep bringing up the name Mark Clark on my site here as one of the worst starting pitchers we've had in recent vintage. I decided to actually check on his numbers, and how they compare to the 2007 Rangers. It looks like I might need to make one of these guys my new "Mark Clark" on the site before too long.

Check out this comparison between the two seasons Mark Clark pitched with us, and the stats of the 2007 Rangers to date. The number of starts is actually quite similar. Clark pitched some relief in 2000, as did Loe & McCarthy in 07, those stats are accounted for in the overall ERA and WHIP numbers, I don't know a way short of manually calculating based on old box scores to extricate the relief numbers from the overall numbers.

That was far worse than I anticipated. Technically Mark Clark has worse numbers, but man - after looking at the actual numbers it looks like we have close to five Mark Clark's in our rotation in 2007. Heck, Mark Clark would feel right at home this year, our numbers are just as bad as his was with us. To look back, here are my comments from when we signed Mark Clark, and from when we released him. I had forgotten how much I wanted to like him when we signed him.

Which one of our current guys would you nominate as the new "whipping boy" for my blog to represent everything that is wrong with Texas Rangers starting pitching?

Just read this over at lonestarball.com. I agree with Adam.

Josh, most Rangers fans aren't rooting for Sammy Sosa not to hit homers right now, so that #600 will be at home. Get his 600 ASAP, have the celebration, then DFA him so we can bring Botts up. Is it possible to DFA someone in the game during the game? I say we do it as soon as he crosses home plate after #600.

THAT is what Ranger fans are rooting for. In fact, get your two home runs tomorrow night in Pittsburgh, and you can leave him behind at Primanti Brothers in the Strip District.

I think what Josh meant to say is that the Rangers management wants Sosa to not hit home runs and then hit two at home vs the Cubs so we can sell more tickets. THAT is what he really meant to say. I can see why Josh would confuse Ranger management and Ranger fans. It's a pretty easy mistake to make.

I'm such a dork. :)

I spend an awful lot of time online; I see a lot of the fads and trends in online communication.

When I was looking at some Ranger pictures today, all I could think of for Dice-K is this, so I whipped out Photoshop...

Original Post @ 10:30AM:

I'm sitting here at work with mlb.com's video channel on, which is supposed to simulcast the ESPN2 feed. I expect it will be swamped, and be unwatchable due to extreme bandwidth demand.

Anyway, I'm not the greatest expert on the draft, so I will defer on analysis completely to Jamey Newberg and his gang on the draft - I suggest you do too. Go check out Jamey's site for all there is to know from a Rangers' fan perspective.

UPDATE @ 4:445PM:

Our second pick in the sandwich round was used on pitcher Neil Ramirez. At this point, I'll have to stop, as I need to get back to work. :)

UPDATE @ 4:20PM:

OK, they're not showing the sandwich picks on TV anymore, so we're done with screen grabs. :) The Rangers took an outfielder as Pick #35 overall, which was the compensation pick for losing Carlos Lee. The kid's name is Julio Borbon.

Our next pick is 44th overall - in the sandwich round. It's a pick for losing Gary Matthews.

UPDATE @ 3:20PM:

The Rangers second pick in the first round is pitcher Michael Main.

UPDATE @ 3:15PM:

The Rangers are on the clock again at Pick 24.

UPDATE @ 2:43PM:

The Rangers first pick is local boy Blake Beavan. ESPN is calling him "the most competitive pitcher" in the draft.

UPDATE @ 2:38PM:

The Texas Rangers are on the clock!

UPDATE @1:10PM:

Hearing Bud Seling say "Tampa Bay is now on the clock" was seriously cool to hear. Then showing Don Zimmer, and hearing all the Tampa Bay fans in the background chant "Tampa Bay - TAMPA BAY" was really cool. I enjoyed that a lot. Wonder where all those guys are at Tampa Bay home games, though. ;)

UPDATE @ 1PM:

I'll probably have a few remarks on the draft itself, not so much on the players - that's Jamey's bag, not mine. :)

It just started. This looks just like the NFL draft graphics. That's kind of cool. This whole thing makes it "feel" like everything is all of a sudden more important.

Saw a nice article over on mlb.com about the lost art of scorekeeping. It is true that it's a lost art. I keep score at every game I go to, and when I do, I rarely see anyone else doing it. A few years back when I had a bigger season ticket package, I noticed a lot of others doing it (Hi Rose!), but it seemed to be regulars; only season ticket holders for some reason.

Now I can understand why. It requires you to pay attention to the entire game. A lot of fans who go to these games seem to (unfortunately) not have the attention span to watch the whole game, let alone pay attention to every single pitch. And don't even get me started on the boob job & cocaine crowd at these things who are there to be on their cell phones, or just "to be seen".

Anyway, I've been doing this since I was a kid in the 70's, and still enjoy doing it today (I wish I still have some from my youth, I'd like to see how bad my kid scoring was). As an adult, I used to buy programs, until I realized I was paying the Rangers $3 a game to keep score, so I decided to make my own form in Microsoft Publisher 98, which basically was a copy of what was in the Rangers programs. This file is still available here on my site as a download if you use Microsoft Publisher. After awhile, I wanted something else, so I went to sporting goods stores and bought large printed books - at about $4 or $5 or so, it was't bad at all, they usually lasted the whole season. But even that got tiring after awhile because of all the limitations that physical paper has on games with a lot of subs and extra innings.

However today, I don't use paper anymore, about 6 or 7 seasons ago I started keeping score on my Palm. It's so much easier to do it digitally, as you don't have to worry about running out of space for extra innings, you don't have to worry about where all the substitutions are going to go in those 18-4 blowout games where everyone is subbed out or moved around... Plus you can keep a theoretical unlimited amount of games in there. For me, it's the only way to go. The software I use is called "Scorepad", and can be obtained here One caveat, though. The stuff isn't cheap. The full package is $169 (although when I bought it a few years back, it was $129). They do have a cheaper option if you only want to keep score on our Palm, and do not care about the desktop app - that version is only $39 (plus they have other options inbetween, check out their store link.

But if you have a PalmOS handheld, and like to score, you really should look into this. It's good software. I took a picture of myself a few years ago, here's what it looked like on my Palm at a game. You can click on it to go to a larger image where you can more clearly make out the screen.

UPDATE: Given I wrote about Scorepad, and keeping score, I decided to score Friday night's game (Jun 1st) against the Mariners. I got a wild game to keep track of, and I'll write more about the game on Saturday (it's 2AM, and I'm exhausted), but I wanted to update my scoring entry here with some examples of what Scorepad generates. After the game was over, I synced the game back to the desktop application, and then I could look at it there. The desktop app has the ability to export the data to a box score HTML page, as well as a play by play HTML page. Both are here, as well as screen captures of a few places from the desktop app. Here's a list of what I have here:

• Scorepad's box score page
• Scorepad's play by play page
• The desktop area for Texas
• The desktop area for Seattle
• A pitch sequence example

Now, the pitch sequence is where this program can get seriously hardcore. I don't use this, because even for me, it's a lot to keep track of. Not only do you keep track of each pitch, but you can also keep track of what kind of pitch it is, where it was in the zone, and what the speed was. Now, I don't do this, because it's even more information than I can keep track of (or care to). However, this software is also used by several major league baseball teams by their official scorekeepers, as well as numerous minor league and softball leagues, so it can be used to keep track of everything - it's seriously powerful stuff.

I didn't start off to write this article as piece on how much I loved Scorepad, it was more about my love of the actual scoring, not the facilitating software. I guess the two subjects are pretty well intertwined, though. :)

For those of you who are recent to my site, I started this awhile back. I put my site online back in December of 1998. I don't have any particular reason why - or if I did, I can't remember it all these years later. :) But I did get at least one really good season during all the time I've been running this site. Too bad it was the first one.

Anyway, I've been doing the site in "blog" format for a couple of years now, and the years from 1999-2004 were in the "old format" I used to do. Tonight I started moving the old entries into the blog format. Once I eventually get them all done, I'll be taking the old pages offline - that should help kill off some dead weight on this site (the total space usage for this siteis seriously large). Plus there will be benefits like searching old reports, etc, etc..

Anyway, if you look down the right hand menu of the site, you'll see categories for 1999-2004 that weren't there before; I started putting the old entries in. It will take awhile, as they all have to be done by hand. Requires cut/paste of old writeup, formatting the box score (which I want to save), and manually setting the date so it will show up in the right place. Not exactly tough, but it can be tedious. Plus with about 200 entries a season (162 regular, 30 or so spring training), there's a lot of them to get through.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for visiting the site. I know I'm not the most popular Rangers site out there, but I do get enjoyment still out of doing the site all these years later. I just wish they'd win a bit more often than they do.

If you read my site, I'll say with some confidence that you read Lone Star Ball, too, and will have already seen what I'm about to tell you about here. There's a seriously badass article up there right now called More draft prep: Organizational reset. If for some mutant reason you prefer my site to his, and have not seen this article, then you need to go check this out.

It lists the status of all the major league players, plus some comments on all the best players at each level of the minor league system. If you're at all interested in the Rangers minor leagues, this is a must read. Do not miss it.

I mean, really. Stop right now, and go read that.

I've updated the poll on the main page. The new poll is about who our closer will be in 2008. With the season in the toilet the way it is, I cannot forsee Eric Gagne being here after the trading deadline, not unless we manage to get ourselves out of this hole (unlikely), or Gagne gets hurt again (a possibility of course). To that, my poll is sort of trading deadline related, I'm asking who do you think our closer will be in 2008? Just hit the main page of my site, and vote please.

If you vote for "someone else", please leave a comment with this post saying who you think it will be.

I also closed out the last poll which was "What do you think we should do with Mark Teixeira?" Here are the results of that poll:

Trade him in 2007: 50%
Sign him long term: 47.06%
No idea: 2.94%
Let him walk: 0%

Kind of a divided crowed from those results.

Saw this picture randomly pop up this evening, and it made me laugh. If you think of a funny caption for it, leave a comment. Hopefully this gets more than the usual comments left on this site, which are mostly zero. :)

It's Alex Rodriguez if you didn't know.

I've been wondering why this hasn't happened sooner. The 24 hour a day baseball channel was officially approved! I remember mlb talking aout it 3-4 years ago, and it's finally coming in 2009. Don't know why it took that long, but OK, I'm still looking forward to it.

Check out this story on mlb.com.

My HDTV TV which I will have by 2009 might as well have just one channel then.

I've been meaning to mention this site for awhile; keep forgetting about it. It's a cool site called "Cardboard Gods", and is a site about baseball cards.

I've tried a few times to figure out EXACTLY how to describe it, and it's hard. The author (Josh Wilker) takes a baseball card, and sometimes talks about the card itself, or has a story about things relating to the card, it's not your "normal baseball fan" website. While not every single story engages me, it is interesting enough to make me keep it on my RSS feed reader.

Today's story is about an old Bump Wills Texas Rangers card that was mistakenly labeled "Blue Jays". He's covered other Rangers cards too; the others are Jim Bibby, Jeff Burroughs, Bill Hands (twice), and Jim Sundberg.

The site has a very interesting flavor; go check it out.

Sunday:

Monday:

Saw a rather silly promotion the fans of the Milwaukee Brewers came up with. It's called..

"Pee Your Pants for the Brewers"

The idea here is that if the Brewers win their division, the fans would collectively pee their pants on the premise they'd be so surprised they made the playoffs for the first time in 24 years. It's quite an odd thing, something that the late Bill Veeck probably would have loved. The Brewers are currently 25-12 (.676) and 7 games up in the NL Central. Only the Boston Red Sox have a better record right now. Granted, 125 games remain in the Brewers' schedule, but it's a promising start.

Makes wonder what Cubs fans would do if they actually won the World Series?

I would rather not pee my pants intentionally, thank you. I'd stink.

Well, the chat log from Evan Grant's recent chat on the DMN website is up, and in it, two answers talk about trading Mark Teixeira. There's also the rumour site mlbtraderumors.com who picked up on the chat and offered their own speculation on the matter. Got me to wondering, what SHOULD we do with him?

Now I'm nowhere near ready to panic and give up on 2007 - that would be a Cowboys fan mentality to give up that quick. Sure, it hasn't gone that well so far, but the basic construction of the team is sound, IMO, and I think we can, it just has to be done soon, where we have to decide if we are going to try and trade off pieces.

Ignoring the reality of trade pieces, and whatnot, if he wasn't here, I would think Baltimore would be a great place for him to go. I think they're still looking for that "face of the franchise" type of player that Cal Ripken was. Tejada is a great player, but I don't think Orioles when I think of him - he's still an "A". If you're a Rangers fan, you already know he's from there, so I'm sure it would be a nice fit. Whether they can offer what we'd want in return, which I'm sure would be a major league ready starting pitcher, and a replacement for Tex (Markakis?). Problem is they don't really have any active starters that excite me. But where else would he go? Anaheim? I doubt we'd trade him there unless we got John Lackey back (yeah, right - like that would happen), although I can see him going there as a free agent. Or worse, the Yankees. Ugh.

Anyway, I set up a poll here on the front page of my site asking what you think we should do with Teixeira this season. Please vote. Thanks. BTW, I voted for "sign him long term", but I'm starting to feel that won't happen. Two off seasons ago, he signed that two year deal to avoid arbitration with the idea that we'd work on a long term contract before this 2 year one is up. It's almost up - I wonder if they meant that.

Just wanted to drop folks a line. I got the word the other day that I have a family member that was given about a week to live, so if that happens, I might drop off the face of the earth for a bit. Just wanted to let you know in case I stop updating for awhile.

Update Wed 25th: My stepfather died last night after a bout with several illnesses that I won't get into here. This will probably keep me offline through the weekend. Thanks for the notes of condolence I've gotten so far.

Update 2 Sat 28th: I'm taking off in the morning to attend funeral services back home. I return Wed evening, I'm not expecting to be updating while I'm away. Nice win last night - good to see Tex finally get a home run. And Sosa keeps hitting 'em.

Update 3 May 5th: I'm back home, but I'm so behind the eight ball from being offline for a week that I probably won't be able to do any updates until Monday, at which point I'll probably do one of my massive catch up updates.

Remember the old post game show guy Scott Franzke? When KRLD dropped the show for a year, we lost Franzke to the Phillies, who was first hired just to do the same thing there he did here. But he's now in their broadcast team. Philadelphia does things differently than we do here. In Texas, we have dedicated radio & TV teams. Not so in Philly. After a couple of innings, they rotate between TV and radio, so you get to hear/see everyone in one game (I believe it's everyone).

Anyway, there's an article about Franzke and the rest of the Phillies broadcast team over here at this Philly sports blog. They seem to like him over there - which is good. I was rather annoyed when we let him go. I don't think I've listened to his replacement here in Texas more than once or twice.

No, I don't want some home made ice cream that Momma was shouting through the screen about from my "Good ol country home".

I know that the "Bunt Cake" commercial is a joke.

Need some new ads, guys. Two three years with the same ad is pretty annoying, especially when you hear the same ones 3-4 times (or more) during one game.

Gaaaaahhhhh!

Edit: Gaaah! This commercial came on a second time within 30 minutes after I posted this!

Gotta love fifth place. Thing of beauty.

Saw an article come over my rss feed reader this morning from the website for Hank's Homies, which isn't updated very often, so the notice stuck out. Apparently the Homies are three years old now. The funny thing is I remember them in the upper deck around Section 340 or so before they moved to Section 5. I remember looking at 'em like "What's with these guys"? They were just a row or two in front of me. I seem to recall getting annoyed when I couldn't see because they held up their sign. :)

Anyway, they moved down to Section 5, and a legend was born. If you read their story, they recall again the story from May 2nd, 2004 when the entire stadium was wrapped up "SWEEP - SWEEP - SWEEP". I agree with them, it was one of the best moments I'd heard in the park. To hear the entire stadium wrapped up chanting sweep was very cool. It wasn't until later that I found out how cool it really was when I found out the Homies started it, and it was even mentioned on air in this audio clip by Eric Nadel and old radio guy Vince Cotroneo.

You can check out this quick video clip I took of them singing their chant when Hank was up the day I hung out with them on June 24, 2004. I couldn't handle standing the entire game, I eventually ended up sitting down where my real seat was. But I had fun with 'em. Check out my pictures I took of the homies that day.

A lot has been written about Jackie Robinson this weekend, so I won't try and tarnish that with my weak attempt at what Robinson was and what he meant. I do appreciate what he did, but feel unable to write words that would be worthy, so I won't.

But I will say this. Heard tonight on Baseball Tonight that the Yankees have a memorial to Jackie Robinson out in their Monument Park in left field in Yankee Stadium. Now I know every team has something for Jackie Robinson in their park, but for most teams, it's just a "Robinson 42" where their retired numbers are. And that's fine.

But I thought the Yankees did something cool by giving him a place in their monument park, especially given the old history between the Yankees & the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Yeah, the Yankees were the only team that didn't have an in stadium "something" for Robinson, but I think they made up for being last with this.

Here's what's on the plaque... "In becoming the first Major League player to break the color barrier, Jackie will forever be an inspiration with his grace, dignity and perseverance. His story and the stories of those who never had the same opportunity must never be forgotten."

Here is a link to a wire story which talks about the memorial in Yankee Stadium. Check it out.

I don't talk about stuff like this too much, because what more can really be said except "That sucks". Don't know what your religious leanings are, but I offered up a prayer for the victims of that fiasco when I heard about it.

Anyway, I was reminded tonight that there's a sort of Rangers connection there. The guy whose baseball card I have displayed here is a member of the Virginia Tech Hall of Fame. VT did retire his jersey, but not his uniform number, which is something I can't say I've heard of before. Anyway, there's a nice (but short) writeup about Oates and Virginia Tech at this link at the Virginia Tech Hokies website. Check it out.

Also, the picture I picked I did because it's the one that means the most to me. I've written about Oates a few times in the past on this site, but this baseball card is the one that meant the most to me as a kid. I always found this one a cool card, and I was glad to be able to get Oates to autograph one for me before he passed away a few years back.

As I've been offline sick for a bit, I was playing catch up this afternoon with my reading.

Read this post on USS Mariner where they slagged off the Michael Young contract extension, saying stuff like this:

.... defense has already degraded to the point that he shouldn't be playing shortstop

Adam Morris' response over at lonestarball.com was pretty well constructed, you should read it. It's much better than my response, which would have simply been this:

But that's the Philly boy in me, I guess. ;)

Here is an interesting article I picked up while reading USS Mariner this morning. It's about how this guy is convinced Francisco Rodriguez was doctoring the ball during opening night.

Anyone else think this? I didn't see it, personally. But it would give me another reason to not like him - His "K-Rod" is fingernails on a chalkboard for me. A-Rod is the only one that can get away with that, IMO. And don't even get me started on "I-Rod" for Pudge. Gaaaaaa!

If you listen to Rangers games live in the park, then you'll want to read this story.

Do you recall that late last season there was a 7 second delay instituted during Rangers radio coverage? If you listened to a game in the park it was fairly annoying. Outside of the park, not so much so, but the die hards who listen while they're at the game (myself included) got pretty peeved at that. I recall Eric or Victor saying at the time it would be something that was looked at during the off season.

So a couple of days ago I got an email on my site from a visitor by the name of Elaine. She wrote me, asking this:

Say, Joe -- do you know anything about the radio time delay broadcast that they had at the end of last year ???? Are they going to be able to do away with it ??? I take my "ears" with me to the game and listen to the broadcasters while watching the game and it is VERY VERY irritating with the delay

I replied back saying that I did not know the answer to the question. I honestly hadn't thought about it since the season ended. But I decided to go to a good source I figured; I wrote Victor Rojas about it. Passed on Elaine's question, and he wrote me back with this:

joe, you might have to call krld on this one to get the full explanation...but as far i know, we were told that all cbs radio affiliates will institute a delay on all broadcasts. cbs is concerned with getting fined by the fcc if something inappropriate goes out over the air.

Great. So it's going to still be there, and it also seems like it's not going anywhere either. Thanks CBS - you're running scared of Janet Jackson's boob again, I see. Sigh. This will suck while listening in the park.

UPDATE Apr 3: Turns out we're not the only ones with this problem. A's fans are up in arms about it as well, check out this post over at Athletics Nation about it.

I did call Chuck Morgan about it, as the last time I talked to him he mentioned the possibility of the Rangers broadcasting a live feed inside the stadium. He told me that won't be happening, but did mention that the delay has been shortened to just two seconds for 2007. That's not perfect, but two seconds shouldn't be that bad. We'll find out on Friday when I'll be at opening day listening on my radio.

Check this video out of Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory throwing out the first pitch at yesterday's Reds' home opener.

I've got all the roster pages for the starting 25 set up. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with that as the season goes along. :) Less than six hours to go now!

In other site news, I've decided to remove the advertising banners from the site. The amount of money I was making from them was so small, it wasn't even funny - on the order of less than $10 a month. I think I can live without that big loss here.

Forgot to post these over here. I put these pics up on a Picasa Web Gallery of mine, thought I'd mention them over here. These are pictures from four days at Spring Training. It's quite different in Philly, as they don't train where they play, so at game time, they show up like any other. It's ot like in Surprise where you can get an idea where all the activities take place.

Phillies Spring Training 1

Phillies Spring Training 2

Phillies Spring Training 3

Phillies Spring Training 4

ESPN's 2007 Season Preview for the Rangers is online here. As Adam over at Lone Star Ball said, it's got some amusing things in it.

Rangers fans are already tired of Kameron Loe, Bruce Chen and Jamey Wright;

Well, readers of my site know I feel about Jamey Wright, and I'm no fan of Bruce Chen, either. But I'd like to know what fans they're talking about with Kameron Loe. It's certainly no actual fans who follow the Rangers. Now I know national writers take a different slant, and local fans have a touch of the "homer vote" in them, but that remark seems a bit out of line. I mean really, the fans are already tired? How does he figure that? I mean, honestly.

Everything's bigger in Texas (except for baseball's third-smallest ticket prices),

Darnit - don't tell Hicks that, please. We'll be hearing about how the $75 seat in the lower bowl is a bargain price. Yeesh! All of their writers weigh in on where they think the Rangers will finish. None of them pick the Rangers as first or second. They're all third or fourth, and only two of them (Gammons at 81, and Neyer at 80) have them winning 80 or more. The low guy (Olney) has 'em at 70-92. I don't think so.

I don't think we're winning 95 games here, my personal feeling is 87-88 wins, and second place, probably NOT a wild card.

Just saw this news story over on one of my tech sites I visit regularly.

Apple has signed a deal with Major League Baseball to bring sports highlights to its iTunes Store for $1.99 USD. The content includes a "MLB.com Daily Rewind" highlight show, as well as two weekly "Game of the Week" full-length games.

To help promote its new downloads, MLB is offering a free "2007 Season Preview Show" to all iTunes users. An iTunes "Season Pass" for the highlight show will cost $7.99 USD, and run $19.99 USD for all full games. Apple TV owners will also be able to stream the highlights and games directly to the television for viewing in the living room.

I use iTunes all the time, so I am downloading their free season preview episode as I speak. I'm not entirely sure if I'd want to pay money for highlights. That's what Baseball Tonight is for. However, if you're an iTunes fan, you might want to check out their preview - it's free for everyone. If you have iTunes on your computer, click this to be taken directly to the preview in their online store.

Something I used to have on the website ages and ages ago has returned. I put a poll script on my site. If you're reading via an RSS feed, or are on one of those sites that swipes other folks' content to generate their own, please visit my site and vote on the poll. The first one is about Sammy Sosa and home runs in 2007.

Thanks.

I had a great time in Florida, got to see a lot of Phillies baseball. I tried to tour the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' stadium, as it was like 10 minutes from where I was staying. However, they're installing several new video boards in there now, and they had the place closed off for tours. Darnit.

Lots has happened while I was away, I'll get caught up before the season starts Sunday night, although right now I don't know when that will be. :)

It's a good thing I'm down in Florida, so I can't be around all the Ranger fans throwing themselves off buildings because of the Jamey Wright fifth starter decision. The screams must be horrible back there in the Metroplex. I just have this to say.

At least they didn't pick Bruce Chen!

At least I got to see Fabio Castro pitch yesterday in Sarasota against the Reds.. Oh wait, that wasn't in a Rangers uniform. :(

This kind of decision is why the Rangers can never be like the Twins or Tigers. Because we're not willing to give the kids a chance, and be damned everything else. Always looking to catch lightning in a bottle with mediocre veterans - Pedro Astacio anyone?

Greetings from Clearwater Florida!

My brother and I are here for Phillies Spring Training. I flew in from Dallas, and my brother flew in from Philly, and we met in the Tampa airport. However, due to various issues at the airport, we arrived a tad late for the game. We got there in the top of the 7th. We contemplated not even going, but we were already there. It was really nice - very sunny. As we got there, the Phillies had pulled out all their main players and had started putting in all the guys you'll never hear from again. However, one of the pitchers they put in was our old friend, Antonio Alfonseca. We actually ended up leaving after the 8th inning, as we had parked in a place we probably shouldn't have (media parking). So we left to retrieve our car, and ended up spending an inning and a half at the game, which is usually major affront. However, since we're going to a game every day we're here, I didn't get bent out of shape about it.

Here's a couple of pictures of what the stadium looked like, and our old buddy Alfonseca.

I have a few selected pictures from our inning in a half at Bright House Field yesterday online. I'm hoping to get some more on later. You can view the pictures here.

My brother and I leave in a few minutes to see the game up in Sarasota in the Reds park that the Phillies are playing today.

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to finally be attending a Spring Training - something I've never done my entire life. Have always wanted to. But I won't be in Surprise, AZ. I'll be in Clearwater, FL at Phillies camp. I'll be there with my brother and my stepbrothers.

I'm not sure what kind of updates I'll be doing on the Ranger games while I'm in Florida, but I'll try.

I haven't had time to read this yet, but if I wait till I have that, I won't remember to pass this on.

Headline article about CJ Wilson on ESPN's baseball site this afternoon. check it out.

Was looking through my photo gallery, and saw this picture. The guy behind Johnny Oates looks like Benji Gil, but who is the other Ranger player in the picture? I don't recognize him. The date of the picture was May 15, 1997.

There's an article online about which ballpark has the best seats.

They rank The Ballpark in Arlington's Home Run Porch as #11 on the list, right behind the Green Monster Seats in Fenway (which I thought would be higher than that, actually). Here's what they said about it.

This section has overhead electric fans to cool you on those 100-degree windless Texas evenings, when Mark Teixeira and Hank Blalock sends souvenirs your way.

I have never liked the Home Run Porch for a couple of reasons, one is in direct conflict with what they said. Yes, there are fans, but they're so useless, they might as well not be there. In the upper home run porch, the fans are so far away from you that it's stupid that they even exist. The lower home run porch is closer, but they're still to far away to be effective.

I've sat in both the upper and lower home run porches, and I don't like either of 'em. There is almost never a breeze there when I have sat, despite the acclaimed "jet stream" in the place. The worst part is that you can't see the scoreboard, because it's on top of you. I've been hearing rumours that they may rip out Sections 301-307 and install a second jumbotron up there. That would make the home run porches a bit more tolerable, but I am NOT a fan of sitting there at all. I have more fun out in the bleachers in center than the HR porches.

I wonder if the people who wrote that article ever actually SAT in the seats, or are just looking at ballpark design blueprints and pictures to determine these things.

If you ask me, I'd say anywhere in PNC Park. That place has one of the most spectacular views I've ever seen.

I just found out tonight that someone close to me has brain cancer. I can't quite bring myself to write game recaps right now.

If you are seeing this message, then you are seeing the Rangers site on the new server. I've recently moved around some websites I run to a new server, and this is one of them.

Things should be fine going forward, but you may be seeing this if you try going to one of my other sites (like the Black Sabbath site). It's a DNS hiccup. If that happened to you, then you need to close your web browsers, go dump your local DNS cache, and retry.

This should all be academic in a day or two anyway.

Found an interesting link on one of the other team blogs I read, "Tiger Blog". They are basically taking the slant that Michael Young's contract would drive up the price of Carlos Guillen's contract extension. They specifically make this statement:

Young is one year younger then Carlos Guillen and you can argue that both are pretty comparable players

I decided to look up their numbers for the last couple of seasons:

One thing that just leaps off the page is durability. In just the sampled years, the number of games played is a major difference. Number of hits is also a big difference. In fact, as you go down the line, the only number that seems pretty consistently the same is batting average. Before I looked up the numbers, I thought that Guillen had more home runs, but even then Mike Young's got him beat over time.

After looking at the numbers, I do not believe that Guillen matches up with Young in all those phases. I don't think Guillen needs to worry about Young's contract impacting his. Guillen isn't a $15 a year guy.

Michael Young is. Thank you Doug Melvin.

Got an email a few minutes ago from Victor Rojas. He informed me that he's now blogging over at mlblogs again. His new one is entitled "The Spoils", and can be reached here:

http://thespoils.mlblogs.com.

Vic's a funny guy, so it'll be nice to have some regular thoughts by him as the season goes along. Just don't stop in mid stream, Vic! :)

I was googling for something the other day (can't remember what now), and happened upon an article over at USS Mariner (probably the best Mariners fan site if you haven't seen it) entitled, "Bugs Bunny, greatest banned player ever".

It is an extremely funny "real life" check on the old 1946 cartoon "Baseball Bugs". They break down the cartoon in such a way as to nitpick the events of it (talking about stadium capacity, realities of injuries sustained in the comic animation, etc). Oh dear, I haven't laughed this hard in ages. It was originally published right about a year ago, and I obviously missed it. Being this funny, I would have remembered it. I haven't laughed this hard in ages. This article is one of the best fan baseball things I've ever read on any site.

Here's a couple of examples from the piece:

The Gorillas score 42 runs in this inning alone by drilling single after single right at the pitcher. By keeping the pace of the game extremely fast, they kept the pitcher in the game, presumably because he had a low pitch count and was not tired, but also there was no pitcher warmed up to relieve him, and the Gorillas scored so quickly that they drove the score up before one could even be told to begin stretching. There is an additional psychological effect to be considered, as well: faced with a team that can score 42 runs in an inning, the opposing manager must have been so stunned by the offensive onslaught that he was unable to make a move, and further that his coaches and other staff were similarly disabled.

It’s a further testament to the addled mental condition of the Teatotallers during this drubbing that they were unable to take advantage of the congested baserunning by fielding any ball and throwing it to any base, where it would have immediately forced out three runners and ended the inning.

Why such a game would be scheduled remains unclear. Efforts to find contemporary promotional material for insight into fan motivation or how the game was marketed have proved fruitless.

Seriously - if you haven't read this piece over there, you need to go do so. The cartoon is available as part of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets. This particular toon is on Volume 1 (they have four as of the writing of my piece here). Click on the dvd image to order it from Amazon.com.

UPDATE: I noticed the entire cartoon is available on Google video. You should buy the DVD set, you get so much more, and a really good quality copy, too. :)

I know if you read my site, you're also going to read all the other fan sites for the Rangers. I hold no illusions - my site is not a bastion of originality or extreme wordiness when it comes to Rangers news. I post when the moment strikes. :)

Anyway, having said that, I wanted to point out an article over at "Baseball Time in Arlington" by their new writer, Joe Matschulat. It talks about our DH situation, and a lot about Jason Botts, as well as the rest of the outfielders who are likely to spend some time in the DH slot. I got a major kick out of the first line of the article..

If only John Hart hadn’t dealt Travis Hafner.

Isn't that the truth. :) Anyway, as I said above, if you're reading this, I'm sure you would have seen his piece anyway, but I still wanted to draw attention to it, as it was a well written article.

UPDATE: Guess it would help if I did something useful like post the link!

I just got done with my first fantasy draft of the season for a public league I joined. I ended up with an OK team I think, although my outfield doesn't have any AAA players in it. Check this out:

C - Pudge
1B - Ryan Howard
2B - Mark DeRosa
SS - Michael Young
3B - Hank Blalock
OF - Jermaine Dye
OF - Michael Cuddyer
OF - Brad Hawpe
DH - Frank Thomas
B - Gary Matthews Jr
B - Frank Catalanotto

SP - Carlos Zambrano
SP - John Lackey
RP - Trevor Hoffman
RP - Bobby Jenks
P - Chris Young
P - Barry Zito
P - Derek Lowe
B - Josh Johnson
B - Greg Maddux
B - Brandon McCarthy

In the next to the last round, it occurred to me that of the 21 players I have on my team, nine of them are current or former Texas Rangers players. I'm such a homer. :)

Anyway, I still have a few slots open in my second Yahoo Fantasy Team. Seven have signed up so far, there's five open slots as of the writing of this story. You can check out the details on how to sign up in this post from earlier this week. Thanks.

Saw this picture from spring training today. Somehow it just speaks to me about how the new regime will be a lot different than the old one.

Just seeing this picture gives one a nice feeling, eh?

As pitchers and catchers report on Saturday (which is about 25 minutes from when I'm writing this), I figure I better get my duff in gear and get various sections of the website ready for the upcoming season. The Rangers Official site posted a few pieces of information that I was waiting for them to post. The information they've posted tonight is:

• The uniform numbers of everyone who is coming to camp
• The TV schedule for 2007

Regarding the first one, I've gone and updated the uniform number history of my website with all the numbers they posted. Now the uniform numbers change daily once games get started. Or at least they did under camp Showalter. They would call 3-6 guys over from minor league camp daily, and give 'em really bizarre numbers in the 90's usually. Those you can't adjust until they happen, but the roster as it exists going into camp is now reflected in the uniform number history section of my site. Only minor blip to that is that they did not post the coach numbers. A few are holdovers from last year, but there's several new guys I don't know the numbers for - if you do, please let me know. These coaches are: Art Howe, Jose Vazquez, & Gary Pettis.

As for the TV schedule, I still need to get my 2007 schedule online and completed anyway, so I should have that finished shortly. The Rangers site has a story up about that. I'll have more to say about the schedule once I get mine posted.

Anyone catch the new ad campaign by the Rangers? Just read about it on their site today. Here's an image with one of the slogans...

"First base has nothing to do with kissing". I find it fairly funny personally. I just look at that and wonder how many parents are going to be irritated that they will now have to answer questions like "What's that mean, Mommy?", or "If First base is about kissing, what are second, third, and home plate for Daddy?". As a parent of a 22 month old, these things cross my mind a lot. :)

A far cry from the ad campaign of a few years back with the slogan "Your friendly neighborhood baseball team". :)

The equipment truck leaves Arlington this morning to head to Surprise, Arizona! :)

Also, Yahoo Fantasy Baseball opens up again on February 15th, so I'll be setting up leagues then.

UPDATE: There's a story up on the official Rangers site with the annual picture of the truck sitting at the loading dock at The Ballpark in Arlington before it heads out to Arizona. Check it out if you'd like to read something else other than Anna Nicole Smith stories this morning.

For my regular site visitors, I intend on doing the fantasy leagues I've done the last several years.

I checked this afternoon, and they haven't announced the start date yet registration - once they do announce that, I'll get something together for the site and announce it.

Thanks for visiting!

I've been playing baseball games since the 70's when baseball games looked like this on the Atari 2600:

Now baseball games look like this:

The second screenshot is from the Xbox 360 version of "Major League Baseball 2K7" from 2K Sports, which is due in March.

I've been following this series since it was called World Series Baseball and it started on Xbox 1. It's now called "MLB 2kx", and a lot of reports called last year's game a failure. I personally didn't see that, but the developer took a lot of steps to make sure this year's edition (and future ones) got significantly better. They hired the lead developer from 2K's biggest competition, EA's baseball game, which was generally regarded as better when they lost their license due to EA getting it. By all accounts, this year's edition should be significantly better. The problem I suppose with last year's edition is that nothing on it really seemed like it was 'next gen worthy'.

But this certainly does. And that's why I'm talking now. I will spend many an hour with this game when it comes out, as should you if you play video games and like baseball. The primary reason I started this entry was that I discovered tonight that the lead designer of MLB 2K7 has started a blog at gaming site 1up.com where he will be talking about the game. It's definitely worth a read, check it out here: http://mlb2k7.1up.com. Additionally, there's several eye popping new screenshots out, you can check out that archive here. There's several previews for the game out at IGN, IGN again, Gamespot, amongst others. There's also the official website at 2K.

The game is scheduled to come out on March 5th for the following platforms:

• Xbox 1
• Xbox 360
• Playstation 2
• Playstation 3
• Sony PSP
• Gameboy Advance
• Nintendo DS

You can click on any of those to pre-order a copy at Amazon.com.

I really wish they had done a Wii version - I found that the Wii controller system was excellent for the copy of Madden 2007 I have for the Wii. I would hope we'd get a real baseball game for the Wii with the 2k8 edition, and not the tech demo baseball game that comes with that console. Anyway, I'll be playing on the Xbox 360, that's my platform of choice.

Take a look at the links and previews above - the game looks impressive.

While I don't have much to say about Sosa (yet), I wwant to take a minute to point out Jamey Newberg's latest update. Now I know anyone who reads my site will be checking out Jamey's stuff (as well you should), but he has some non histrionic things to say about Sosa's possibly return to the Rangers this spring.

He raises an interesting point. A lot of the hysteria I've seen has been of the ilk of "He'll take away at bats from Botts, Cruz, etc". I love his response:

So from that standpoint, giving playing time to Sosa might cost Victor Diaz and Marlon Byrd some at-bats, but there have historically been two or three outfielders on the Rangers' non-roster invite list each spring, and there were none on the list announced by the organization last week: no Adrian Brown's or Adam Hyzdu's or Chad Allen's or Jason Conti's or Andres Torres's or other non-roster 4-A's this year.

Rather enjoyed reading this one - has a bit of a more grounded response to the dance we're doing with Sosa than some other online writers I've seen. Including some of the pro writers I've seen, too.

With all the talk about Cal Ripken & Tony Gwynn and the HOF vote, it feels like Pete Rose has released another book this week, as all I hear about when I turn on ESPN or XM is folks talking about Mark McGwire. He didn't get in. Ripken & Gwynn should be all we're talking about, and AGAIN, we're talking about the controversy. Sigh.

Anyway, I decided to see how former Ranger players did on the ballot. Here's a list of all the players on this year's Hall of Fame ballot who ever played for the Rangers and what they got in terms of vote support:

Goose Gossage: 532 votes, 71.2% (just missed)
Bert Blyleven: 260 votes, 47.7%
Harold Baines: 29 votes, 5.3%
Orel Hershisher: 24 votes, 4.4%
Jose Canseco: 6 votes, 1.1%
Ken Caminiti: 2 votes, 0.4%

Bobby Witt was also on this ballot, but did not receive any votes at all. The complete list is on this page which talks about Mark McGwire and this year's vote over at mlb.com.]

In an idea that I admit I completely ripped off from the USS Mariner Site, I went through my attendance history page, and entered the data into Excel. I produced a graph that shows how the attendance records and the winning percentage go over time. I went from 1972-2006. I do have the records from the Washington Senators, years, but I did not include them.

Whenever we hear from the Rangers that there's too many empty seats, someone will almost invariably follow that up with a statement saying "Well, if you win, people will come". Yes, that's true, but it's also true this is Cowboy land. Some people are loathe to deal with the Rangers. Newy Scruggs over at NBC5 for one. You can almost see the pain on his face when he has to talk baseball. But that's a rant for another time. I decided to look at the numbers and see how this all breaks down. Take a look below. I have a few larger size images for you to check out besides this thumbnail here. You can also download my Excel spreadsheet if you're so inclined to look at it that way. I'd be curious to see what you think of this - please leave some comments below. Thanks.

[ Full Size Image | 800x600 | Excel Spreadsheet ]

I work at a game company that has to deal with large bandwidth usages at time on our web servers. So I've always been curious what the back end of the mlb.com website is like. They do a virtual boatload of bandwidth, and I've been following the official sites for awhile now. I started this website in December of 1998, and have been with mlb.com since before they centralized all the websites under one banner. Used to be each team "rolled it's own", and it was haphazard. Heck, I remember when they didn't own mlb.com, and you had to enter majorleaguebaseball.com (which still works).

Anyway, as they've grown over the years, their bandwidth has jumped, with more archives, video streams, etc, etc. So it was with some interest that I ran across this article tonight which talks a bit about the back end of the mlb.com website. It's not as in depth as I would have liked, but it is an interesting read if you like baseball and are into web servers. This is my favorite quote from the article:

"After the third out in an inning, everyone goes away, then we have 60 seconds for commercials," Nelson says. "God forbid they pinch-hit at the top of the next inning. Then half a million people request the same JPEG within a 10-second span. You go from zero to 600 miles per hour really fast."