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I was at this game, and was really looking forward to it. Roy Oswalt vs Vicente Padilla. The 2008 version of Padilla, mind you. :) But before I get to any of that, I have to talk about the opening ceremonies. I had heard back on Wednesday what was planned, and I thought it was going to be really cool. But it didn’t quite prepare you for actually witnessing it.

To start off, they had a live feed from Baghdad, Iraq. That was pretty cool. After thinking about it, it was 3AM in Baghdad when the Rangers game was starting. Something I bet most people didn’t take into consideration. Chuck Morgan said the Rangers/Astros game was being broadcast on the Armed Forces Network. I’m sure the soldiers probably didn’t mind being up at 3AM for that, but 3AM is still 3AM – that’s early, eh? Anyway, as they normally do during home openers and on July 4th, they had the four sets of military all present the colors. You know, these guys..

Some soldiers from Ft Hood rolled out a flag on Greene’s Hill, so it was nice to have the local military presence, on top of what was being shown from Iraq. While the local presence was unfolding, they were playing the good old tear jerker of a song, Lee Greenwood’s “I’m Proud to be an American”. That song gets me every time, especially with all the visual cues around regarding the military.

After all the flags were presented, then they had Major General Hammond of the 4th Infantry Division based at Ft. Hood, TX give a two or three minute speech. While I won’t break it completely down, he mentioned folks supporting the troops, gave a quick update on what was going on in Iraq, but made a bigger point about supporting the families of the troops, as they’re wider hit than the troops themselves, if you think about it. After General Hammond had his speech, they brought on a band from Iraq to play the National Anthem. That was pretty cool, too.

But all that stuff was known ahead of time. What wasn’t announced is that they brought on a soldier from Iraq, whose kids were here in the park. They said it was their birthdays (whether they were twins, or just born on similar dates was not disclosed). Anyway, with the game being broadcast in Iraq, I’m sure said solder could SEE what was going on, and they had him on the Jumbotron saying happy birthday to his kids. What I thought was a nice touch was the soldier was positioned in front of the camera to make it look like he was looking out from the Jumbotron directly down at the area in front of the Rangers dugout where his kids were. Said kids then were escorted to the mound (by Tom Hicks & Nolan Ryan) where they both threw out first pitches. The recipients of the pitches were Josh Hamilton & Michael Young.

Since I have a three year old of my own now, these kinds of things hit me way more emotionally than they ever did. I really enjoyed seeing the ceremonies with the kids and their dad from Iraq.

Oh yeah, the game. Padilla was good, even if he ran up his pitch count early. We got to Oswalt for a couple of home runs, then he had to come out of the game. Home runs for Marlon Byrd, Milton Bradley, and Lance Berkman (who has about 500 already this season). Rangers won. We got back to .500, and that was good.

However, the pregame things took up a lot of my thoughts that night, and quite frankly, a lot of professionals who get paid for this kind of thing will write about the baseball events of this night. You can read them. I’m taking a pass on this one, as to be honest, I’m getting a bit emotional just recalling the pregame stuff again.

I really liked it – one of my all time favorite pregame ceremonies ever. I spent the entire time during all the pregame ceremonies with my cap over my heart – never took it off. Sang the national anthem out loud, which is something I usually don’t do in stadium. Also teared up several times.

As I told Chuck Morgan in an email this morning, “Good stuff, my friend”. I really enjoyed that.

UPDATE: I spoke with Chuck this morning about the ceremonies last night, and first off, he said the credit for the idea wasn’t his, it was Nolan Ryan’s. Apparently Nolan came to Chuck and said that this Iraq video feed thing was something they did in Round Rock, and that he thought it would go over well here, too. So thanks to Nolan for that.

Chuck also told me that some people were complaining on online message boards about the game being delayed due to the ceremony. That just made me mad. First off, they couldn’t delay the game, it was advertised as starting at 6:17 or so due to the pregame stuff. If they delayed the game for that, the umpires, starting pitchers, and managers would throw a fit. Chuck also told me some people were complaining about the Lee Greenwood song. Come on guys – have you no heart? Besides, I was told the Army requested that song be played. It all worked, and if all you have to do is sit around and complain on message boards about a very nice military pre-game ceremony, then perhaps should consider giving up your baseball fan title. I cannot believe people ACTUALLY COMPLAINED about the ceremonies. I told Chuck I’ve been doing this online forum and email communication thing now for 22 years, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that folks who mouth off online about things like that can be ignored, that their opinions don’t really matter, because they just want to complain.

I’m actually embarrassed that Ranger fans had the audacity to complain about this stuff. Thanks guys. Thanks a lot. :(

This game definitely belonged to Josh Hamilton. After almost making a spectacular play in center field (lost the ball to a snow cone hitting the ground), Josh proceeded to go 5-5 with a walk, scoring four times, and had five RBI’s. His hits included two home runs and a triple. Quite the performance. He has the major league lead in RBI’s. At the current rate he’s going, he’s looking at something like 35 home runs and about 140, 150, 160 RBI’s. It’s a seriously impressive set of numbers. We haven’t seen anything like that since the glory days of Juan Gonzalez in the late 90’s. I hope he can stay on the field.

Lost in the hoopla of all the home runs and Josh Hamilton was another pedestrian outing by Sidney Ponson, now making his second in a row. Granted, Ponson was hurt by some poor fielding, but still did not dominate. His line was five innings, 80 pitches (not that bad at all, actually), nine hits, and seven runs, although only three were earned. I’ve seen a lot worse lines than that, but watching the game he was just “eh”.
But there’s no doubt the big deal in this game was the home runs. While the box score says we had six, it honestly felt like more than that. The home runs came from Josh Hamilton (two), Jarrod Saltamacchia, David Murphy, Chris Shelton, & Michael Young.
The Rangers had seventeen hits in all. The only Ranger without a hit was Frank Catalanotto. Everyone else had at least one. Hamilton had five, David Murphy had three, Milton Bradley & Michael Young had two each, and the rest were all single hit performances. Still, it was enough to club the Astros into submission.
It always seems that some game against the Astros each year we score some really huge pile of runs. Normally it comes later in the six games we play. Hopefully, this wasn’t the last one.
More importantly, we can get back to .500 with a win on Saturday evening. It should be a great pitching matchup, Vicente Padilla goes against Roy Oswalt. I’ll be there.
Make sure and check out the MLB Recap link at the top of this entry. There’s video highlights of a lot of this. These new recaps they have in 2008 are worth checking out, now that they’re all into recaps and video clips.

The game just ended a minute ago. I’ll have some more to write later, but probably not till tomorrow.
My kid was up most of the night sick, so Mommy and Daddy got very little sleep. Will probably pass out tonight. :)
I ended up passing on commentary for this one. It was an extra inning loss, which always end up irritating me.

Kason Gabbard looked good again, and seemed to have no ill effects at being at the bottom of the pile due to Sexson’s still gutless move of charging the mound. Unfortunately, Kason didn’t get the win due to Josh Rupe letting some inherited runners score. Kason went 5.1 innings, gave up five hits and two walks. Rupe, who allowed runners to score, got the win, and got no earned runs on his ERA. Gotta love those baseball rules, eh? :)
But this game was about our defense. Kinsler, Vazquez, Hamilton all made spectacular plays in the field to rob several Mariner hitters.
We actually didn’t have a ton of offense. Just seven hits, and they were all by just four Ranger hitters (Murphy 2, Laird 2, Vazquez 2, Boggs 1). Boggs and Murphy doubled, but that was about it.
Scary moment for Gerald Laird going headfirst into second base, looked like he was done and headed to the DL when he hit the bag.
Eddie Guardado looked spectacular in the ninth, didn’t he? I have to admit I didn’t think that signing would amount to much. While it’s still early, and he can still tank, he’s done well so far, something I didn’t think would happen.

You know, as I sat here watching this game, I thought of several angles to take reporting on it. With all the seesawing in this one, I didn’t know which way I’d go in reporting this story. Now that it’s over, I can’t get the following image out of my mind, so it’s what I’m going with as commentary for this story. Except to say that Hamilton’s ball went WAY further than it was reported. Can we institute a recount? Can we overturn a distance call?

Well, first off, I didn’t see most of this game. I spent the day with my family, and with it being Mother’s day, I saw just part of the early bits of the game before we headed out to do the family thing in the afternoon.
What I saw was the Sidney Ponson that has existed for the last few years make a reappearance. The one we’ve had up until this point has been really great. The one we got on Mother’s Day 2008 was well, “Sidney Ponson”. He actually stuck around the game for awhile (5.1 innings), but he gave up seven hits and five walks. That was pretty indicitave of the entire Rangers pitching staff, actually. Ponson was followed by Esteban German (0.2IP, 3H, 2R), Jamey Wright (2IP, 1H, 1R, 1BB), and Eddie Guardado (1IP, 2H, 3R, 2BB). None of our guys did particularly well this day.
Rich Harden came off the DL for Oakland, and proceeded to stink up the joint about as badly as Ponson did – worse if you look at the line. 3.2 innings, eight hits, four walks, and 5 runs. Not good.
Since I didn’t see much else of this game, I’ll pass on going into a lot more detail. Check out the MLB.com Recap I link to here, there’s plenty of detail, plus some video.

On Saturday evening, the Rangers went to extend their winning streak, but in the first inning, we got something that kind of made it not much matter. After just two thirds of an inning, Kevin Millwood came up lame after a pitch, and had to be removed from the game. The injury was later described as “mild strain of the right groin muscle”. It turns out it wasn’t so “mild”, as Kevin ended up on the disabled list over this. This now leaves just Vicente Padilla as still in the rotation from the original opening day starting rotation. Blech.
Josh Rupe followed Kevin, and threw three innings. He wasn’t sharp, gave up five hits and two walks. Fortunately, he just gave up one earned run in all that, with one unearned. Josh ended up with the win, but the next reliever had quite the dominant outing. Frank Francisco threw 2.1 innings, gave up just one hit. More importantly he faced eight batters. Struck out five of them. Guardado & Benoit followed up, keeping zeroes on the scoreboard. CJ Wilson finished up, although was not very good, giving up two runs in his one inning.
Offensively, we were driven by positions 1 through 4 in the lineup. All but one of our hits came from the first four spots in the lineup. Ian Kinsler, Michael Young, and Milton Bradley each had two hits. Josh Hamilton had three. Milton Bradley had a home run and a double. Josh Hamilton and the non 1-4 hit (which was by Duran) were also doubles.
We did lose our scoreless innings streak in this game too, but the more important part of this is that we won the game, bringing us back to just two games under .500.