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Where do I go with this one? Yeesh!

I went to this game with my wife, who was a major trooper about the length of the thing. I was meeting some friends from online at this game. Turns out it was the first EVER baseball game for the woman who went. Boy, what a first ever game to go to, eh? 18 innings. We won in a spectacular fashion in the bottom of the 18th. Well, maybe not that spectacular, but given how long it’d been going on, we were kind of glad that it had ended. :)

I’m not going to recap the entire game, the summaries below do that well enough. However, there were two totally spectacular defensive plays in the 17th inning by our guys to keep it going – plus a great pickoff by Chris Michalak (two days in a row for that). Arod had the kind of defensive play you see in the first inning, and Chad Curtis had a dive that was also an early inning play, not a 17th inning play. Kudos to both those guys for running it out like that at 1AM!

One thing about this game.. I’ve always wondered during a game how many balls are used during a game. Tonight I decided to count. I kept track of all the balls that were used during the actual game itself. Not counting the ones that were tossed around between innings, just actual game balls. I don’t have my scorecard with me as I write this, but I’m pretty sure it was around 145. I also counted the total pitches for the game, and I’d see three figures on ESPN, MLB, and the AP wire. My count was higher than all of them – all of the ones I listed were all different, too. I counted about 657. Someone else had 602, and someone else had 62something. Either way, it was a lot – I’m never doing that again!

What was interesting about this game is that after we got to the 14th and beyond it became a communal experience for those of us left in the stands (yeah, my wife and I (and my friends) were there till the end). My wife was ready to pass out, and was desperately hoping for the end of the game for quite awhile . However, everyone who was left started talking to each other about who was left to play, and various other baseball things. It was most cool. It turned out to be the longest game (by time) in Rangers history, so it was kind of cool to be there for that!

Oh yeah, speaking of my wife… She really REALLY wanted to see Nomar play, and out of all the players Boston had, he was the only one not used (save for some starting pitchers). That really bummed her out, as Nomar is probably her favorite player.

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Well, this was bobblehead night. I decided to attend this – figured I’d get one. I wanted the Nolan Ryan one, but the game started while I was in the air coming home from vacation. So I headed out early and got mine. I had bought a $5 ticket, but when I did, I was told the entire first 7 rows up in the $5 sections (341-345) were sold out. I wonder how many of those were people who came for the bobbleheads and left. Last time I checked, Pudge bobbleheads on Ebay were getting a few bucks. I’m keeping mine.
As for the game itself.. It was a really great game until the 8th inning. I’ve always said playing Boston brings out the best in both teams, and through 7, we had a great tight game. It was 4-3 Texas at that point, but then we blew it in the 8th giving up a grand slam to Trot Nixon. That pretty much sums it up. :)
Hideo Nomo was brilliant through 6 – not giving up much of anything. At one point, he had given up just two hits, both to Catalanotto. Aaron Myette didn’t look bad, either. Went 5.1 innings, giving up three earned runs. Michalak looked good with his pickoff move. Kolb on the other hand gave up the gopher ball which lost the game for us. Too bad, as he wasn’t awful, either.

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The Yankees looked really un Yankee like in this game. Never mind the fact that they lost, they just looked sloppy as hell. They most certainly did NOT look like the three time defending World Champions. Not at all.
Darren Oliver looked like the Yankees usually look to us – which was his first win in almost a month. While we scored eight times, we didn’t have any home runs, and only two extra base hits during this entire game.
Figures – if we end up winning on Thursday, I can say that I went to the one game the Yankees won this series. Bummer. :)

Why couldn’t they have done this last night?
I was working again in the evening, so I couldn’t pay a lot of attention to this, but it was nice to hear the Rangers blast off so many times against the Yankees and El Duque. In fact, I’m just going to list the home runs from the box score. THat about sums up this game pretty damn well, except for Ruben Sierra’s 5-5 with 2 HR night. What a night for him!
ALEX RODRIGUEZ (38) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 1ST, 1 ON
FRANK CATALANOTTO (9) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 2ND, 1 ON
RAFAEL PALMEIRO (33) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 3RD, 0 ON
RUBEN SIERRA (15) OFF O HERNANDEZ IN THE 3RD, 0 ON
RUBEN SIERRA (16) OFF WOHLERS IN THE 8TH, 0 ON

#@)(%*)@$%(‘ing Yankees!
Dammit! Today was my birthday. I’ve always had this tradition of going to a baseball game on my birthday (or as close to it as possible). Even though we were up against Roger Clemens, I thought we’d make a game out of it. And after the game started, I thought we were going to win it!
It was an awesome game up until the 8th inning. After that point it all fell apart. Rick Helling looked great – he gave up one home run ball, but then lost it after 5, and ended up giving up four runs. Danny Kolb came in, and was spectacular! He went 1.2 innings, with three strikeouts in a span of five batters. The usually good Juan Moreno came in and the Yankees lit him up bg time. A few home runs eliminated our lead, and we never recovered. The wind seemed to be gone. And to cap off the weirdness, Pat Mahomes came in and didn’t give up anything. Go figure!