Hey, was anyone at the Rangers game on Wednesday? If so, did you happen to get any good pictures of Rangers Captain & the Philly Phanatic next to each other? I would have loved to have seen that in person. Too bad the Rangers marketing people didn’t do anything radical and like TELL ANYONE IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!

I’ll resume regular updates again starting with this coming Tuesday’s game. A few short blurbs:
1) It was awesome to see the Rangers beat the Yankees twice on Fri & Saturday. Always good to see the Yankees booed in their own stadium.
2) As the standings are right now, the Yankees have sole possession of last place in the AL East. In fact, there’s only one team with a worse record in all of the AL, that’s the Royals. There’s only three with worse records in the NL, too (Brewers, Pirates, & Rockies). Gotta love that.
3) Read something on the Yankees site where Soriano seems to imply he’ll return to the Yankees when he’s a free agent after the 2006 season. Check it out. If that’s the case, trade him back there so we can at least get something out of him, and play Kinsler.

Well, my baby was born, and things are going great. If you’re interested, there’s a story here. I’m still not ready to resume big updates, but I can get this small one.
1) Augstin Montero was suspended for 10 days for violating MLB’s new steroid program. Dumbass. Can’t remember who we had to sacrifice from the 40 man roster for this guy, but… DUMBASS!
2) In a move that kind of surprised me, we demoted Adrian Gonzalez to AAA and prompted Laynce Nix. Not sure what prompted that, exactly.
Nice 3-0 win yesterday. I actually had the Rangers game on a couple of times when my wife was in the hospital. Once before the baby was born, and once after the baby was in the room. My daughter was one day old, and I was showing her a Rangers game already.

There will be a slight delay in the resumption of my updates.
The reason is my wife and I had our kid on Saturday afternoon at 2PM. She had a Cesearean, which means she’ll be in the hospital longer than we expected.
Needless to say I’m a bit occupied at the moment. Not sure at the moment when I’ll get going again, probably later this week after my wife and baby have come home.

Just a remark I thought of posting..
As you may or may not know from reading what I’ve written over the last few months or so.. My wife is pregnant. Very pregnant. Her due date is next Saturday the 16th. As one can never really tell what’s going to happen with this subject, I’m not sure when I’m going to have to drop off the face of the earth for a couple of days to deal with this situation.
So if my reports suddenly stop coming, that’s possibly what has happened. Hopefully my daughter’s pending arrival will allow me to still go to opening day.

Well, tonight’s the night. The regular season starts. I watched the new Washington Nationals play the Phillies on Monday afternoon. I watched David Wells (wearing a Sox uniform and Babe Ruth’s #3) get torched in Yankee stadium. I read about Dimiti Young getting 3 HR and 5 RBIs (for a season avg of 480HR and 800RBI). And, unfortunately, I read a lot about steroids the last couple of months. That was a drag, but today, I don’t give a crap about that. Basically, the baseball season has started. And I couldn’t be happier – except possibly for the birth of my child sometime in the next two weeks. And for “special” 6AM wakeup calls. ;)
Anyway, as I write this, the Rangers game is roughly three hours away from starting. We have an odd 25 man roster to start the season (link) – there were several surprises there. However, all that doesn’t much matter, as real games are ready. I’ve got my Palm all loaded up with the Rangers and Angels roster. I’ll be scoring tonight. Last season, I attempted to score every game the Rangers played. I burnt out on that after about 100 games or so, so I’m not doing that this year. I’m scoring every one I attend, and some other selected ones. But I don’t want to burn out on that – plus with a kid coming, I likely won’t have the time. This evening, I went and updated my roster page with all the moves that were made over the weekend while I “took off”. I have about 4 or 5 players on the 25 man roster I have no roster page for. Once I pick up my copy of the 2005 Media guide, I intend on rectifying that. Unless of course my daughter Samantha decides to make an appearance and change my plans, I will be attending opening day. If my wife goes into labor during the game, I might not stay long, but I do plan on going as of this moment. :)
I’m ready to go, and let’s see if we can beat the Bartolo Colon problem we seem to have.

Check out this page on ESPN. It’s a Raners based poll on the upcoming season.

So says this article over at thesportingnews.com by Ken Rosenthal. This is his 2005 AL Predictions thread (he has one for the NL, too). He has this to say about the Rangers:
Home run champ: Mark Teixeira, Rangers. Teixeira hit 26 of his 38 home runs last season after July 1. If he carries that kind of production into ’05, a 45-homer season should be within reach.
Biggest name traded before July 31: Alfonso Soriano, Rangers. The Rangers could use Soriano, who can become a free agent after ’05, to acquire pitching, then play the emerging Ian Kinsler at second base.
He also thinks Arod will be the league MVP. I don’t agree with the Arod remark, but I tend to agree on his two comments about the Rangers. I can see us trading Soriano at the trading deadline. I bet he would have been traded in camp, if he wasn’t 0-6million to start out this spring.
We shall see. :)

March always brings good things. It’s when Spring Training is in full swing. There’s games on TV (although not as many as I’d like), and many on radio, and since the advent of MLB.com and XM Radio, I can now pretty much listen to almost any (broadcast) game anytime I want. This is good. In fact, as I write this I’m paying attention to a Twins/Phillies spring training game. The regular season is about two weeks away, which means daily Rangers games for six months! This is the good part of March.
The BAD part is all the FRIGGIN COLLEGE BASKETBALL HIGHLIGHTS on the TV! I can’t escape them! Every time I see another college basketball highlight, I want to pull my hair out from underneath my BASEBALL cap! Bleargh – I can’t stand basketball to begin with, and college basketball? Don’t waste my time – I need to see this many baseball highlights, thank you.
There has never been a term so accurate as March MADNESS. How so many people could be into college basketball is beyond my comprehension.

Intrasquad games start today. While they don’t “count” in the spring training standings, I’ll try and report on them if I can get info.
However, I probably won’t update until later in the week, as I’ve been terribly sick the last few days – I caugh something going around my office, and I’ve had a fever since Saturday that I can’t shake. :(