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I scored this game at home on my iPad, and was chattering a lot on Twitter today during the game. Jamey Newberg did not, so I’m assuming he was doing lawyer stuff at work, otherwise I would have been out Tweeted 20 to 1. :) My summary of the game will mostly be an archive of my own tweets. In chronoligcal order from right before the start of the game until it was over..

• @Evan_P_Grant the empty seats there are just bloody amazing. Move that team. They don’t deserve them.
• When did the Orioles hide inside the Rays uniforms? #Rangers (Referring to getting to Cliff Lee early)
• Stop giving the #Rays batters time at the plate, please! #Rangers #seligaboutpaceofgameagain (Rays batters seemed to be trying to throw Cliff Lee off by calling time excessively in the first)
• @aandro 4 out of first 5 outs are Ks, though. @aandro Excuse me. 5 out of 6. (in reply to Anthony Andro talking about how many hits the Rays had early on)
• #Rangers – Both Price and Lee have 43 pitches thrown thru 2 innings.
• I just clawed from the couch after Nelly’s HR. Off the roof out there! #Rangers #Boomstick
• Just seven pitches for Cliff Lee in the third. That’s more like it. #Rangers #Pricedidntdothat
• Retweet of Aandro – The three #Rangers with postseason homers are now Nelson Cruz, Juan Gonzalez and Dean Palmer.
• The three #Rangers with postseason homers are now Nelson Cruz, Juan Gonzalez and Dean Palmer.
• That’s the second run that scores on a 3-0 RBI hit. #Rangers #ByBbyePrice
• Retweet of craigcalcaterra – Price’s “throw it right down the middle” strategy may not be as devious as he assumed.
• 5-0 over David Price after 5. Rays look like they’ve already lost sitting on the bench. Not a good sign for a comeback. #StepOnTheirThroat
• BJ Upton, you’re not Derek Jeter. Stop it with the stupid hold your hand up at the ump. You are not getting time. #doofus #Rays #Rangers
• 17 of 21 first pitch strikes for Cliff Lee. #Rangers
• Cliff Lee is now the #Rangers record holder for Ks in the playoffs. #AnyoneSurprised?
• David Price is gone in the 7th after about 105 pitches and a 5-0 deficit. A bit surprised by that, honestly. #Rangers #Rays #w00t
• More than once the ball/strike indicator on TBS has been wrong. Doesn’t even match the pitchtrax count. Fail. #Tbsfail #Rangers #Rays
• #Rangers relievers keep Lees shutdown feeling going. Even threw in a strikeout, too. #O’Day #Oliver #CanSmellGame1Win
• Neftali Feliz takes the hill in the 9th. Non save, but this feels good. #Rangers #Rays
• This is not the part of a John Wetteland closing performance you want to emulate. #NoMoreHeartAttacksPlease #Rangers #Rays
• The 9 game post season losing streak going back to 1996 is over. #Rangers beat #Rays 5-1. Feliz looked like Wetteland in 9th for sure.
• #Rangers had lost something like 10 of 12 at the #Rays park before today.
• @SixOkay Rangers win Game 1 of the ALDS! P.S. Megan Fox for Wonder Woman!

That last one is an inside joke with someone (as much as an “inside” joke can be inside on a public thing like Twitter). Anyway, it was cool that the Rangers won. Winning Game 1 against a guy we were expected to be shut down by is a huge morale booster. I mean, wow. We’re up 1-0. The last time the Rangers were up 1-0 was October 1, 1996, when they were up 1-0 over the Yankees. That was our last post season win until today.
A few other thoughts. After we went up 3-0, we had scored more runs than all the six playoff games in 1998 & 1999 combined. Granted, that had a lot to do with the Yankees late 90’s dynasty, but to me, that’s a more embarassing stat than the fact we had lost 9 playoff games in a row, and before today only a single playoff game. Two runs in six games over two years is pretty sad. We destroyed that today. Funny that you can talk about an “offensive destruction” while only scoring five runs.
Ten hits, five runs (four earned). Error by Elvis Andrus, but it didn’t affect anything.
Early on the Rays had a beef with Carlos Pena claiming he was hit by a pitch and then ended up striking out. It was a non conclusive call based on replays (to me), and obviously one never knows how an inning might turn after that. But if that was the only thing different, we still would have won the game.
Long balls by Nelson Cruz & Bengie Molina. As stated above in Twitter, they join Juan Gonzalez & Dean Palmer as the only other Rangers with post season home runs (both of those others coming on Oct 1, 1996 off of David Cone). That doubles the lifetime franchise of home run output. Yeesh.
Both starters had rocky first innings – Cliff Lee loading the bases, but he escaped. Both pitchers had over 20+ pitches the first inning. Both escaped, although Cliff Lee found himself after that, retiring about 12 in a row or so at one point.
The biggest observation of mine came from one of my mid game tweets when the Rays were down 5-0. They were shown in the dougout looking sad and depressed (much in the way I like seeing the Cowboys). The point being that it was only the fifth, and realistically, it was only 5 runs. Yeah, it was Cliff Lee, but the fifth inning of Game 1 of the playoffs is not the place to look like you’re about one out away from being eliminated. It was at that point I didn’t think they were coming back. Even when Feliz walked two to start the ninth, harnassing his inner John Wetteland. Had he been wearing #35 on his back, it would have been TOO scary for comfort.
Tomorrow afternoon is Game 2. CJ Wilson against James Shields. A lot was made after Lee came out about how CJ Wilson essentially idolizes Cliff Lee, and will use his info from Game 1 in Game 2. Hope it works. I like our pitching staff, but I’m nowhere near as confident about a win after Cliff Lee. Prove me wrong CJ. Prove me wrong.

I took my daughter to this game, but to be perfectly honest, what happened in the game was pretty much not witnessed by me. Basically, I spent the majority of my time in the kid park in center field. And WAITING. Man, don’t spend all your time out there in a game with 45k+ in attendance. We spent probably a good 40% of our total time at the ballpark waiting in some sort of line. Ugh.

Still, when we weren’t waiting on some line, she had fun, and I suppose that’s the whole point. She won some prizes, had fun playing with a few other kids. Was fairly mind numbing for me, however. If I didn’t have my iPhone with me, I probably would have gone nuts. :)
We did see the first four innings from our seats in Section 302 (that’s the best we could get on walkup – egad!). One funny thing about the game, Samantha head them announce Hideki Matsui, and thought instead of Hidecki, they said “Duckie”. That made me laugh. But most of the four innings was spent with her asking me when we were going down to the games. As a baseball fan, that was hell. As a dad, I thought it was cute. Ah well. At least I used the free ticket coupons from the kids packages. Didn’t cost me much money at all.

Another starter who only went five innings. Colby Lewis went five, gave up the two runs we saw, and that was it. Oddly enough it was only on one hit. He walked two. One of them scored as it was in front of Matsui’s home run.

That’s all the notable baseball I saw. The rest I was in center field. Heard the Angels were whining about Ron Washington taking our guys out of the game in the sixth (heard it standing out there, didn’t see it). Probably just po’ed they didn’t have the chance to do it themselves. :)

2011 will be the year that Michael Young breaks about every major offensive record the Rangers have. As the 2010 Season ends, Young has

1st place in Multi-Hit games (543)
1st place in hits (1848)
2nd place in doubles (347; needs 6 to pass Pudge for first)
1st place in triples (46)
2nd place in runs (918; needs 41 to pass Raffy for first)
4th place in games (1506; needs 68 to overtake Pudge, Sundberg, & Raffy for first)

This was the final start of the season for CJ Wilson. It was more interesting to me than Cliff Lee’s last start, because we generally know what we’re getting from Cliff Lee. CJ Wilson, we don’t. This was his first year as a starter, and by all accounts, he seems to be gassed a little. His September numbers are up, and to be honest, I’m a little concerned about his start. So I was curious to see how he’d do here.
Early on, I thought “Oh crap”. He gave up two runs in the first inning on a triple, two walks, and two singles. And that was all before Wilson got the first out of the game! Egad, that was an awful start. However, he settled down a bit, and didn’t allow anything else. Just the two runs. However, he came out after five innings, having thrown 82 pitches. He probably could have gone another, but I expect the short outings at the end of the season here are to give some bullpen guys some work before the postseason starts. Our pen was good, we had four guys pitch a total of four innings, although one guy (Rapada) had a line of 0.0 IP. Rapada & Derek Holland allowed a single hit, but that was it. Pen was good.
Our offense put up a pair of three run innings. One in the fifth (to get the lead back) and one in the seventh. Only two extra base hits in all. A double by Nelson Cruz, and a big two run home run by Josh Hamilton (his 32nd overall). All the other nine hits were singles. Our hits were pretty bunched together, as all of them came in slots 1-5 in the lineup. 6-9 (Kinsler, Moreland, Treanor, & Borbon) all took an ofer, although Treanor walked once. But the hits were all up top. Two for Andrus, three for Young, two for Hamilton, one for Guerrero, & two for Cruz. Franceour pinch ran for Guerrero and got an at bat of his own, but didn’t get a hit.
Nice to see the time off doesn’t appear to have affected Hamilton’s offense. Which is huge, as we’ll need him more than ever come Wednesday.

Josh Hamilton returned for the last three games of the season, pretty much to get his swing back for the playoffs. Some would say that’s not enough time, but it’s all we’re going to get. He wasn’t the big power in this game, though.
That was Mitch Moreland, who was 2-3 with two runs scored, and two hits. Also had two walks. But the two hits were home runs. Bengie Molina also had three hits and an RBI. But the rest of the offense was spread out, and contributed to the fact that we didn’t have more runs.
Tommy Hunter was decent, although he only went five innings on 60 pitches. Obviously, he came out not because of being tired.
It’s an extra inning loss. Don’t like those. :(