Rangerfans.com

In an idea that I admit I completely ripped off from the USS Mariner Site, I went through my attendance history page, and entered the data into Excel. I produced a graph that shows how the attendance records and the winning percentage go over time. I went from 1972-2006. I do have the records from the Washington Senators, years, but I did not include them.
Whenever we hear from the Rangers that there’s too many empty seats, someone will almost invariably follow that up with a statement saying “Well, if you win, people will come”. Yes, that’s true, but it’s also true this is Cowboy land. Some people are loathe to deal with the Rangers. Newy Scruggs over at NBC5 for one. You can almost see the pain on his face when he has to talk baseball. But that’s a rant for another time. I decided to look at the numbers and see how this all breaks down. Take a look below. I have a few larger size images for you to check out besides this thumbnail here. You can also download my Excel spreadsheet if you’re so inclined to look at it that way. I’d be curious to see what you think of this – please leave some comments below. Thanks.

I work at a game company that has to deal with large bandwidth usages at time on our web servers. So I’ve always been curious what the back end of the mlb.com website is like. They do a virtual boatload of bandwidth, and I’ve been following the official sites for awhile now. I started this website in December of 1998, and have been with mlb.com since before they centralized all the websites under one banner. Used to be each team “rolled it’s own”, and it was haphazard. Heck, I remember when they didn’t own mlb.com, and you had to enter majorleaguebaseball.com (which still works).
Anyway, as they’ve grown over the years, their bandwidth has jumped, with more archives, video streams, etc, etc. So it was with some interest that I ran across this article tonight which talks a bit about the back end of the mlb.com website. It’s not as in depth as I would have liked, but it is an interesting read if you like baseball and are into web servers. This is my favorite quote from the article:

“After the third out in an inning, everyone goes away, then we have 60 seconds for commercials,” Nelson says. “God forbid they pinch-hit at the top of the next inning. Then half a million people request the same JPEG within a 10-second span. You go from zero to 600 miles per hour really fast.”

I don’t know how many of you regularly read the site “The Business of Baseball”, but they post some great stories over there. There was one posted this evening which I found rather fascinating. It’s about television territories and how it affects expansion & relocation. You always hear some teams whining (Angelos & Orioles, the Giants) about their territories. This article goes into that a bit in detail.
They also have a map which shows where each team’s rights go. If I’m reading that map right, the Rangers own rights into New Mexico? That seems a bit far away. Check it out, it’s a good read.

Saw this little blurb today up on the Boston Globe website.

According to a friend of Palmeiro, the former Cubs, Orioles, and Rangers star wants to return to baseball even after the embarrassing events of 2005. Palmeiro, the highest-profile player ever to test positive for steroids, feels he’s done the time and should be able to return. On Aug. 1, 2005, Palmeiro was suspended 10 games. He returned to the Orioles after the suspension but was out of baseball all of last year. The Cuban-born Palmeiro, 42, feels he can still hit.

Apparently Rafael Palmeiro doesn’t feel like he’s finished, and wants to make a comeback. I wonder who would have him? I’m sure the Rangers wouldn’t. I’m not up on the Orioles situation, but I’m not sure they’d want that headache, either. Guilty or not, there’s a stigma around him now too. It’s still a sad way for him to end his career. I wish that hadn’t happened. Oh well.
I envision him like he was in this old Rangers TV commercial, knocking on the clubhouse door saying “Let me in!”

What do you think? Do you think Raffy should come back, and if he did, who do you think would be interested? My gut feeling is that he will probably try, but I have no idea who would want to take a shot on him.

46 days to go until Ranger pitchers and catchers are to report (Sat Feb 17th).