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STG2: Rangers drop game late; lose 7-6

Posted by on at http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120305&content_id=27030848&vkey=recap&c_id=tex>MLB.com Recap

Game 2 of spring training was one of those webcast deals that I’ve talked about many times in the past. The broadcast people were Steve Busby and John Blake. Busby was kind of cool to listen to, but when you bring in guys aren’t usually broadcasters like Blake, it tends to seem like I’m listening to some other teams broadcasters.

Unlike yesterday’s game when we had only five hits for the whole game, we got out pretty quickly and were up five to nothing after an inning and a half. It ended up being 5 to 1 after two. There was no big outburst there was just a lot of sustained hits. I suppose the biggest deal in that was Elvis’ triple in the second.

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New Site is Live!

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Well, I’ve finally gone and gotten rid of the old Rangers site.  I’ve been doing the site since December 1998, and over that time I’ve had a few looks.  The 2012 season will be the 14th season since I started this site, and perhaps one of the more radical changes.  I’m going to cover some of the changes that have occurred on the site since the last iteration and this one.

Overall, most of the content is the same as before.  Given all of the site was in Movable Type before, I was able to import the entire site (save for two bits, photo gallery & forums), and then it became a matter of how to massage the data.   So most everything is still here, it’s just a fresh coat of paint, and a new interface.   Most things are still here, only a few are gone (but several have moved around).

Let’s delve into the changes, and also a big look back on the history of the site (which goes back over 13 years now)…

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STG1: Rangers drop #1, 6-1

Posted by on at http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120304&content_id=27002974&vkey=news_tex&c_id=tex>MLB.com Recap

Today was the first game of spring training for the Rangers.  Oh, there were a few inter squad games before this, including one that had Yu Darvish’s pitches chronicled pretty well.  But today was the first real one.   As is the tradition since we moved to Surprise, AZ for Spring Training, we took on the Royals.

So I sat down at the computer to listen to the game, as I was working on the new server for my Rangers site at the same time.  My son was taking a nap, and my wife and daughter were heading out to a baby shower.  So I got to listen to the game.  Which was kind of cool.   It was VERY nice to hear Eric Nadel’s voice again to start the broadcast.  I actually heard the tail end of the pre-game stuff, and the pre-first pitch stuff (like lineups) in the car on the way home.    Heard a great sermon by a visiting Bishop at church today, had a good time there, the girls were off to have fun, so yeah, it was a pretty decent day (unlike the day before).

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Rangers 2012 Season Preview

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First off, a quick comment about why this post is on my personal blog.  I run a Rangers fan site/blog at rangerfans.com – and I’ve been prepping a new version of the site for the last two months or so.  I completed it earlier in the week, and had it ready to go.  On Wed the 29th, I launched it – or tried to.  You see, the server I have it on is a bit old, and underpowered.  I’m putting too many things on it, and it’s time for a change.  I’ve ordered a new server, but any of my attempts to get the new site up and going on the old server crashes that server, so I have to put my plans to launch the new Rangers site on hold until the new server is in place, which should be around Mar 20 or so.  I was really disappointed by that, because I wanted it in place before Spring Training games start on Sunday, but given I apparently can’t, I didn’t want to NOT write about baseball either, and since this blog DOES work right (it’s on a different server), I thought I’d write here for the time being.  Once the proper site is working again, I’ll copy any posts from here over there.  With that out of the way…

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Japanese Rangers Page

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Tonight I was looking at the Rangers official site, and noticed some Japanese lettering in the far upper left hand corner I don’t recall being there before.  I went to the page, even though I knew I couldn’t read any of it.   The picture on that page shouldn’t have surprised me, I guess.  :)

MLB 2K12 & Rangers Ballpark

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I’ve been a fan of baseball videogames going all the way back to the Atari 2600 in 1977 when I played “Home Run” there.  I’ve written about baseball videogames a few times over the years on this blog.  I’ve been a fan of the MLB 2K baseball series for awhile now, going back to the original Xbox, and it’s previous nomenclature as “World Series Baseball”.   While I enjoy the series, some of the minor nitpicks bother me.  Like the screen grab I just took from the new trailer released today.   They have the old Rangers Ballpark scoreboard in it.  The thing has been live for all of last season – and they can’t update that?  Sigh.

Still, the game looks good, and it’s not about a ballpark’s scoreboard as how a game rates, but I wish they’d pay a little closer attention to stuff like that.

Center Field

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A lot has been made about the center field position this year.   It’s historically been an unstable one for the team, there’s not been many players in the last 20 years that have grabbed a hold of it, and kept it.  Oh, good people have played there, but never one guy who was “THE MAN” out there.

The Rangers don’t want Josh Hamilton out there, they want him in left.  Julio Borbon looked like he had a lead on it at the start of last season, but got hurt, and that fell apart.  He’ll have a chance again this year, but he’s probably on his last chance here.  There’s really no dominant guy out there at the moment – there’s a bunch of names that can be used out there.  Craig Gentry, Leonys Martin, Josh Hamilton, and David Murphy just to name a few.

But I wonder if this is the last hurrah for Julio Borbon.  There was some noise about trading him to the Nationals not too long ago, I guess that isn’t happening.

Nolan Ryan spoke on this yesterday during spring training, here’s some video of him talking.

 

MLB.com Embedded Video

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mlb.com has become the destination for online baseball. I remember years ago when it started, mlb.com was originally owned by someone else, and the “Major League Baseball” site was at majorleaguebaseball.com. It was not very good. But that changed when MLBam came onboard, and they’ve been doing it for a few years now. it’s been refined into a video powerhouse. While the blackout rules still stink like my baby’s diaper genie, it is a great place to watch baseball video.

As the years have gone by, their archive of old video and clips and whatnot is huge. But they had one epic level fail. You couldn’t embed the video on other sites. It was like that for years and years. Today I happened to notice an “embed” option on video clips there. I was quite stunned. I tried it, and it worked great. It’s not just new video either – they’ve apparently allowed you to embed video from the past.

My test is of an old video segment that Gar Ryness, the Batting Stance Guy did at MLB Network HQ back in 2009 when Victor Rojas was still there. His impression of Andre Dawson gets me every time. While I’ve seen Gar do Hawk a few times, the one from this clip is still my favorite version of it. The interaction between Gar and the three MLB guys (Mitch Williams, Victor Rojas, & Harold Reynolds) was brilliant. So I present this clip below. Watch it, it’s funny! To MLB? What took you so long?

Apparently not all video works.  While that video I mentioned has an embed code, you can’t actually embed it.  This one below however, does work, and it’s Bud Selig talking about the game.  Apparently older videos aren’t working.  Whether that’s temporary or permanent, I don’t know.

Kelvin De La Cruz

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  • P Val Majewski re-signed to a minor league contract
  • P Kelvin De La Cruz acquired via trade from Cleveland for cash or PTBNL [ Link ]

Elvis Extended

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  • SS Elvis Andrus signed to a three year contract [ Link ]