Back in the 2004 season, I was interviewed about an article for the Texas Rangers in stadium program about fan websites. Well, the guy at the Rangers who was responsible for that article being comissioned (Kurt Daniels) is now behind a new venture (he’s still at the Rangers, too). This new venture is a magazine called “Total Texas Baseball”, and is available now. This is a magazine that covers all kinds of baseball in our state of Texas. Majors (Rangers/Astros), Minors, college, High School, it’s all there. Here’s some text from them about what’s in the Inagural April 2006 issue of the magazine:

• Lives Shared in Baseball – Nolan, Reid and Reese Ryan
• Rangers Planning on Improved Pitching
• Astros Offense Expected to be Stronger in ‘06
• Pocket Aces: Danks and Diamond
• Cats Joining American Association
• TCU’s Huffman Dedicated to Two Sports
• Alaniz Leading Longhorns
• “Throw Strikes and Keep it Low” – Hallsville High School’s Justin Jenkins.
• Allen’s Tolleson “Blessed” Despite Injury

I haven’t personally read the magazine yet, but I wanted to draw some attention to it anyway, as it appears to be a quality production. I’m expecting to have my copy shortly, at which point, I’ll update again once I’ve had a chance to read through it.

You know, I’ve been thinking. It’s a lot of work collecting and putting together all the line scores, box scores, etc that I’ve put together for all the games over time. I’m thinking of dropping that stuff, and just concentrating on my reports only for the games.
Since the birth of my daughter, and especially now that she’s become a lot more mobile, there’s a lot more things pressing on my time. Collecting all that stuff takes a bunch of time to put together, and after thinking about it, I’m thinking that I don’t want to spend all that time daily. My work is about to get a whole lot busier, as the company I work for is about to have a major release, so I won’t have that free time. Putting all these things together has kind of made me feel like I don’t have to go “Oh jeez, I need to set aside 20 minutes to half an hour to gather it all”. The amount of time saved will be helpful. Plus with a weight off my shoulders, I will feel more like writing, which is something I’ve enjoyed the last few days when I’ve written at home from my (new) laptop.
I definitely will not stop doing the site – I still like writing, so hopefully I’ll be more inspired to do so on a regular basis with this new site alignment I’ve been thinking about the last few days.
I know I don’t generally get a lot of feedback to questions like this from folks, but I really would appreciate you saying something about this, as it would be a major change in what I do on my site. Thanks.
UPDATE SAT AFTERNOON: After sleeping on it, and giving it some thought I’ve decided that I’m going to go this route, for the reasons stated above. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to stop doing the site, but I thought about how much time it was taking me, and decided that at this point in my life it’s better if I don’t devote as much time gathering info I can just link to. Speaking of linking, I’ve decided to keep one part of the old stuff. For game recaps, I will be linking to the MLB.com recap page. That gives you the box score, as well as a story and game notes from each team. Underneath my commentary, you’ll see a link that says Game recap on MLB.com. That’s the link. It’s pretty unobtrusive, and requires me just to get a link – something I always look at anyway, so it’s no extra work.
Any further thoughts can be added via the comments section here. Thanks for visiting!

For years and years, I used to hate Yankee fans. Why? I felt they were the most obnoxious group of people I could think of. I hated going to Ranger games when the Yankees came to town, because they always swore, were basically just jerks. I don’t mind them coming in the stadium and cheering – that doesn’t bother me at all. It was the WAY they did it. My wife refused to go. I didn’t begrudge them winning – even if some of the more recent attempts were just throwing money at it. On the field, if you win, you win.
And then something happened. The Sox won the World Series, and all of a sudden the spirit of jerk fans transferred to “Red Sox Nation”. I used to love going to Sox games, as the games would be good, the opposing fans would be nice, but it seems there’s a lot more jerks on the Sox side now than there ever wold be. Evidence this T-shirt by some mental zero when Johny Damon came to bat recently against the Sox. I don’t see fans in Oakland and Kansas City doing things like that, so it reflects squarely on the
That reinds me of that jackass in the outfield a year or two ago who took a swipe at Gary Sheffield. Remember that? Sheffield swiped back a little, but didn’t really do anything. What he should have done is gone into the stands and wailed on this moron. Or bring back Ty Cobb from the dead and have him do it. There’s an awful lot of jerk fans, and lately it seems like they’re in Red Sox Nation. I actually find myself enjoying going to Yankee games now and not Red Sox games. Surprised to hear myself say that.
That makes the “Sweep” thing the Hank’s Homies did at a game a year ago or so seem so much the sweeter. Thanks for that moment, guys, I loved it. :)

Does anyone know a place left that still publishes current text only box scores? Everyone wants to “fancy up” the box scores with their own version of “let’s put graphics in the box score”. Does anyone know of a site that publishes pure text based box scores like this? Thnanks.

Well, as with most everyone else in Rangers fan land, I was surprised last night when I read that Juan Dominguez was traded. I think most fans tended to agree that Juan fit the mode of a player with an awful lot of promise, but one that has generally left it unfulfilled. He’s shown incredible starts (that one in Yankee Stadium was probably his high point), and some really horrendous ones. And then there’s his well documented off field problems, which I won’t go into here.
Even having said all that, I think most fans kept feeling that he’d “get it”, and become the great pitcher we all wanted to see come up through the system and become dominant. So when he wasn’t picked to be the fifth starter earlier this week, my guess is that most people figured it would be another setback, as he hasn’t shown that he can deal with these “setbacks” well. The word came down that he was late for another team meeting that day, which probably didn’t help the team’s mood about him. Then Adam Eaton got hurt, and pitchers 3-5 in the rotation got moved up, and Juan Dominguez was widely accepted to have been given the fifth starter’s spot by default, than actual merit.
Then comes last night, we get the word that he was traded. And to the Oakland A’s as well. It’s at this point where we start hearing things about we hope he does well, as you want to feel good for him. But as a Rangers fan, I have to say I hope he falls on his face in Oakland, because I don’t want his skill to blossom there and come back and bite us in the ass. I know most people won’t come out and say they want the guy to fail, but I refer simply to the sport. As a human being I hope he matures and becomes a great pitcher, but simply on the sport of it, I don’t want him to do well at all. I hate trades inside the division just for that reason.
I’m not the greatest at breaking down big detail on players I don’t know the most about – but Jamey Newberg is good at that. Go check out his report this morning for some detail on the inbound players in this move. I don’t know much about the inbound guys (or the transient player we had briefly in the three team trade), except I remember the name John Koronka from when he was a Rule 5 draft player by us a couple of years ago.
The only thinking I have now is this.. Is John Kronoka really that much better than the other #5 options we had at this point (minus Dominguez)? My gut feeling is that we might have been better off giving #5 to Dominguez, or some of the other guys we had in the competition than Koronka. That might not be fair to Koronka, but that’s probably our good old friend “fear of the unknown” creeping in there.
Either way, I hope whoever pitches for us gets wins, and those who pitch against us do not. If this all sounds like rambling, it might be. I don’t write my best essays in the morning, as the brain isn’t in gear yet. :)

I got this submitted via a comment a few days back. One of my site visitors submitted this graphic he made. It was pretty cool, so I wanted to make sure y’all saw it. It’s been the background image on my laptop for the last few days. Click on the thumbnail below to see a larger image in another window.
Thanks to “Chaz” for submitting it. It’s good work!

There’s players flying all over the place right now. :) The next 24 hours will be quite chaotic for the roster. I have decided that until it’s all sorted out who is where when the final roster is put toether tomorrow night, I’ll wait and see what’s going to happen. I’m going to be at the game on Saturday, so I plan to pick up a media guide which I’ll use to update roster pages for players that don’t have them now. My roster page/transactions page has some of the changes, but not all – I’ll catch up when the 25 man is announced.

First Philly gives the Dallas area Terrell Owens. Today they gave us Vicente Padilla, as Philly released Ricardo Rodriguez, so that leaves them with nothing from the trade for Padilla. Thanks guys. :)

Just noticed today that the Ballpark in Arlington was whored out a little more. The 200 level of seats is now going to be called the “Lexus Club Level”. More names in the ballpark where one wasn’t before. I seem to recall last season that Hicks said the club was making money. I guess it wasn’t enough. Yeah yeah yeah, I know – “we need more income to sustain and grow the club”. Yeah, Pbbbbbt. Find it elsewhere. Stop whoring Ameriquest Field The Ballpark in Arlington, please. Sigh.
This just adds another product that I will never give any money to or buy anything from. That’s all these deals do, make the “No way” list get larger. There’s a real happy sounding press release about this over at the Rangers site here.
And as long as I’m complaining, what’s with that stupid name for the Hall of Fame Ballot that was announced today? I mean come on…
The Verizon Yellow Pages and SuperPages.com Hall of Fame Hall of Fame Ballot
Excuse me? What’s that nonsense? Does anyone even care that it’s called that besides Hicks, who gets a few more bucks for it? Must need new floor mats for his Lexus. Sigh.

As the season opener is now a single digit away, the mass media coverage is warming up.
Today’s game is actually a night game, and it’s on KRLD @ 8:05PM. Saturday’s game is not on radio, but Sunday’s game is – @ 2:05PM. However, Sunday’s game is also on Rangers TV. If you have the out of town sports package on DirecTV, you’ve been able to see a handful of games (mostly Chicago games with their coverage). However, Sunday’s game at 2:05 will have Josh Lewin & Tom Grieve back on the air.
However, Monday night is the big one. Monday night’s game (8:05) is on TV, but it’s not just the game. There will be a half hour 2006 Season Preview, followed by the usual half hour pregame show, and then the game itself. It all starts at 7PM on Monday the 27th, so make sure and check that out.
After that, starting on March 31st, every Ranger game for the rest of the year is on KRLD. TV coverage kicks in again with the home opener. My TiVo at home has found another 2006 Season preview, when I get home and can check it, I’ll update with that info.