FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

TEXAS RANGERS RELEASE NEW LOGO

Arlington, Texas – July 29, 2014 – In order to properly reflect the current status of the Texas Rangers, the club has today released a new logo. This logo, while very similar to the most recent logo, does contain one new section.

This is a bandage over top of the Texas Rangers logo, which will be sponsored by Band-Aid™ brand adhesives. Rob Matwick, Executive Vice President, Business Operations says, “The money brought in by this new sponsorship will help improve the already extensive medical facilities already deployed (by necessity) by the Texas Rangers”.

Matwick continues, “The Band-Aid brand is one of the most respected brands in American business history, and for the Texas Rangers to align themselves with a much respected business icon can be nothing but beneficial to the long term stability of the Texas Rangers.”

New caps, jerseys, and other merchandise bearing the new logo are available immediately at the Texas Rangers Team Shops at Globe Life Park in Arlington.

About Rangers Baseball LLC: The Texas Rangers are a professional US baseball team and are owned by Rangers Baseball LLC, a consortium of various owners, headed by Ray C. Davis & Bob R. Simpson. The team is part of the Western Division within the American League of Major League Baseball. The team plays its home games in Globe Life Park in Arlington.

About Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages: BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages, leading iconic brand of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies Inc., have long been a staple in a family’s first-aid kit as a source of healing, comfort and protection, and as the brand has expanded over the years, so too has the technology and innovation behind it. BAND-AID® Brand has moved from offering strictly bandages to becoming a brand that offers a wide variety of products to meet the diverse needs of today’s active families and their lifestyles. For more information visit www.band-aid.com and “like” BAND-AID® Brand on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bandaid.

Contact:
Rangers Captain
thehorse@texasrangers.com
1000 Ballpark Way Ste 400
Arlington, TX 76011
Ph: +1-817-273-5222

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Well, Siri on my iPhone finally knows about the 2014 season. I asked it tonight what the next Rangers game was, and it said this.

Well, the season is over.  We got eliminated in Game 163, the tie-breaker.

I’ll probably write something about all this shortly.   Today’s news however, is that Bench coach Jackie Moore and coach Dave Anderson will not be back in 2014.  That was announced today (Oct 2nd).  [ Link ]

There was some noise today that the team wanted to get rid of Moore after the 2012 season, but Wash talked them into keeping him.  Not sure what the deal with Dave Anderson was at all.    If you ask me, and you haven’t, I’d bring up Steve Buchele to be bench coach.    If they do bring up Buuuuuuchele, it might set up some sort of situation like Philly had where Charlie Manuel had Ryne Sandberg hanging around.  Charlie had been there for awhile, and the team was struggling, so it kind of seemed to me as a Phillies fan that Sandberg was hanging around waiting for Manuel to get fired.   If the Rangers make Buchele Wash’s bench coach, there will probably be a lot of talk about “How long will Wash keep that job until they replace him with Steve Buchele?”

I am NOT in the camp that says we need to get rid of Washington at all.  I like him.   But he probably needs to show some sort of improvement in 2014, or he probably will be suspect.  I believe his contract is up after 2014.

Most importantly, who will Ron Washington hug after wins next year?  :)

Well, the Rangers went and traded for Alex Rios.   This strikes me as a move that was made more out of necessity due to Nelson Cruz being suspended.  I think they probably would have tried to move forward with kids from here, but when we could get Rios, we did.   This strikes me as more of a “best player available”, kind of thing.   It’s not like Rios is bad.  He’s decent enough.  Not going to light the world on fire, but a good, solid player at a time when we could use one of those.

We were trying to get him before the deadline, and the Sox apparently wanted some big major league ready guys, so we backed off.  In the end, they took merely a PTBNL or cash.   The rumours are that they wanted Leury Garcia in return .  Garcia is a guy I’d like to hang onto, so as with the Garza trade, we’re sending decent, if young/unproven pieces back for a veteran.   At some point we’re gonna run out of pieces like that to send.  But I guess it depends on how Rios does here.

The White Sox also sent $1M in cash too, this covers two clauses Rios had in his contract that escalated the value of his 2015 buyout, and his 2014 contract by $500k each.  So basically the White Sox covered the increases in his salary due to the trade.

I’m looking forward to see how the Rios bat affects our lineup, which has been surprisingly potent the last couple of weeks.  Speedy as well.  After the Cruz suspension, it seemed like the “need to steal more bases” light went off.

Hahahahaha

An event in last night’s game made me think INSTANTLY of Nolan Ryan.  So I screen grabbed a shot of them together from the TV, and slapped it on here.  Made me laugh.   Click it for a larger version.

I’ll get straight to the point.  After much consideration, I’ve decided to stop doing the daily updates here.

Since I dropped cable TV, my ability to keep up with Rangers games has been really impacted.  Those who have followed my site would have heard me rant about that.  However, one thing that also has changed a lot since last season is the fact that I am working again.    That has taken up more of my time than I anticipated.  I tend to work strange hours, and my need to timeshift the games is even more of an issue than it was before.  Before, I could get away with it, because I wasn’t working, and could devote more time to the games, especially since I had to listen to them when they happened due to radio.  Work has impacted that more than I thought it would.

I tried this season to keep it going, but about 3 times, I’ve fallen behind on updates of like 10 games.  When the team has played only 64 – that’s a lot.  When I fell behind most recently, I started thinking of doing the catch up work and quite frankly, I just didn’t want to.  Most of the games during the week I just miss totally anymore.   What time I get in the evenings that I’m not working is now spent with my kids and wife.  That’s NO complaint, just a reality.  They deserve my time more than the baseball games do.   By the time I’m done with them, the games are over.  There’s been a game or two in the last few weeks that I got notified via email it was over, and I didn’t even realize they were playing.   I also realized that I never updated my roster page once the team broke camp back at the end of Spring Training.  That’s fallen way behind, and right now I don’t have really have the desire (much less the time) to go through all that and update it.

Due to all this, I’ve decided this is the time to stop trying to force myself to do daily updates.   The above is why.  However, I’m not stopping cold turkey.  I’m not taking the site down.  I will leave it here, I’ve put a lot of work into this since I started in December 1998.  Going forward, I will still maintain these parts:

• “How Many in 201x”.  I’ve rather enjoying keeping track of that the last few seasons.  It ties in mostly to transactions, but I’ve had some nice compliments on that, so I’ll keep doing it.
• Uniform Number History – that’s been a thing I’ve REALLY enjoyed more than any other on the site.  I’ve gotten personal communications from Victor Rojas (when he was here), and Eric Nadel about the usefulness of that, so with those in mind, I will make sure that gets updated going forward.

Plus, when the mood strikes, I’ll say something.   But it’s obvious to anyone that I’ve pulled back, but in my mind I still saw it as something that needed to be updated every day.  By releasing myself from that, I think I can enjoy the thing a bit more, and perhaps not stress out so much about missing bits.  I’m still going to follow the team, I’m still going to be paying attention where I can (given the boundaries I set out above).  I’m still going to be a Rangers fan, and I’m keeping up, just not as visibly on these pages.

Thanks to all who have visited me over the years, and as I said – not going away, just changing focus.  Go visit me and a lot of other great Rangers fans on our Facebook Texas Rangers Fan Page.

Thanks, and God Bless You!

Joe