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Ugh. The only good moment of this game was Chris Davis’ home run.
I know it’s only two games out of the break, but after last night and tonight combined, does anyone else feel like it’s April again?

First off, I wanted to make a comment about the MLB Game Recap for this game. For the last few seasons, I’ve been linking to the recaps on the official mlb site. This year they’ve gotten a lot better, with video and pictures, and recaps from both sides. They’ve been a serious improvement. There’s technically three recaps for each game. The ones that are slanted for the home and visiting team comprise two, and then there’s a third that covers the “general MLB recap”, which also includes the other two. Anyway, for the general MLB one, someone is writing what I would perceive as “comedic headlines”, where it’s things like “Texas Two Step stops such and such team”. But the one for this game really struck me as odd, mostly because it seems bizarre. The phrase was “Perky pitching powers three-hit derby”. Perky? Perky? What exactly is “perky pitching”? That really seems odd to me.
Thing is, this little diatribe I wrote about the word “perky” is more than what can really be said about the actual game. I think most Rangers fans were riding high off of Josh Hamilton’s HR Derby performance. Ian Kinsler’s 25 game hitting streak was ready to be extended, and most Rangers fans I think were feeling good about the team. Unfortunately, we ran into Twins pitcher Glen Perkins. He tossed a gem against the Rangers, going six innings, allowing no runs and just three hits. Those hits were a double (Byrd), and two singles (Young, Bradley). Perkins only went six innings and 98 pitches, though. I thought he probably could have gone longer, but you can’t argue that he would have done better than the bullpen guys who followed. The three Twins relievers each pitched a single perfect inning. You can’t beat that.
Millwood was not good. 6.1 innings, eleven hits, one walk for five earned runs. Bleh.
But the bottom line was the Twins pitching shut us down totally, and handed us our first shutout of the season. Hats off to Perkins and crew for a well pitched game.

The Rangers had four guys in this game, and they all played. Granted, two of them started, and one of the other two should have started, so that came as no surprise. What was a bit of a surprise was the fact that for roughly an inning or so, all four of them were in the game at the same time – if not all on the field at the same time, as Bradley was a DH. Here’s a short summary of what our guys did:

• Josh Hamilton – 1-3 with a steal. His hit was a single. He got a lot of applause because of his home run derby moves. Wasn’t terribly impactful in the game.
• Milton Bradley – 0-2 with a walk and a steal. He was also picked off. The walk was a surprise. OK, not really. He’s been doing that all season.
• Ian Kinsler – 1-5 with a steal and a caught stealing. He also had a great tag on a not terribly well pitched strike out, throw ’em out throw from Dioner Navarro. Was well played.
• Michael Young – 2-5 with what could have been the game winning single in the 11th, but Dioner Navarro was thrown out at the plate. That was made up for by the bottom of the 15th.

I’m not going to get into the individual stuff about the whole game, but the first four innings and innings 9-14 were both scoreless, but for different reasons. The first four were well pitched. The others were well danced. Both teams really gave the othe team a ton of chances, but nobody could get the job done.
Defense was weird. There were some fantastic plays at the plate on both sides (Adrian Gonzalez pick and Miguel Tejada falling down throw plays to save the game comes to mind as well as Ichiro’s throw to get Albert Pujols). Then there was Dan Uggla, who had three errors on his own, although the third wasn’t really his fault.
Young’s hit and lost game winning RBI in the 12th was nowhere near as bad as the bottom of the 11th where the AL had the bases loaded and nobody out, and couldn’t score. In the bottom of the 10th/11th, three of the six outs were at home plate. The National League had the bases loaded in the top of the 12th, and couldn’t push one across, either. AL led off the bottom of the 12th with a double, couldn’t do anything with it. There were a ton of chances in extra innings, but nobody could seal the deal until Young came up again in the bottom of the 15th with the bases loaded and sac flied in Justin Morneau.
Four hours and fifty minutes later, Michael Young gets the game winner for the second time in the last three All-Star Games. Gotta love that.
I have to admit to being somewhat disappointed in the pre-game stuff. Oh, there was nothing wrong with it, and I really did like seeing all the Hall of Famers, but there were quite a few of them that probably should have been there like Johnny Bench & Nolan Ryan. I did like how they staged it so Yogi Berra was the last announced Hall of Famer. Some other things I wished would have happened is have Joe Torre be on the NL coaching staff for some reason. Likewise having Don Zimmer on the AL staff.

No commentary; no time.

I was involved in a church event last night, and will be most of today too, so I have no time to write about last night’s game. Nice try in the bottom of the ninth though. Love the resiliency (sp?).