Saw a cool post today with all the remaining free agents out there as of today. Now I know some of these are in the process of signing (JD Drew, Bonds), and a couple (Radke, Kapler) have retired. I wonder what kind of team I can put together with this list. This will be an interesting mish-mash, I’m sure. This also assumes the guys would be healthy, as I know at least one of my choices has some health questions going into 2007 (assuming they get a job).
C – Sandy Alomar, Jr
1B – Shea Hillenbrand
2B – Ronnie Belliard
3B – Aubrey Huff
SS – Tomas Perez
LF – Barry Bonds
CF – Darin Erstad
RF – Shannon Stewart
DH – Phil Nevin
Bench: Miguel Cairo (IF), Doug Mientkiewicz (1B), Todd Greene (C), Mark Loretta (IF), Ricky Ledee (OF)
SP – Barry Zito
SP – Roger Clemens
SP – Tony Armas Jr
SP – Steve Trachsel
SP – Jeff Weaver
RP – Eddie Guardardo
RP – Matt Herges
RP – Danny Kolb
RP – Mike DeJean
RP – Arthur Rhodes
CL – Keith Foulke
Hey, Fernando Tatis is still out there! :)

I just noticed the other day that the site layout here looks kind of odd if you’re using Internet Explorer 7. If you use IE6 or Firefox (like you should), then you don’t see the problem, but IE7 has issues with the css work that comprises this site’s layout. I took the css work from a contest the software’s manufacturer had for people to design free layouts. I’ve already contacted the person who made the css about this issue, and she’s agreed to look into it and let me know.
So in the meantime, if you’re using IE7, and the site looks like this, please be aware it should be looking like this, and it’s being looked into. Sorry about that.
UPDATED: This appears to be fixed. I got a css change from the original design author this morning, and all appears to be well again. If you view the site via IE7, can you please confirm? It works for my IE7, but I wanted to make sure some other people are seeing the same thing. Thanks a ton to Carrie for sending the fix; much appreciated.

I know a lot of small fiddly stuff has happened in the last few days. I’ve meant to write about it, but my mind has been elsewhere. Had a root canal surgery this morning, so my mind is not completely with it due to the happy pills they gave me. :)
When my head clears, and my teeth aren’t aching, I’ll play catch up – I do have a lot of thoughts on what’s going on, buit haven’t found the time to get them out of my head and into the keyboard.

This week is filled with stories about Barry Zito, Mike Piazza, Vicente Padilla, and other names from the Winter Meetings. I want to take a minute to talk about former Ranger pitcher Don Carman. If you don’t remember Don as a Ranger, that’s not surprising. He had even less than a cup of coffee with the Rangers in 1992. His entire Ranger career was two games in 1992 for a total of 2.1 innings pitched. His name is not up there in Rangers lore with Nolan Ryan.
But that’s not why I bring him up. Visitors to my site know I’m also a Phillies fan, and have been since I was a kid. I knew Carman fairly well in the 80’s with the Phillies. A friend of mine sent me a link this afternoon to a story on slate.com about Don Carman and fan mail. It’s a really nice story which shows players aren’t all about what Scott Boras can get for them in negotiations.
It’s the story of a kid (now an adult) who wrote to Don Carman back in the 80’s and never got a reply back. Until now. 15 years later Mr Carman found a box of letters in his garage, and decided to write back to them. Some of the things told in this story are a nice thing to hear in this week of meetings that are so awash in cash, one wonders if Lucifer himself is behind all the evil that that much money does.
Anyway, check it out. It’s a pretty darned nice story to read. It’s written by a Bryan Curtis; I wonder if that’s the same Bryan Curtis who is a news reporter for NBC5 news here in Dallas.
I have a few of these outstanding letters myself from many a year gone by – I wonder if I’ll ver get some of them back – problem is the address I would have sent them from has been out of my family for a decade now. Oh well. :)

You know, having been here watching the Rangers as so many big name free agents come through here, the skeptical side of me wonders how much of Barry Zito’s eventual contract will be driven up by the free agent’s token appearance in Texas today.
But then the kid that is still left in me (after contracts, steroids, ticket prices, quarter billion dollar contracts) wakes up and goes “BARRY ZITO IS HERE!“. That pitcher that takes a teddy bear on the road with him is here! Yay!
For some reason, this visit seems promising. Even if we don’t get him, I won’t come away from this one feeling used like I usually feel (Clemens, Johnson) when one of these visitors signs elsewhere.
Most Ranger fans I talk to don’t say Ron Washington was their first choice to be manager in the recent sweepstakes (I certainly didn’t think that – always liked him from afar, but never considered him my manager material). But if it pays off with Zito, then I bet you you’ll see a lot of revised opinions in that regard (mine’s already changed after listening to the man).

Wow. $51.1 million. Just for a cup of coffee. Baseball money is so out of whack. It’s a good thing I really love the game, or I would have bailed ages ago. I did enjoy the remark that DMZ had over at USS Mariner…

This is, by the way, approximately 1/4th the value of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays franchise.

ESPN’s site has a link which shows that if you combine the salaries of all these players, it still doesn’t even add up to the posting fee the Red Sox paid. Johan Santana, Brandon Webb, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Cris Carpenter, Scott Shields, Joel Zumaya, Aaron Heilman, Scott Linebrick, Juan Rincon, & Francisco Rodriguez. And you’d have about $2.5 Million LEFT OVER. Yeesh. And that’s not even the contract!
My own remark… If ever there’s a time for this bible scripture to be used..
…I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:24.

Hey, anyone who is reading this in the Dallas area and has HD, I have a question for you. What has the Rangers local game coverage in HD been?
Given we see the bulk of the games on Ch 27 & FSNSW, that’s what I’ll talk about. I’m not talking about national ESPN coverage, for Fox Saturday games, but the local stuff.
I can only remember seeing a handful of games that said “HD” and those were on FSN towards the end of the season. Can someone elaborate on this if you have any knowledge? Hoping to get some feedback on this.

There’s a lot of rumours about which free agent will end up where. The movement starts this weekend. One of the more “out there” rumours is one of Barry Bonds coming to Arlington. I think if he didn’t have the roids contoversy, then I think most people would probably be OK with that move. Offensively he can still bring it, but he’s a total liability in the field.
However, I don’t think it can completely be ruled out. From a purely baseball side, I’m sure he could help in the lineup, and we all know about left hander power hitters and our home run porch. From a complete “blinders on” mentality, that probably would be good. But as we all know this instant headline media obsessed culture we live in wouldn’t allow that. There’s a boatload of baggage with Bonds.
That brings me to the reason for writing this. The last few years, you go outside of San Francisco, and Bonds gets almost universally booed. Heck, the fans in Philly had some rather imaginitive sings when he was there.
It makes me wonder. If Barry Bonds signed here and was a Texas Ranger in 2007, do you think he’d get booed at his own home games? I’d love to hear what some people think about that issue.
This seems like a good time to bring up the story again of how my wife met Barry Bonds some years ago, and he refused to pay $2 for a couple of cookies and milk from a mall stand she was working at.

The last 24 hours have been a real high for Ranger fans. I think the majority of us will say that the hiring of Ron Washington is a positive for us. I personally wasn’t one of the people with pitchforks and torches running behind Mr. Showalter, but I can see the arguments for change. Ron Washington’s choice surprised me. I fully expected it to be Wakamatsu or Hillman. I figured Washington was a serious candidate, but didn’t think he would be picked. Now that he has been, it just “feels” right. Can’t quantify that with any hard facts, I just get the feeling based on what I’ve read from Oakland players that this will be a great move for us.
It’s in the wake of this high that I found some other information about the 2007 season that I don’t believe has been mentioned anywhere before. Most of this is good. One thing if I understand it correctly is not good. Today in the mail, I got a flyer with various group ticket options for 2007. There is a schedule in here, which shows times for the 2007 games; that was new information. The 2007 promotions schedule is also in here. Neither of these pieces of information are on the Rangers site as of this posting. Here’s a summary of the bullet points from reading this flyer:
Not good stuff:

• Parking next season will be $12. Actually that info did not come from the flyer; I knew that back in October when I pre-paid for some parking. So that’s a change.
• It would appear that the Rangers are adopting that “charge higher ticket prices for higher profile opponents” thing that’s been floating around for awhile. The reason I think this is happening is the flyer has several different kinds of rates for group tickets. One of them is “Big Games”. In that section appears the text… “These are the biggest games with the best opponents on the best nights. Access reuglar gate prices and avoid paying premium individal prices for Yankees and Red Sox games.“. Now while this does not explicitly state they’re charging higher for Yankees/Red Sox games, it reads that way to be cause of the “premium prices”. I could be wrong about that, I can see where it could be translated another way, but the fact that they have a category called “Big Games” makes me think that’s what they’re doing.

Other Stuff:

• Every single home game in June, July, & August has a start time of 7:35PM. There’s one exception to that, the Sunday game on Jul 8, before the All Star Break is at 2:05, but all the other Jun/Jul/Aug home games are 7:35. Good, good, GOOD. I just wish the ones in April, May, & September were like that, too (they’re still 7:05). But I’ll take this. It’s a good move, as I have to drive 34 miles from my house to the Ballpark through the downtown Dallas mixmaster.
• Sunday day games in April, May, & September return to their old time of 2:05PM instead of the 1:05 they’ve been at the last few years. Weekday day games remain at 1:05.
• It appears they’re adding a regular promotion. There appears to be a $2 T-Shirt Tuesday on many dates. From the name it appears you can get a T-Shirt for $2, but that’s all the info on that promotion. I expect we’ll be able to buy some of the lesser T-Shirts for $2; I’m sure we’ll hear more about that later.
• Initially, there’s only three bobbleheads listed. I know these things tend to change/get added once the season gets going, but that’s all that’s listed for now. Two of them are “connected” in some capacity. The ones on May 4 & May 11 are a “Doubple Play Combo Bobblehead”. One is Mike Young, one is Ian Kinsler. How they’re “connected”, I don’t know.
• The usual promotions are here. Fireworks, Dollar Hot Dog night, Autograph Wednesdays, $1 Ice Cream Sundays, etc…

So the only real “bad” news out of this is the “Big Games” concept. The $12 parking isn’t much fun. If management wants less empty seats, they need to make some incentives towards the fans like Tampa Bay has been doing (free parking!). Yeah, I know – we’ll hear the line about “Win, and they’ll come”. Sure, that’s true, but I went to a lot of games late last year, where the number of empty seats was OBSCENE. I can tell you why. Too DAMNED expensive. And the tickets aren’t the problem. Gas, parking, cost of food, etc, etc, etc. THAT’s where the cuts need to be made. Not another half price ticket deal. Not a free pair of tickets once in a while (that’s nice, though). The tickets are actually the cheapest parto f the equation when coming to the game. Oh look, there I go ranting about cost of attendance again. If I’m gonna stop doing that, I need a REAL incentive to come out more often. Not more bobbleheads or a half price ticket (which by the way even at half price is still more than it should really cost, but that’s another rant).
I’ll have the 2007 schedule online shortly with the times in this flyer.

As I’m thinking of what to do with the site in 2007 (just minor tweaks, nothing elaborate), I had a thought. Would anyone visiting this site be interested in having those open comments posts I see on a lot of other sites?
Traditionally I’ve resisted them, since I’ve never been a big fan, but I was wondering if folks here would like to have them.
Please let me know. If I don’t hear more than a couple of comments, then I’ll assume nobody cares, and not bother.