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A nice Saturday afternoon win, although I watched most of the game in the evening, thanks to my TiVo. :)
It was nice to see Andres Galarraga & Gabe Kapler come through with pinch hit RBI’s – both are in a major slump – the 40 year old now bench warmer is probably in his final days with the Rangers. I’d like for him to gracefully retire. I like the guy, I really like the guy, but it doesn’t seem like he has any gas left in the tank. I’d like to see him retire, so we can have some great going away stuff for him.
Anyway, this game was one I thought was going to slip away until the aforementioned pinch hits. Nice to see that, but we also got a decent pitching performance by Doug Davis, who continues to pitch well. Our bullpen gave up nothing in the final three frames. Actually, I thought we were going to get destroyed by Bobby Jones, but he fell apart in the seventh, giving us our lead and the win.
Nice game to come back from – and apart from the 3 spot given up in the second inning, our pitching was pretty damn good!

I started watching this game, and saw the first few innings. I stopped watching after the top of the fourth, as I promised my wife we’d watch a movie. In the middle of the movie, I peeked in to the score, and it was 8-2! When I left, it was 2-0.
Oh well, guess I saw the best parts. :) Mike Young, who is rapidly heading for my fav Ranger player of the year got another home run on the West Coast in front of family. Someone start bringing them to every game we play, please! :)

14-2? Is this score backwards? Seems like it should be 14-2 the other way.
I’ll take it. There isn’t much to say except that the nine run inning was beautiful! :) I’ll just let the log of that inning speak for itself…
TEXAS 4TH: Kapler reached on infield single. Lamb doubled to right, Kapler scored. Haselman doubled to right center, Lamb scored. M Young reached on infield single, Haselman to third. Brian Fuentes relieved Dennis Stark. Catalanotto hit by pitch, M Young to second. Ledee walked, Haselman scored, M Young to third, Catalanotto to second. A Rodriguez homered to left, M Young, Catalanotto and Ledee scored. R Palmeiro hit by pitch. Sierra homered to left center, R Palmeiro scored. Kapler flied out to right. Lamb singled to center. Haselman grounded into double play, shortstop to second to first, Lamb out at second. (9 Runs, 7 Hits, 0 Errors) SEATTLE 1, TEXAS 14.

My annual trip out to the Ballpark for the July 4th fireworks show was not disappointing. The fireworks show was one of the better ones I’ve seen at the Ballpark – and the show on the field was great, too!
We beat the Mariners who are what, about 200-3 this year? It was a great feeling, the crowd was really into it, especially when Raffy jacked a home run, as well as Mike Lamb’s home run (first of the year). Game felt great, and Rob Bell looked pretty good this game. He’s looked pretty uneven in his Ranger appearances so far this year, but this one looked good – probably the reason we traded for him was for pitching like this.
However, it wasn’t a complete sail – in the 9th inning, we had Zim in to close, and when they started the inning, I said out loud “7 batters till Ichiro hits a home run”. Had to explain it to my wife, and said something like “Well, it’s a save situation, and Zim will be in. Ichiro has two BIG home runs off Zim this year”. Sure enough, the inning got to Ichiro. Narron did something interesting, and pulled Zim to get to Venafro who got the job done.
Talk radio went nuts the next day over that move, but I agreed with it – Zim had already been burnt by Ichiro twice, might as well play for the win, instead of the heart attack. :)

The second half of the season started pretty much like the first half went. Darren Oliver pitched pretty mediocre in this game. He seemed more like last year than he did this year, although he wasn’t TOTALLY awful. Ryan Glynn pitched in relief to do nothing to endear himself to the Rangers; turns out he was put on waivers and then assigned to AAA when no one else claimed him. I suspect he won’t be here next year, or will be given a shot in spring training, but that’s about it.
On the positive side, Arod & Pudge (I refuse to call him IRod) hit back to back jacks in the fourth – but that was the extent of the scoring for us. Yeah, we scored two more, but they weren’t “exciting” runs. :)