The season previews are rolling in now that spring training gets started this coming week (yay!). Here’s a few of the ones I’ve noticed the last few days. If you know of one I haven’t listed, please post it in the comments. Thanks.
Now that Nolan Ryan is our president, I wonder how plausible this might be..
In a couple of years, Pudge Rodriguez will likely be on the back end of his career. He’s still pretty darned good now. Not the Pudge of the mid/late 90’s, but he’s still a great catcher. Of all the former Ranger players from the championship teams that went and played somewhere else, Pudge is probably still the most beloved.
Juan Gonzalez is in the Cardinals system trying to hang on, most have retired, but Pudge is still pretty active. He turns 37 after the 2008 season, so I wonder.. When he’s no longer a frontline catcher, I wonder if the Rangers will bring him back to be the backup catcher/part time DH. Nolan caught Pudge back in the day, and I wonder if that might spark something on either side for a career ending reunion.
Other Ranger players have done that kind of thing at the back ends of their career. Jim Sundberg came back in 88/89 to finish off his career after spending a few years in Kansas City and Chicago. Jeff Russell came back in 95/96 after a couple of seasons in Oakland, Boston, & Cleveland. So it could happen.
I was at Pudge’s final game as a Ranger. It was quite the love fest, and when he’s returned with Florida and Detroit, he’s always warmly welcomed by the fans.
Wouldn’t surprise me.
It’s February 7th, and it means we’re about four weeks away from the annual release of this year’s crop of baseball videogames. I’m an old school gamer, and I’ve been playing baseball games on just about every platform there has been since my first system in 1977 (the Atari 2600).
Anyway, since we’re in the buildup for the new games, we’re getting the usual bunch of screenshots and all that. Saw this one today, and thought I’d pass it on. It’s from MLB 2k8, and shows Ian Kinsler at bat at the Ballpark.
2K’s “MLB 2k8” is the latest entry in their series (which started back a few years ago when it was World Series Baseball, and going further back than that on the Sega Genesis). One of the things that has plagued the 2K series has been the player models. That’s supposed to be Ian Kinsler, and it sorta looks like him, but not exactly. 2K is the exclusive “third party” baseball game maker. That means that Sony can make one for the Playstation, and Microsoft can make one themselves for the Xbox 360 (likewise Nintendo for the Wii), but nobody outside the console maker can make a MLB baseball game other than 2K. With that in place, you’d think they’d do a better job of getting the players right. The last couple of entries in this series have been a little more “miss” than “hit”, so I’m hoping they rebound in this latest edition.
This year I have a Playstation 3, and will be checking out Sony’s “MLB 08 The Show” game. Everything I’ve read about that makes me think it might dethrone 2K’s game as the best baseball game around.
I wrote about this a bit when MLB 2k7 game out last year, and I’m bringing back a screenshot that I used then from the baseball game from Atari for the 2600 in the 70’s. We’re a long LONG way from that.
Yahoo’s fantasy baseball is open again. I’ll be running the usual league I do, but someone posed this question to me..
What about doing a paid league? Where folks had to pay to play? Yahoo has a pay league which has more in the way of stats, and all that. If the league was made up of folks who paid, we’d be likely to keep the league together towards the end.
I’ll still have a free league whatever I do, but is there enough interest in putting together a paid league?
The league costs $125 to buy the whole league, which would be not too bad if we spread it out amongst everyone who joined. Is there enough interest from those of you who regularly play in the leagues I put together?
Please let me know.
I for one welcome our new baseball overlord.
This will be good, and will likely be another thing that won’t go right this offseason for Drayton McLane.
Back in November, I wrote about cheerleaders in baseball. As a red blooded normal American male, I find them nice to look at, but as a baseball fan, meh. Like crying, they don’t really belong in baseball, do they?
When I last wrote about this, it seems that when there are cheerleaders, it’s in Latin ball mostly. Turns out that’s not an exclusive thing south of the United States. I saw an article today talking about the cheerleaders for the Florida Marlins, The Mermaids. Heh. Given the community in the Miami area, it makes sense I suppose, but I can’t say I recall seeing them on TV. Not that I see a lot of Marlins home games, but you’d think they’d turn up somewhere.
What do you think of the concept of cheerleaders in baseball? A lot is written at places who write a lot better than I about what “baseball has become”. The game itself sometimes seems like a sideshow to all the other “stuff” that is going on in and around the park. A lot of teams have faux cheerleaders already – ushers that dance, groundscrew that dance, and the Rangers version of that, the “somethingorother six shooters” – girls that play games with the crowd, shoot t-shirts into the stands etc. They’re “fakey” cheerleaders.
When I was in Florida in March 2007 for spring training, the Phillies had Hooters girls (in full regalia) as ball girls. Ball girls are a bit different than an actual cheerleader, though. Makes you wonder at what point some major team will take the leap from all these “almost” cheerleaders to actual cheerleaders. I mean besides the Marlins.
Or heck, with JerryLand being built next door to our little ol’ ballpark, I wonder if we’ll be seeing the Cowboys cheerleaders at games now. I mean if you go to a Rangers game, which of these two pictures would you rather see live in person? It’s a harder question than you think. :)
It could be worse, though. It could still be “Rootin’ Tootin’ Ranger”. :)
According to this story on Monday evening, Armando Galarraga, who was the last part of the Soriano trade we still had a piece of, was being traded to the Detroit Tigers.
According to the story, we would receive outfield prospect Michael Hernandez. I don’t know much about this kid, that’s more Jamey’s bag, but given this was towards the back end of the designated for assignment period, it’s probably not a prospect that would get most Rangers fans jumping up and down.
I’m sure Jamey will have more on this one shortly.
Was looking through some pictures I’ve collected, and ran across this one of Johnny Oates. It always makes me laugh. Looks like an overly enthusiastic call to the bullpen. :)
Lots of Rangers sites/blogs and newspapers have written about the possible return of Nolan Ryan to the Texas Rangers as president. It’s an office that has had much ridicule from fans in the know since Tom Schieffer departed as president of the Texas Rangers not long after Tom Hicks bought the team.
Since then it’s been a bunch of guys who didn’t seem to care much about baseball or the fans, they were mostly hockey guys thrust into the role (Jim Lites, anyone?) who were a victim of Tom Hicks’ attempt at synergy some years ago. He eventually (sorta) figured out that you can’t run a baseball team like a hockey team. The other “joke” I used to laugh at was the one president (forget his name at the moment) who would have a video clip on the (not so Jumbo) Jumbotron at the Ballpark talking about how he wanted the fans to contact him. Even went so far as to give his email address, and said that every email sent to him would get answered. Oh yeah, RIGHT! Way to lie to your customer base every single night. That did not help the perception of monolithic business in the front office.
So anyway, at the end of this past season, the team moved Jeff Cogen back over to the Stars President’s role (snicker – that further proves the hockey analogy), and the post has been left open. Any Rangers fan reading this site should already know that. Been a lot of talk about bring Nolan Ryan back in the role of President. It does raise an interesting role, the office of President has traditionally been one that was involved in biz only. The “baseball” side of things was kept separate. If Ryan comes back, I don’t think he’ll be some sort of dictator president, but it will be interesting to see how well he works with Jon Daniels. Of course, Ryan has owned two minor league baseball teams for awhile now, and that brings me to something I haven’t seen discussed much.
Ryan is the owner of the AAA Round Rock Express, and the AA Corpus Christi Hooks, both teams in the upper two levels of the Houston Astros minor league system. What I’ve always wondered was if this would be a conflict of interest. Could Ryan exist as being the president of one club, and an owner of two minor league franchises for another? I always figured if he took the Rangers President post, he’d have to divest himself of his Astros minor league holdings, or at least put ’em in trust for his kids, or something like that.
So I decided to pose the question to Maury Brown of the very informative site “The Biz of Baseball“. I figure he’d know, since he seems to know more about oddball baseball minutiae than almost anyone else I know. Here’s some relevant bits from an email exchange we had:
Joe: The Nolan Ryan story has been playing locally since late last week. It does raise a question. If he became President of the Rangers, wouldn’t he have to divest himself of his ownings of the two Astros minor league teams? I can’t see MLB allowing a team president to own minor league teams for another franchise.
Maury: Try this… The Red Sox (Fenway Sports Group) recently purchased the Salem Avalanche of the Carolina League. There’s more on that in this link. The Avalanche are an Astros minor league affiliate. Based upon that, it appears that Ryan would not have to divest himself of the Express or Corpus Christi Hooks.
Joe: So that’s a no then. :) I would think they would perceive that as conflict of interest.
Maury: One might say that, but it’s at the minor league level. MLB rules forbid owners from owning shares of more than one MLB team. Yet, at one point (a short period, mind you), John Henry owned parts of the Marlins, Yankees, and the Red Sox at the same time.
So it would seem that he wouldn’t have to, although I would have to imagine we’ll hear “conflict of interest” if he is hired as the Rangers President. With Sundberg being in the upper management team, and with a possible return of Nolan Ryan, it would help restore Hicks’ image a bit with the fans, I think. I always kind of felt those images of Hicks celebrating championships in 1998 & 1999 were kind of “riding the coattails of the previous regime” (much in the same way that Barry Switzer rode Jimmy Johnson’s coattails). I think a hiring of Ryan would be a good move, both from a baseball standpoint, and most CERTAINLY from a PR standpoint.
Still would like to see how the conflict issue I raise here would be officially dealt with.
Makes you wonder if “Nolan Ryan’s All Natural Tender Aged Beef” would be a Texas Rangers sponsor, too. Heh. :)
For no good reason, here’s that clip of Nolan Ryan & Robin Ventura. Thanks to Tim McMahon for the timing of his post referencing the clip right before I posted this. :)