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I didn’t get to see or hear very much of this game at all. My wife and I were out to dinner and a movie. We saw “For Love of the Game”. Was a great movie. Yeah, it’s a Kevin Costner movie, and it had the usual “mushy sap” in it that women seem to eat up, but I very much enjoyed the movie.
There was some awesome direction in the movie, especially the bits where Costner’s character (a pitcher) was drowning out the crowd. Extraordinarily well done, I thought. If you like baseball, go see this. Especially if your wife/girlfriend/whatever is into romantic movies, she’ll love it, too. I was hoping the Texas Rangers would get mentioned, even in passing, but they didn’t (old Arlington Stadium was actually in his first baseball movie, Bull Durham).
Aaron Sele pitched well (from what I see in the box scores). Mr. Flaherty hit another home run (what is it with us and one player from the other team just unloading with home runs?). A really nice story was the appearance of Jim Morris, the oldest rookie (at 35) since 1970. Came in, threw the last out for Tampa Bay, and blew away Royce Clayton on four straight 95 or 96 mph pitches. Hope he sticks around next year, was great to see.
Ex Ranger Julio Franco was called up from Tampa’s AAA team, and was on the bench and in uniform for Tampa, but did not appear.

I was at this game, due to tickets I picked up in exchange for the rainout a week or so ago. First thing..
I HATE FRIGGIN’ CRICKETS!
They were all over the place. It was actually kind of gross, tell you the truth. They were hopping around, making nuisances of themselves, and it got to the point where I was spending more time looking for crickets than at the game, which I didn’t care for. I hate this time of year because of this. Weather is starting to cool down, but out come the crickets. :(
There was some cool pre-game stuff. This was Latin American night at the Ballpark, and the Rangers had dancers out in the concourse, which were nice to watch (they were mostly kids or teenagers). There was a very cool pre-game ceremony where Luis Mayoral (Rangers Spanish radio announcer) gave awards to all the Latin American players on both the Rangers and the Devil Rays. Furthermore, for the first inning, Mayoral was following Chuck Morgan’s player announcements with a Spanish version. It was very cool to hear Mayoral announce the Latin names in Spanish. Had a much more “Spanish sounding” feel to it. It was very cool.
I don’t know if anyone from the Rangers will see this, but I wanted to say I very much enjoyed this kind of thing. These little added extras make it very cool to attend games in person.
As for the game itself, it can be summed up pretty easily with two things: Home run ball, & missed opportunities. We left fourteen men on base thought the game. There wasn’t an inning where we didn’t have at least one hit, and most innings had people in scoring position. The bottom of the eighth was the worst, because we left the bases loaded. Lee Stevens struck out swinging three straight innings in a row, which is never good. The wind did keep several balls inside the park that probably normally would have gone out.
However, the Devil Rays hit a few, including one by Canseco (there’s a shock). However, their catcher (John Flaherty) hit two home runs, and only missed a third by a few feet due to a spectacular catch by Tom Goodwin. All but one of Tampa Bay’s runs came as the result of one of their home runs. It was not a good night for us, but we didn’t get blown out.
It’s really our own fault – 14 men left on base!

Although the Twins made it a little interesting in the 9th inning, the Rangers finally managed to get out in front of a bad team and keep the lead through the entire game.
For the second game in a row, Twin manager Tom Kelly gambled on one of his pitchers getting Rafael Palmeiro out, and he lost. Last night, it was a two run double to give us this win. Today it was a three run home run to give us a 6-1 lead. Roberto Kelly also chimed in with two home runs of his own – the first off of Minnesota starter Brad Radke, who used to be a teammate of Roberto’s when Roberto played in Minnesota; Kelly had never faced him before.
Raffy’s 43rd home run of the year gives him a personal best for home runs in a season. Matter of fact, quite a few things happened in today’s ballgame:

• Raffy setting a new record for himself with 43 home runs in a season.
• The first time the Rangers have ever beat an opponent for the entire season (going 12-0 against the Twins in 99 – next closest was 11-1 against the 1975 Tigers)
• The first time any team has beat another in a season series 12-0 since 1996
• The Rangers beat the Twins in home runs this season against each other 21-5.
• Eight out of the 12 games against the Twins were decided by one or two runs.
• The 10th time this year the Twins failed to have 10,000 people in attendance at a game.

Since I listened to this at work, I couldn’t pay close attention to the game, unfortunately. It was nice to get a win, and head back to the 29 games over 500 mark. Our magic number is now 10, and could be 9 depending on what happens during tonight’s play.

It was a thrilling win, if nothing else. Yet again, we’re letting a team that we should be crushing get into the game. We were losing 1-0 after two, but we led until the bottom of the 7th, when the Twins went ahead 4-3. We were down to our last out in the 9th inning when Tom Kelly tried to play percentages, and walked Pudge to get to Raffy. That was a mistake, because Raffy made ’em pay for it with yet another game winning hit. This one a double to right center, scoring Royce Clayton, who was already on base, and Pudge all the way from first. It was a sweet win, but I don’t think we should have put ourselves in a position where we had to win the game like that.
I admit to not knowing a bunch of the small details of this game, because for the first time all season, I got to see my hometown Philadelphia Phillies on TV! I grew up in Philly, and have always been a Phillies fan, but down here, I don’t get to see ’em. They got shellacked, 12-2, but I had fun watching them, and I’d flip over to see what the Rangers were doing. I only saw the last 3 innings of the Ranger game solid.
This win makes us 11-0 against the Twins in 1999. If we win on Wednesday afternoon, it will be the first season sweep in forever (that I can remember) of an opponent. I’m hoping we can get one big win, because after this, the “really bad” team stretch is over, and we’ve only played .500 against them. Not good at all.
Magic number is down to 11. My wife and I have four games left to go to at the Ballpark in the regular season. Of the upcoming homestand, we see one game from each series, and I’m hoping that the Rangers can clinch it when we’re there. Would be nice. Hey, it would be nice if we could clinch it with a win, instead of backing in like we have in 1996 and 1998. :)

Well, we won. However, it wasn’t the prettiest of games for many reasons. We lost a few players for a few days with injuries. Rusty Greer got hit in the eye with a ball during warmups, and is out for a few. Luis Alicea sprained a muscle during the game, and is out for awhile. Jeff Zimmerman also came out of the game early with muscle tightness.
Add to that the fact that we let the Royals get back in it to send the game to extra innings isn’t good. Add to that the fact that the 10th was given to us on a silver platter by KC (errors, wild pitches all over the place), and leads me to believe that we shouldn’t have won this game either.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take the win, and I’m glad to get out of KC, but I don’t think we deserved the win. I’m hoping we can do better in Minnesota, and then have the team healthy on Friday when the DRays come to town.

Ugh. No commentary again. Three in a row to the Royals while the Yankees were also swept? This is sad.

Ugh. No commentary again.

Ugh. No commentary.

The name of this game was John Burkett. I read in the news reports that Burkett was booed when he came on at the start of the game – I didn’t see it, as I was at my bowling league for the start of the game. When I came home, the game was already 3-0. When Burkett was pulled, it was really, really nice to see him get a standing ovation – made me feel really good. Teared up a bit. :)
Tim Crabtree got the pitch of the game when he struck out Manny Ramirez with the bases loaded to preserve our shutout. That was the biggest single moment of the game, although Burkett’s pitching was stellar.
We’re 29 games over 500, and going further into uncharted territory. We did spoil the Indians clinching their division. They won it after they had left the Ballpark already and had packed up their champagne – HAHA! :)
The AP story says that two fans were married in the stands – I wonder who they were. :)
It was announced that Mark Clark will not be activated for the rest of the year – hopefully he can get it together next year, and contribute.