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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).

I was at this game with my wife, and I have to say – a damned exciting game. The entire thing was under a constant threat of rain, and in the bottom of the 8th, it started. We disappeared into a sheltered area, and watched the bottom of the 9th. As soon as we got in our car, it down poured something fierce.
The game itself was awesome – a spectacular comeback. I do have to say I’m a bit surprised that the Ranger fans booed Will Clark. Sure, he’s not Rafael Palmeiro, but he did a hell of a lot in the five years while he was here. I was disappointed in my fellow Ranger fans for that. I’ll boo Canseco alright, but I felt that the Thrill deserved better than that.
Rick Helling had probably his worst outing of the year, going 6 innings, giving up 7 earned runs (raising his season ERA to 3.14, still awesome by today’s standards). However, our bullpen seems to be coming around, as they pitched the final three innings giving up only a single hit, and one run (Cordero, Venafro, & Wetteland). We seem to finally be coming together after a disgusting April. And, we’re doing it without Rusty Greer & Gabe Kapler (who wasn’t exactly burning things up when he went on the DL). I have to imagine that things will get even better when we’re all back together and healthy again.
Mike Lamb was awesome, going 3 for 4, with three doubles. Royce Clayton was 2 for 3, and everyone except Jason McDonald had at least one hit (Sc Green was a defensive replacement late, and didn’t bat), but McDonald did lay down a nice bunt – was an awesome team game, and a great comeback, after being down 7-2 as late as the 6th inning. However, the name of the day was Frank Catalanotto, who went 3 for 5, and set a few new Ranger records, too. He had hits in 10 consecutive plate appearances, setting a new record, as well as getting on base for 12 straight times, also setting a new Ranger record!

I’m not doing commentary on this game because of my being out of town for the better part of a week for the 2000 E3 convention in Los Angeles. One comment about this game, and it’s a picture. :)

I’m not doing commentary on this game because of my being out of town for the better part of a week for the 2000 E3 convention in Los Angeles.