A check a few minutes ago on Ticketmaster shows you can still buy tickets for the playoff game between the Rangers and the Rays that starts in about six hours. It’s their Home Game 1.
Way to go Rays fans, you don’t deserve a team.

The 2011 Texas Rangers regular season has been a season like no other for me since I started following this team in 1995. For a couple of reasons.
First off, we were the defending American League Champions. That alone was an interesting thing to deal with. The perception that the Rangers were the team that everyone else was chasing was a weird feeling. But a good feeling just the same.
Second, I only attended four games this season. Two were in Arlington (Games 2 & 157), and two were in Philadelphia (Games 45 & 46). That’s a low for me since I’ve been a Rangers fan. For someone who used to go to about 25 games a year, that was a major adjustment.
Thirdly, my drop in updating the site. I took a huge number of breaks this year, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that I dropped cable TV and went to antenna only. I discovered that my being more than a casual fan was really based around the fact that I could watch the games on TV.
Still, it was a great season. The Rangers won the division again for the second year in a row, and the fifth overall. We set a record for wins in a season, as well as a record for home attendance. Both by minimal numbers over the previous records, but still. New records for wins and attendance are great!
CJ Wilson stepped up and pitched like the Number 1 pitcher slot he was put in. He apparently picked up a lot from Cliff Lee when Cliff was here last year. CJ seemed very “Lee-like” in several places this season. I’ll say it again, I was wrong last year in thinking there was no way he’d make the rotation, but he destroyed that.
The Rangers new scoreboard in right is spectacular. Something that should have been done ages ago, but when I saw it for the first time, it actually gave me that “seeing the green in the field as a kid” feeling. I loved the new scoreboard. Shame I only got to go to two games.
The broadcaster stuff is more confusing. We started off the season with John Rhadigan replacing Josh Lewin on TV. He didn’t last too long, and was fired fairly early on in the season. That caused a shuffle of personnel, and we ended up with Dave Barnett replacing Rhadigan on TV, and Steve Busby replacing Barnett on radio. At the time, some noise was made about those moves being temporary for the rest of the season. I certainly hope that’s the case. I never wanted Barnett on TV, he was one of the reasons I stopped listening on radio for the most part. At this point, if things went the way I would like for 2012, I’d bring back Josh Lewin for TV, and have Bryan Dolgin be with Eric on the radio. When Dolgin was on the radio, I liked him. I have nothing against Busby – I like him too. But I’ve read where he’s not interested in doing play by play full time. But Dolgin is younger, and I thought worked well with Nadel.
We’re going to the playoffs starting in a few hours. My Phillies are in too. This will be interesting. Not sure who I’d root for there. :)

I’m going to Friday night’s Rangers game. I’ll be setting a new low in number of games attended (that isn’t a zero, I didn’t go to any in 1994 or 1995). This will be my SECOND game of the season.
Extended unemployment really saps your casual spending money big time. :(
Still, there’s a shot they could clinch tonight. I’m hoping Chuck puts on the Angels game on the Jumbotron after the fireworks so we can see them lose and we’d clinch. :)

Seems this having to watch/listen to games at real time is affecting me more than I anticipated. I’m missing weeks at a time here.
Will get caught up again soon, hopefully. :)
I miss Fox Sports Southwest!

Hey Texas Rangers fans.. What would you pick for a Texas Rangers specific playlist of songs? My list of iTunes tracks is woefully inadequate for the Rangers, but I’m having problems coming up with more than the three I have.
The three I have are:
Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire
Little Texas – God Blessed Texas
Merle Haggard – That’s the Way Baseball Go
Brother Cane – And Fools Shine On
That last one was a song the Rangers used to play a lot during their “take the field” music during the 1998 season.
The only other thing I can think of is the Texas Rangers specific version of “Talkin’ Baseball” by Terry Cashman, but I’ve never been able to find that to purchase online. Tkx for suggestions.
If you have any suggestions, drop me a line. Tkx.

While Ogando didn’t directly replace Cliff Lee in the starting rotation, one could make the case that Lee’s spot was taken by Ogando. Given Lee is pitching tonight in Philadelphia, it made me wonder what their stats looked like at this point in the season. While Lee’s are marginally better in some categories, they’re not radically better. Check this out:
Going into action on August 17, 2011, a comparison between Cliff Lee & Alexi Ogando..
Cliff Lee:
12-7, 2.83 ERA, 24GS, 5CG, 5SHO, 172IP, 153H, 56R, 54ER, 14HR, 3HB, 34BB, 177K .237AVG, 1.09WHIP
Alexi Ogando:
12-5, 3.33 ERA, 23GS, 1CG, 1SHO, 140.1IP, 122H, 57R, 52ER, 12HR, 5HB, 36BB, 102K, .231AVG, 1.13WHIP
Cliff Lee Salary: $11 Million for 2011, is an average of $314,285 per start based on avg of 35 starts per season.
Alexi Ogando Salary: $430,150 for 2011, an average of $12,290 per start based on avg of 35 starts per season.
Just sayin’. ;)

The guy who fell over the rail at Rangers ballpark tonight and went head first into the area behind the scoreboard in left field just died (as I write this). (AAndro story here)
This is the third person who has fallen over the rails at Rangers Ballpark in now the 18th season the park has been open. A woman fell over in year 1 in 1994, and they raised the rails due to that.
Someone fell over last year, and he ended up being OK. Tonight’s guy
There’s video of the guy falling off at this link, although given he’s since died, I’m not sure if they’ll leave that video up or not.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot about safety rails in the next few days. When this happened in July of last year, a lot was made about how the height of the rails was above what “code” said they should be. The bigger problem generally is people leaning that far out to get balls, and losing their center of gravity. No amount of rail can stop that unless you screen every one off, and that won’t happen.
Apparently the guy went over throwing a ball up there that Josh threw into the stands at the end of an inning. A tweet by Anthony Andro said “Nolan Ryan on Josh Hamilton: Josh is very distraught over this, as the entire team is.”
God Bless his family. They’ll need it.
UPDATE: It gets worse. If you watch the video footage, there’s a little kid behind the guy who fell over the rail. NBC5 news said that was the guy’s kid.
UPDATE 2: The fan, finally named as Shannon Stone, was laid to rest on July 11th. It sucks. Still. The shock isn’t as hard, but man, this whole thing sucks.
Finally, Derek Holland pitched a fantastic game. He won 6-0. Who cares?

Not that there’s been a clamoring of fans at my doorstop demanding me return to my site, but I decided this afternoon that I’ll be coming back shortly. The All-Star game will be my return to writing updates for my site. I’ve had enough of a break due to Duke Nukem Forever coming out, and my loss of TV.
Also, I’ve decided that I might investigate new software for the site. I had to remove comments due to spammers. The main reason I’ve never done this before is a lot of hellacious custom templating for this site I’ve done. I may have thought of a way to do that, and if I can, I’ll be bringing back comments on the new site.
That 15-5 game tonight was fun to watch. Especially since I only get one per week now. That was a good one to have on Friday night. :)

Looks like I’ll be taking a longer break than I thought.
I wrote a few weeks ago about having to drop cable TV and go to antenna only. That reduced my Rangers game watching to once a week, and I have to say, it’s really cut into my paying attention to the team. Yeah, I know I can get it on mobile devices, my iPhone, my iPad, and good old fashioned radio, but there-in lies the rub.
I can’t time shift those. Oh, I could wait till the game is all the way over and listen to a replay, but that is near impossible in this world of Facebook updates, tweets, and whatnot. So many friends tweet everything that happens, that I would have to stay offline totally until I could see the game.
I decided not to go through all that, and while I’m still looking at box scores, and catching the odd inning here and there, I have to say I hate having to catch a game on it’s actual scheduled time. TiVo has changed me – permanently. I do not like having to do things on a prepared schedule, I want to do it when I’m ready, which usually means after the kids are in bed.
Long time followers of my site know I’ve worked in the videogame industry since 1992, and and the project my former company worked on for 13 years finally came out this past Tuesday. That’s Duke Nukem Forever. I have a part time gig doing contract work for the company that picked up the slack, so I was involved. It was a busy time, and to be honest, there were several Rangers games that I didn’t know the results of until after 24 hours beyond their endtime.
So I’ve decided to take a longer break. I don’t think I’ll break for the whole season, but I am still paying attention to results. I just didn’t realize how much of my being a baseball fan was tied to the television. Now that I don’t have that kind of TV game access anymore, I find myself not as interested, and that’s mostly due to TiVo.
I’ll be back. Been doing it too long to just quit totally. Thanks for visiting.