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Blech. I hate writing about games like this. So I won’t. Except for one thing.
Boy, Bertram is lighting up everything the last two days. As Rusty Greer was held back a bit longer, Bert got a reprieve. And he made use of it, pulling off a straight steal of home. It was awesome to see – although I was listening on the radio, I did get to see it on SportsCenter. Way to go!
Who’s Bert? That’s Scarborough Green – Bertram is his real first name, Scarborough is his middle name. When he was a replacement player with the Cardinals in 95, he went by the name Bert.

I thought coming into this game that we’d light ’em up. If I recall correctly, Mac Suzuki was the pitcher on the mound that game in Seattle last spring where Pudge had 9 RBI’s in one game. I wonder if Pudge thought that at all. :)
Scarborough Green, playing in what is probably his last game before Rusty Greer is activated again really lit up the stage. He was awesome in the field, saving some runs, and then contributing with a bat. Doesn’t really look like he was one of the spring 1995 replacement players (for the Cardinals), eh? :)
I’m not writing much about this one, as I fell asleep again – I had my pet cat Flash buried today, so it’s been pretty stressful for me. :(

Well, you never want to lose, but if you do, it’s not all that bad to lose to this kind of game. It’s always nice to see a well pitched game, you just hate it when they come against you. Still, it was really nice to see Jeff Suppan pitch this well – I’m hopeful the Royals can make a turnaround and be a real team again. They’ve got a great young team (as does Montreal).
Kenny Rogers was no slouch either, giving up just one earned run over 6.2 innings. He pitched well, too, but Jeff Suppan pitched better. There’s not a whole lot you can say about games like this! :)

Last night was a bad night for me. I had to put my pet cat Flash to sleep in the morning, and because of that, I was so stressed, I fell asleep on the couch watching the Rangers game. I missed about half of it, but from what I saw, Helling pitched OK, if not dominating. The long ball won it for us, and we’ve won 7 games in a row and tied for first.
Rusty Greer’s wife had her twins last night – Tom Evans is out for the season – Gabe Kapler reinjured himself, and baseball is talking about raising the mound for next season. A lot happened yesterday! :)

Well, my wife is out of town visiting her parents, and since I was sitting around the house all day Sunday anyway, I decided that since I had nothing else to do that I’d head out to the Ballpark. Bought a $5 ticket, and sat in the first row of Section 344 – and you know what? These seats, while obviously not as good as the ones down below near the dugout aren’t as bad as people would have you believe they are. For some reason, when I sit here, I get more of an “old time pure baseball feel” than any other place I sit in the park. I don’t know, maybe it’s something about walking up to the ticket booth, buying a cheap seat ticket, and scoring the game while listening to the radio broadcast. :)
Anyway, yet another comeback for this team, that’s what, about 100% of our wins this season? This time, we came back from a 5-0 deficit. Darren Oliver didn’t have it from the start (giving up another 1st inning home run), and seemed to labor with just about every pitch. However, we were knocking the ball around a lot, but getting virtually no results early. However, we hung around long enough to pick up the win, doing all our scoring starting in the 6th, and the Orioles got no more once we started scoring. Two long balls in the game, one by Lamb (his first as a Ranger at the Ballpark), and another by Palmeiro who seems to be coming together again, after a dry spell. However, the real fun was in the bottom of the 7th, when we “small balled” ourselves back into a tie, and in the bottom of the 8th, our “Mr. hit” Frank Catalanotto singled in the winning run, after coming in as a pinch hitter to thunderous applause. Was an awesome game to be sitting and watching – it’s really great that we’re starting to come together finally.
Jason McDonald committed a throwing error early, but made up for it with two outfield assists. One was pure, tossing out a runner at the plate, and the other was an “assist”, where he missed a cutoff, and the ball went all the way to Pudge, who then threw out the runner at first, who strayed too far off. McDonald leads all major league outfielders with assists at this point.
Two sweeps in a row, giving us a 6-0 homestand (the fourth or fifth time that’s happened in team history). We next head to Kansas City, where we should pick up a few wins, but KC has the best home winning record, and we got blown away there last September.

Good lord! An awesome pitching battle that we didn’t choke on, give up too many late inning hits, or a home run somewhere to blow it. It’s our first win of the season in a one run game when we don’t score at least 5 runs. We’re something like 1-16 this season that way, if I remember what I heard on the radio correctly.
There’s not a whole lot that can be said about 2-1 games, other than “great pitching”, and “just enough offense”. We finally won one for our hard luck pitcher, Esteban Loaiza. Usually, he’s the one that turns in an awesome performance, and loses it late, because we couldn’t hold it, or he made one small mistake and got burnt on it. Mike Mussina, who is having a surprisingly horrible year, went the complete game for the loss, making him now 1-6. Loaiza went 7 innings, giving up just one earned run on 6 hits. Venafro & Wetteland pitched shutout relief again, and Wetteland earned another save (his 9th), giving him a lot of saves in a very short period of time. I had concerns he wouldn’t get 40 again this year, but if this pace keeps up, that won’t be a problem.
Offensively, we got a solo blast by Rafael Palmeiro, and a sac fly by Chad Curtis, scoring Jason McDonald, who has been very surprising in his time with the Rangers. My guess is that he stays when Kapler and/or Greer are ready to come back, and Scarborough Green goes back to AAA.
And to top all of this off, the way the game ended was awesome, too. Rich Amaral was attempting to steal second, and Pudge tossed him out to end the game, what a thriller!
What a game!

Second rainout of the season – this one will be made up on September 12th as part of a doubleheader (that I will be attending).