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Well, Rick Helling was the Rick Helling of last season tonight. Gave up a lot of home runs balls, and put us way behind 7-0 in the first inning, and then we were down 10-1 after two.

That set the stage for Scott Sheldon. Johnny Oates had been threatening to play Scott Sheldon in all 9 positions in a game this season, but the word was that it was going to be at home. However, with being blown out so early in this game, that let Johnny have some fun with the lineup.

Scott Sheldon came in during the fourth inning at catcher, and over the rest of the game, he moved all over the place, with the last two places he played being pitcher and third base. Scott even struck out the only batter he faced! :) Scott was the third person in history to do it, and is the FIRST player ever to do it in less than 9 innings (he did it in 5).

I couldn’t see the game, due to my long problems with my lame ass cable company, Optel. However, I probably would have tuned out anyway before Scott started his historic moves around the diamond. :)

Dammit – why are we winning against the White Sox? Stop that! I do not want to be helping the Indians. Because we’ve beaten Chicago the last two nights, their lead is now only 6.5 games. Should be 8.5, if it wasn’t for our winning. :(
This was one of those games where both my wife and I expected a big Ranger loss, mostly because of who was pitching this night – Dead Arm Oliver. It took 3+ innings for dead arm to give up a run. In fact, it was his only run. He pitched 6 innings, and probably would have gone further, but his pitch count was way up there. A rather interesting surprise there – I doubt anyone expected Dead Arm to pitch well at all. However, let’s see if it happens a few times in a row – remember that dazzling start he had in rehab at AAA, just to be followed by the pasting he got at Tulsa. :) Jonathan Johnson went two innings to get the win in relief, and Wetteland got a save, although he lived up to his reputation of not making it easy at all.
Offensively, we didn’t have much else – we only scored two – and neither was an easy run. One in the 5th on a Scott Sheldon double, scoring Ledee. The other was in the top of the 9th on a Chad Curtis single, scoring Frank Catalnotto.
It was nice to get the win, but it was not nice to get it against the White Sox. I also found it interesting (although I can’t say why) that two “names” from earlier in Ranger history were playing in the same game, Ruben Sierra & Harold Baines.

You know, with all the losses we’ve had lately, I actually game into Chicago wanting the Rangers to get swept. A few more wouldn’t make any difference now. Why? Lord knows I don’t want to help the Cleveland Indians by beating the White Sox. The Indians need to be out of the playoffs. They’re starting to become rather annoying just like the Yankees by winning all the time.
This is one more game I missed – I got called into work on an emergency situation when the game was on – I only got to see the start of the game, when we went down 2-0 early.
We called up four players from AAA Oklahoma who finished their season on Monday the 4th. The four are: catcher Randy Knorr, Darwin Cubillan, Kelly Dransfeldt, & old time Ranger Ruben Sierra. Will be interesting to see Sierra up in the bigs. I’ll have to make sure to watch the pre-game show Tue night, I’m sure there will be something on him.

Not available – This is the third game in a row I missed. Why? I was out at Texas Stadium seeing the Cryboys get annihilated by the Philadelphia Eagles. Boy, it was a thing of wonder, wasn’t it? I hate the Cowboys. :)
On the Rangers side, it was nice to see Ryan Glynn put up this kind of start. Looked good from the box score.

Not available – I didn’t see or hear the game at all, I was out at a cat show in Ft. Worth. My wife and I lost our cat to kidney disease a couple of months ago, and we were checking out some of the breeds we were looking at relative to getting a new cat.