I didn’t watch much of this game, as like most people I was watching football on Sunday afternoon. It was Week 1, and I had to be watching football. :) I did peek in on the Rangers game, and after they got behind, I stopped peeking very much. I did see Raffy’s record breaking home run, though.
Back home to play Seattle. The cakewalk teams are done. Our remaining 20 games are against our own division, all of which are much better than us, so we’ll either gain some respect, or sink even further back in the hole.
Additional game commentary is available here.

Well, I was going to write about this one, but I didn’t see or hear virtually any of it. The reason why is that I was out for the afternoon, so I recorded the game on my TiVo. I sat down on the bed to start watching it, and after the first inning, one of my cats decided to pay me a visit. Unfortunately, she stepped ON the remote, and hit the “end of program” button. At the time, it was the bottom of the ninth, and I saw the score. Oh well, so much for watching that one.
We tied the HR record, with a few of them. Herb Perry had another great game – 2 HR, 5 RBI. And Chan Ho Park looked really good again. That bodes well for next season. Just hope he doesn’t get hurt again during the offseason.
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Don’t have time to write about this on Monday morning, but it was nice to see a win where we were supposed to get one. :)
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Arod’s the only Ranger player ever to have 50 home runs, and he’s done it the two years he’s been a Ranger. He’s also played in every game the Rangers have played since he signed up. Again, don’t know if anyone’s worth a quarter of a billion dollars, but there’s no denying how good he’s been for this team. When he hit his second home run, my wife and I were watching the game while eating dinner, and I almost spewed my food when I said “Holy Crap” when he hit the second one. Off the bat, it looked like it was headed to the upper deck. Didn’t get there, but was still very impressive. It’s not unrealistic to think he might get 60 – as there are 23 games left; he needs 10. His two weren’t the only home runs of the night, we also had jacks from Carl Everett, Todd Hollandsworth, & Mike Young (all in the 5th). The Orioles never really made any noise this game, this was ours from the start.
Our pitching was pretty decent, too. Kenny went 7 innings, giving up the two runs, and Kolb & Cordero pitched an inning of hitless, scoreless baseball each. Cordero also had two strikeouts, and has looked very impressive this year. With Zimmerman out till middle of next year (and there’s a possibility he may NEVER come back), this is a good time for Cordero to finally figure it out.
We go on to Tampa Bay tomorrow. Hopefully, we can exact some revenge for that horrible series in Arlington a week ago when we got swept by the Rays.

Well, as good as the previous game was, this one was equally flat and blah. Aaron Myette, making two starts in two games, due to his only throwing two pitches in the last one didn’t go that great again. He seems the weakest link in our young pitchers (although Doug Davis fell pretty good, too). The TV guys keep saying he’s got great, above average stuff, but I can’t say I’ve seen it. I wonder if he’ll be here next year. If not, he’ll probably figure it out somewhere else.
On the positive side, our home run streak reached a new record – 22 games in a row, with a Pudge blast into the Rangers bullpen 425 feet to left center. That’s about it good, except for a Todd Greene solo HR late in the game.
Additional game commentary is available here.

Sorry for the delay in getting going again. My brother was in town, and I didn’t watch much baseball at all when he was here, and then I got bogged down getting caught up at work, and then there was the sorry Tampa Bay series, which I just didn’t feel like writing about. Thought I’d give it a fresh start at the start of the Baltimore series. And what a good game it was to start up with.

I missed the top of the first inning, as I had neglected to record the game on my TiVo at home. As I was listening on the radio on the ride home from work, I heard they were making a pitching change – that was odd – first batter in the bottom of the first. I didn’t know Arod had gotten plunked, and Myette was retaliating (not officially, of course). So Myette got tossed after the first two pitches went behind Melvin Mora’s back. In came Todd Van Poppel who walked the batter Myette started, then one of his own. Then he got down to business, striking out five in the two innings he pitched (including everyone in the first inning). Then they brought in Benoit.

Man was he spectacular! Going 7 innings, and not allowing anything, except one hit batter, a walk, and a triple in the 9th inning to break up the no hitter bid. That would have been nice, and Benoit was the lead story on the ESPN baseball site on Wednesday (as it should have been). Still, Benoit set a major league record though as he got a 7 inning save, which I found humorous. I didn’t even think about that during the game. :)

Oh yeah, we extended our HR streak to 21 games in a row – the second time this year we’ve done that. Also, I was mad at myself for not recording the pre-game, as I missed an interview with Johnny Oates. I REALLY wanted to see that. Damn.

Additional game commentary here.

I have to admit, going into this game, I didn’t think we had a chance. Derek Lowe has been spectacular all season, and we were tossing out an inconsistant rookie who likes to walk lots of batters. Not a good combination. However, we instead got a wonderful pitching duel. Benoit went six innings, allowing 2 earned runs – and that’s all the Red Sox got, because our bullpen (Alvarez, Powell, Kolb, Rodriguez, & Cordero) combined for four innings of shutout relief. It wasn’t a cakewalk, but they got it done. In fact, Rich Rodriguez (why is he still here?) threw just one pitch to get the win.
Derek Lowe was even better, going 7 innings, and allowing just one unearned run. He deserved the win, but Boston’s bullpen let ’em down, by allowing a solo home run to Todd Hollandsworth in the 9th inning, and another solo home run to Pudge in the 10th to win it. Cordero nailed it down, and we got a nice come from behind win in Boston.
Carl Everett got the predicted reaction in Boston. Interesting that the umpire he head butted is here, too, although he won’t work the plate during the series. Arod didn’t get a home run, so his mega streak of consecutive games is over, but I attribute a lot of that to Derek Lowe – although Arod came close on one ball hit to the deeper parts of Fenway.
Nice game – nice win; on my birthday, too. :) Five in a row now. Would be nice to sweep all the way through Boston & New York without losing, but somehow I don’t see that happening. :)
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It’s Arod again – hitting two more home runs, rocketing past Sammy Sosa for the ML lead with 44 now. That’s 6 home runs over the last 3 games – with 1 on Friday, 3 on Saturday, and 2 on Sunday. In fact, he almost had three Sunday too – putting one just short of the right field fence during the game.
Aaron Myette was really wild this game. He got the win, but walked 7 in 5 innings, and threw 116 pitches through 5 innings as well – quite frankly, he didn’t deserve the win, I felt. The game was pretty much in hand until late when we almost blew it in the 9th, giving away four runs, and requiring Cordero to come in and save the bacon.
We also had a home run by Raffy, and Carl Everett had a good night with three hits. Our offense is clicking very well – it’s too bad it happened this late in the season.
It was also nice to be at the park to see the ML debut of Jason Hart, who walked. Not an eventful debut, but at least it wasn’t an out! And he technically doesn’t have any at bats, either.
Additional game commentary here.

What can you say about this one? Arod does it again. And Again. And again. Three more home runs for Arod were the story of this game. He had 3 home runs in three straight at bats going into the previous game. He ended up with three home runs for hte night – and was left on deck in the bottom of the 8th.
We also had hoem runs by Herbert Perry & Raffy, but the story of this game was Arod – no doubt about it.

There was a lot to like about this game. First off, I had just finished working on my fence in my back yard, so being able to sit on the sofa after 3.5 hours of manual labor in the back yard was great. Thank god for TiVo, so I could watch the game from the start. :)
I really got a kick out of seeing Buck O’Neil at the game last night. Was really nice to hear a few stories of his, plus it was a blast hearing him go “Come on Arod – Come on Arod”. Al Oliver was before my time, so I didn’t enjoy his speech as much, but it was still nice to see the guys from the past here. Sometimes think I want to go to Kansas City and check out the Negro League baseball museum. Watching Buck O’Neill in the Ken Burns baseball documentary was a lot of fun. Man certainly loves his baseball – and like a lot of old timers, he doesn’t seem to have a distaste for today’s game too – which is nice to see.
Anyway, about this game – Kenny Rogers was pitching again on the day a strike date was announced. The last time he did that, he pitched a perfect game. Not to happen here, as Kenny was nowhere near as sharp as he was last Friday in Cleveland, but was “OK”. He gave up 5 runs over 7 innings – not great, but not totally horrid, either. Danny Kolb, however was great coming out of the pen, pitching the final two innings and giving up a big fat donut.
Our offense was led by Arod (who else) who was 4 for 4 with 3 RBI’s and two runs scored. It was capped off by a game winning home run in the bottom of the 9th to win the game. I have to say I wish Buck O’Neil was still around then to see the home run – boy does Buck get excited about baseball, that’s for sure. Anyway, the problem here was that we had two players get hit on the hands by pitches. Kevin Mench (who stayed in the game), and Frank Catalanotto, who came out immediately, and has a broken hand, and very well could be done for the year. Not sure who we’re calling up for that, but it’s a bummer that Cat is out again.
However, given the way the season has gone, I can’t say I’m totally surprised, either.
Additional game commentary here.