Vicente Padilla had nothing. He looked weak, and had over 30 pitches in the first inning alone. He was lucky to escape the first inning with just one run given up. We did tie it up in the bottom of the first, which I’m sure made everyone feel good.
But then it got really REALLY ugly in the top of the second, and that’s not even Padilla. The Rangers comitted two errors, and one was particuarly heinous, it looked like something out of little league, or a videogame. The not so bad one was Ian Kinsler dropping a ball thrown in from the outfield which allowed a run to score. But the particuarly heinous one was Gary Matthews in center whiffing on a ball, allowing it to roll all the way to the wall. By the time they retireived it out there, the Royal batter had come around third, and scored on that play. Ugly! There was one to my eyes at the park looked like an error but wasn’t counted as such – a ball got by Mark DeRosa in right which I thought should have been an error, but it wasn’t. We did actually get a true third error in the game later on when Mike Young had a fielding one. UGLY!
All of that combined to allow a big ol’ five spot for the Royals in the second. That was the game. Yeah, we managed to piece together a few more runs in the 6th & 8th, but after the second inning, the game was essentially over. Benoit did pretty good in relief, as did Ron Mahay, but John Wasdin allowed three runs in the top of the ninth to add insult to injury.
However, one positive note was the debut of Carlos Lee. Wearing #45 (RA Dickey’s old number), Lee made an immediate impact. Playing DH tonight, he went two for four – two singles in his first two at bats. Lee got a standing ovation as he came to the plate in the second inning, and was pretty well applauded after that from what I saw. I’ll talk more about the trade over the weekend, I’ll try and leave it out of here.
I was at this game tonight. We wnated to be there for the Build a Bear giveaway, and Samantha did fine for awhile, but she hit her wall, as the game started only half an hour before her bedtime anyway. She was having fun for awhile, but in the fourth, she hit the wall. We had to leave in the fifth inning, which is very unlike me, but the welfare of the kid comes first. I am going again Saturday night (by myself), so that will be different.
I did take some pictures during the game of a few things – I had decent seats, so I got some nice shots of some of the guys at the plate. Check out my pictures by clicking on the Carlos Lee thumbnail pic here.