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First off, with this game I’ve decided to start linking for Rangers site coverage to the Wrapup page. That way you get both the Rangers and the opponents page coverage plus notes, and since that one link goes to a page with four stories (or more) on it, I figure that’s the way I’ll go unless there’s a special link to go to for some reason.

Second. I had a hell of a lot of fun at this game, it almost didn’t matter what happened on the field – which is rare for me. It started in the fifth inning. A group of kids were next to me and it was the inning where the Rangers announce that if they score in that inning everyone gets a taco. So these kids next to me started whooping and hollering about “I want my Taco!”, and every time someone came up, it became I want my Taco! Hank Blalock was the last guy to bat that inning, so he became “Mr. Taco”. When he ran out on the field to play defense, the guys were going “Hey Blalock, I want my Taco!”. It then quickly evolved into every musical queue had the word Taco shouted at maximum volume after it – and then we started picking on other players. When Oakland’s Marco Scutaro came up, I screamed “It rhymes with Taco” after he was announced, which got a laugh from those guys. So basically from that point on all of us were going “Gimme a T..” you get the point. We even got a group of kids from the next section over doing a competing thing where they were yelling “Burrito”. ;) So if you were at Tuesday night’s game and heard a bunch of maniacs up in Section 330 screaming TACO all the time, I was part of that. If any of you guys who were doing it happen to read this (I’d be shocked, but still), I had a lot of fun last night guys.

As for the game, Callaway stunk up the joint, and had to be pulled. We gave up a few more, but in a surprising move were able to score against Barry Zito. We had 11 hits and 6 runs off of Zito, and we managed to claw our way back to a 10-9 score in the ninth inning. We even got the leadoff guy on in the bottom of the ninth and couldn’t do anything about it. We lost, but it was a very entertaining game to watch (if a bit slow at 3:30). The Taco stuff aside, I really enjoyed myself at this one. I’ll definitely take 4-4 against this division, considering I expected to be like 1-7 or 2-6 at this point.

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I don’t have time to write anything this afternoon – too busy. All I’ll say is that we should have won by a lot more than we did. We let the Angels back into the game late. :(

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Kind of figured we wouldn’t keep up the 12 run a game pace we had over the last two with Bartolo Colon pitching. Although when the first inning started, I had a fantasy that it might, as we started off with a double by Mike Young, and then a single by Blalock, scoring Young. However, except for a sac fly in the fourth, we didn’t get anything else.

And I sat through a 50 degree game in the rain to watch it too. My wife’s a trooper, she was there with me through the rain, although this time I remembered to listen to her and we brought a couple of umbrellas. We needed them. In the fourth it started spitting. It was really slow, but a couple of innings later, it started picking up. It was cold. It was raining. It wasn’t a great way to watch a baseball game, but I stayed through the entire game. My wife was with me, so I give her some major points for sticking with me, when I know she wanted to go home. She’s great!

As for the game, we got from Chan Ho Park what I expected from Chan Ho Park. An inning of bad (actually there were two), and the rest was great. That seems to be the way Chan Ho goes, and it was about what I expected. Bartolo Colon gave up not a whole lot, and Chan Ho did, so we lost. Still, Chan Ho Park felt like he was a lot better than last year, and it was great.

There was a great handout yesterday, a Ballpark in Arlington replica. I like that a lot, but the main reason I was there was for the baseball game. Even with a loss. Even in the rain.

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Two games. 36 hits. 24 runs. Two wins. Two great ways to open the 2004 season at home. While I doubt we’ll continue to score 12 runs a game, I hope we can keep up the winning. We’re over .500 and have a three game winning streak. I know, I know. It’s all too early to worry about stuff like that, but if this happened around game 107 of the season, people would be loving it! After 361 losses the last four seasons, I’ll take winning where I can find it! :)

This game mirrored opening day in a lot of ways (although not the weather). We got out to a lead early, then blew it. We were up 4-0 after the first inning, and Kenny Rogers was perfect through three. But in the fourth, he had a meltdown. We gave up 6 runs in the fourth inning to go down 6-4. However, just like opening day, we came back immediately in the bottom of the fourth to retake the lead 7-6. We then extended it by another five over the next few innings. A nice way to bounce back from an ugly six spot on the other team’s ledger.

Kenny Rogers was pretty good, save for the fourth inning. 6 earned runs in 6 innings didn’t help his ERA (it’s now 6.23), but he and we got the win, which is what really counts. We used four pitchers out of the pen (Powell, Mahay, Nelson, E Ramirez). Of the three innings they pitched total, they gave up just one hit, although it was dicey for a bit when Powell first came in. You can’t really erase the fourth inning, so it kind of makes the pitching performance just “OK”, otherwise it would have been just like the first four games that preceeded it. Let’s hope Chan Ho Park wasn’t watching during the fourth.

Offensively, we had another 18 hits, and this time everyone got in on the act. Three guys had three hits (Blalock, Fullmer, Dellucci). However, Blalock probably had the best day. In addition to his three hits (double, HR, single) he also had two walks, and had an OBP of 1.000 for five at bats. He also scored four times. Mike Young and Mark Teixeira also had home runs to lead the power. Of the nine guys we put out there yesterday, the lowest batting average for the season of any of them is .286 (highest is Nix with .500). Our offense and pitching looks pretty good so far. In fact, up until the fourth inning we were temporarily leading the AL in both pitching and hitting. And later on in the game, in stolen bases, too. :)

Let’s hope all this goodness keeps up. I’m realistic – at some point we’ll break down, but I’d love to see it keep going as long as it can.

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What a game. I don’t know where to start with this. I could write about what everyone writes about. The atmosphere, the smells and sounds of being back at the ballpark. The sunburn on opening day. But everyone writes about those kinds of “artistic things”, so I’ll skip that stuff.

I did get a bit of sunburn, though. Some sunburn is always an acceptable thing when it comes to opening day. Always. My wife is now shaking her head while reading this. OK, I’ll talk about something my wife did like. There was an awful lot of tailgating going on at the Ballpark. Now I know tailgating is not a new thing at the Ballpark. I’ve seen it before. But I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen THIS MUCH of it. There were tons of it in the parking lot I was in. I mean LOTS. WAY WAY more than I’d ever seen. Makes me wish I was in Milwaukee where that happens every game. ;)

The bad. Mike Young had two errors on two consecutive plays. It seemed quite out of character, and I wondered if it was just jitters. I would expect so, he’s a much better player than that. Thing is, that’s about all the bad there was in this game. It really was that great!

Defensively, Laynce Nix in center sparkled, making not one, but two fabulous running, leaping up against the wall catches. It was the kind of “Hello” defense that really gets a crowd (and hopefully team decision makers) pointing in the right direction towards Laynce. Alfonso Soriano didn’t commit a fourth error in the first four games. Amazing!

Pitching wise, I thought RA Dickey was great. He gave up three runs, but it was in the inning that Young had the two errors, so even though Dickey gave up a home run (a TBIA wind helped HR, though), he had zero earned runs on his book. That’s sweet to see. Another amazing thing is that over the 9 innings pitched yesterday (7 by Dickey, 1 each by Almanzar & Callaway), we gave up NO walks. None. That needs to hold up in a big way. This start makes four out of four for great starting pitching performances this season. I’m no fool, it won’t last, but it’s really REALLY damn nice to see that out of “Your Texas Rangers”. It’s almost shocking. Of the four games started this season, our starting staff has now given up 7 earned runs over 27 innings pitched. That’s an ERA of 2.59 I believe. It’s also an average of 6+ innings pitched per game. Absolutely amazing for the Texas Rangers.

Offensively, we had numbers all over the place. 12 runs, 18 hits. Everyone had at least one hit except for Brad Fullmer, who pulled an ofer. Fullmer did have a walk though. It could have been a lot worse too, as we had quite a few left on base. The box score below says 18, but I don’t think that’s right; we did have a lot though. The best day had to the The Hammer, who went 3 for 5, driving in 4, including a three run homer to cap the 5 spot we had in the third inning. Laynce Nix had a home run as well, which cleared the far seats in Section 51 of the ballpark. Mench also had a home run in the 8th inning over the left field scoreboard. Plenty of power, plenty of hits, and just a ton of great feeling. We beat up on nemesis Ramon Ortiz (9H, 7ER, 2.2 IP) as well as former Ranger Aaron Sele (8H, 5ER, 3.1IP).

There was no Arod. It was different, that’s for sure, but yesterday’s game certainly went a long way to wiping Arod from a lot of fans minds. It was a great game which showed a hell of a lot of promise and excitement for the future. And after four straight last place finishes, a bright future is the only thing that would be acceptable here, I think. Although the guy whose picture I saw in the DMN had a good stance on it. He was wearing his Ranger Arod jersey, with duct tape making a big black X on the back over his name/number. I wish I would have seen that guy in person.

One cool thing that wasn’t totally game related. I met up with a few friends I knew from last season, and my wife ran into a co-worker. That was nice to have some folks recognize me. :) As for my seats, I started off in Section 327 Row 6. That’s not my season ticket location this year, but that’s where I was to start the game. However, after the fourth inning, my boss and the owner of my company called me on my cel to tell me to come down to my company’s lawyers seats, so after the fourth, we headed downstairs, and sat in Sec 32 Row 5. That’s the second row right behind the camera well and the Ranger dugout. Had some really wonderful seats for the back end of the game. :)

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Whoa. We beat Barry Zito. That’s never happened before – ever. I’ll have more to say about the game tomorrow. I will say this now. We’ve played three games. Alfonso Soriano has had an error in all three (although the one in game 2 he didn’t deserve).

After thinking about it overnight, all I can think of to say about the game is damn – we had some great pitching, and against Barry Zito. Wow. So far the pitching has been great in the first three games – something I did NOT expect to happen at all. A nice opening series, even though we lost 2 of 3.

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Uh, excuse me? Did someone replace Chan Ho Park last night with someone else? I sat there watching Chan Ho Park pitch, and damned if he didn’t seem like a totally different pitcher. His fastball was sharp and had movement on it, and his curveball. Yikes – it looked like Barry Zito’s curveball. It was absolutely amazing how awesome he pitched. It was by far – no comparison the best pitching performance he had in a Ranger uniform. Nothing was even close. Park gave up seven hits over his seven innings, and struck out eight – a lot of them on called third strikes. Unfortunately, a short sequence in the 6th inning cost him the game. He gave up a triple on a ball that was botched by Kevin Mench in right. A single followed, and then his only mistake was hit over the fence. Park came back the next inning and was brilliant again. It’s a real shame that we couldn’t get any runs to cover that small mistake, because Park really deserved a win the way he was pitching.

Unfortunately, Mark Mulder was the opposing pitcher. Mulder gave up even less. Mulder gave up 5 hits over his seven innings, and just one run.

We never got much going offensively, and the one run we did score was a small ball run – scoring on an a fielder’s choice that never left the infield. I’ll take this pitching performance from Chan Ho Park any day. It was quite amazing to watch.

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