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The second game felt an awful lot like the first one. We gave up a run in the first inning, and then it stayed that way for a long time. We were “right there” the whole way, but couldn’t bring anyone across. It got a bit more irritating when we left five men on base in the first two innings alone! Just couldn’t get it done. In fact, the game stayed 1-0 until the eighth.
In the middle of that, Kenny Rogers had a ball batted up the middle pretty fast that he tried to catch with his glove, but replays showed it nicked the top of his pitching hand. That’s two games in a row that Jamie Reed had to come out and deal with something (in fact, twice in this game too, as Hidalgo got hit in the kneecap with a pitched ball earlier). Rogers stayed in after that, but eventually came out of his own request after six innings. Unfortunately, Jarrod Washburn was like Colon the night before, and was pretty untouchable in terms of runs anyway. :) So Kenny left with a loss on the hook.
However, in the eighth, our new right fielder paid dividends. Richard Hidalgo jacked a two run home run over the short left field corner wall in Angel Stadium for a 2-1 lead. These kinds of games tend to turn emotionally pretty quickly – at that time, I assumed the game was won. It felt like a win. But Cordero couldn’t hold it. Actually, Cordero came in early in the 8th after Doug Brocail & Ron Mahay left him with bases loaded. Got out of that, but in the bottom of the ninth, but a ground rule double scored Josh Paul to tie the game up and send it to extra innings. We almost really blew it the bottom of the eleventh. Ryan Bukvich had pitched a good 10th, but in the 11th, he was wild, putting two on with nobody out, but some picking and choosing of relief pitchers by Showalter got us out of that.
It set the stage for Alfonso Soriano’s game winning HR in the top of the 12th. Brian Shouse, who pitched the final 1.1 innings, picked up the win. There were a lot of pitchers used total. The Rangers used 7 (Rogers, Brocail, Mahay, Cordero, Bukvich, Dickey, Shouse) and the Angels used 6 (Washburn, Shields, Donnelly, Yan, KRod, & Prinz).
Did anyone think that Tom Grieve was really going to give out his phone number? Was amusing, though. He did narrow it down, if someone wants to dial 1,000 phone numbers, they could get through. :)
You can view my full update for this game here.

The season started. I was messing with my wife while watching the game – I said “You know when this game is over, that’s one less game in the season to look forward to”. I almost got slapped upside the head for that, but I did get a good solid glare. It was nice to have Josh & Tom back on the TV, but I’m sure Tom doesn’t like those intros where the camera is looking top down. :)
Ryan Drese was our opening day starter, and we haven’t had the same guy do two consecutive opening day starts since Ken Hill in 96-97, so he’s another on the carousel. Speaking of that, we had another opening day center fielder this year which is like 10 out of the last 11 years with a different guy or something. Drese was really well – in fact, other than Vlad Guerrero, he was spectacular. No shame in falling to Guerrero, he could probably golf a ball out of a home run if it was underground! We got our first quality start in the first game of the season. Drese went seven innings, giving up six hits and 3ER. Two of which were directly attributable to Vlad. So while it was disappointing that the birthday boy did not get a win, he pitched really well, and it was a good sign of things to come, I would think.
On the other side, our nemesis, Bartolo Colon went 6.2 innings, giving up just one run and six hits. He did seem to labour a lot more (Colon had 108 pitches in 6.2 and Drese had just 87 in 7 IP). We did have our chances, we left nine men on base, including four in the first two innings. Colon felt beatable last night, but we couldn’t cross the line and get the win, although we played really well.
Offensively, we only had a total of seven hits. Only four of our players had hits, everyone else was an ofer. Soriano went 2 for 5, Tex went 2 for 4, and had a HR, Gary Matthews went 2 for 4, although one of his hits was wiped out when he tried to stretch a single into a double, and almost made it with a really weird acrobatic “slide”. The final hit was from Mike Young, who got a hit to the right side of the field (what a shocker). In fact, one of Teixeira’s hits was a single that should have been a double. It looked like a HR off the bat, but hit the wall, and Guerrero absolutely cannoned the ball back to second – it was quite amazing to watch. I always liked this guy for years in Montreal when no one had heard of him. Glad to see him getting a bigger audience.
We lost the game, which is never good, but I didn’t much mind. It was Game #1. :)
You can view my full update for this game here.