First and foremost tonight, let’s talk about the most excellent Ranger fans. They started the evening by giving C.J. Wilson an appropriate welcome, gave Yu Darvish his props, almost all of the sellout crowd waited through a two-hour rain delay, then ended the evening chanting “we want C.J. as the beat down wound down. With all of the comparisons of the Rangers-Angels rivalry to that of the Red Sox – Yankees, tonight was certainly worthy of that. Why were the fans chanting “we want C.J.”? While Yu Darvish stayed loose and came out and pitched a very solid 5 1/3 innings, Mike Scioscia decided to put C.J. on ice for Saturday’s nationally broadcast game. He threw the starter for Saturday’s game, Jerome Williams to the wolves and the Rangers finished what they started.
The most surprising thing of the night is remembering no matter which team has been the AL West’s chosen one the last ten years, these games have always been nail biters and I remember never counting the Angels out. Instead of resembling a team that has been the powerhouse of the west for the last decade they resembled the 1985 Rangers. Bad throws, outfield near collisions and missed cut-off men. Albert Pujols? I think the words of the L.A. Times were best:
The most solid contact he made all night was when he hit Yorvit Torrealba’s face mask with the follow-through of a first-inning swing and knocked the catcher out of the game.
They said it, not me. He never got a ball out of the infield. He’s now hitting .192 and out of respect, I won’t do the math on what each of his RBI’s, hits or his one home run equate to on his current contract. But alas it’s just 1 of 162 games and we have many more to play with this team. I have learned one thing. To never count them out. But this is still mad fun and when they leave they will still be at least 6 games out.
Tomorrow, it’s C.J. Wilson vs. Matt Harrison and Sunday it’s Jared Weaver vs. Neftali Feliz. Mitch Moreland is really putting it together at the plate and the forgotten one, Craig Gentry is too. Josh is hitting on all cylinders and most were the first two weeks of the season. What happens if they all do? Not even the rain could stop us tonight.
No Pepper 