Carpe Datum

Wild Night

Texas is still playing some great baseball, but coming into the weekend series with Detroit, there were some signs that the hot streak was beginning to crumble back to reality. And even though the Rangers have been playing their best baseball in years, the Angels are matching them and battling close for first place. So this is an important series against a decent, improving Detroit team. It is a team that, if we are serious contenders, we should take care of.

Midway through last night's game, it was beginning to look like we might get swept. Detroit had won Friday's game 8-7 in a really disappointing loss for Texas, and by the time the bottom of the 5th came around last night, Texas was behind 14-4. What happened to the pitching? Well, they say that even the best young pitchers have one bad outing in three, and nobody is going to claim we have the best young pitchers. Thus, it wasn't a shock that Dickey (who carried a shutout 8 2/3 innings in his last start ... his outing was extended about 15-20 pitches too long since the manager tried to let him get a complete game shutout) had a poor outing. It was mostly relievers who gave up all the runs, though, since Dickey only gave up 6 in less than 4 innings.

Well, at the end of the Detroit half of the 5th inning, when they had finished piling on eight runs to extend their lead from 6-4 to 14-4 came one of those moments that may go into Rangers lore. Craig Monroe, a random Tiger outfielder, hit a routine fly ball for the last out of the (very long) inning. He had gotten a single earlier in the inning and scored a run, for crying out loud, but that wasn't good enough. He threw his bat down hard in disgust. Well, that didn't sit too well with the Ranger dugout, who thought they were being shown up and treated with contempt by an unworthy team. Manager Buck Showalter got really mad, yelled a few things out of the dugout and at his players, and they responded with a 10-run inning.

Before it was over, Alfonso Soriano would set a new Ranger record with 6 hits in the game (he went 6 for 6). The Rangers would walk *FIFTEEN* times (in the previous 29 games, they've walked 79 times, an average of less than three per game). The score would remain tied 15 to 15 and have to go extra innings. Finally, the Rangers finished off the Tigers in the bottom of the 10th, singling in a run off Ugueth Urbina, the great closer the Rangers had last year (but traded mid-season for some prospects).

The Rangers play Detroit again today and three more times next weekend. If tonight is the launching point for a big winning streak that gets us back out in front and propels us to playoff contention ultimately, you are going to be hearing about the Thrown Bat Incident for a long time. And yes, it is silly. The whole reason it was such a wacky game is that the plate umpire decided to have a raisin-sized strike zone (our pitching coach was thrown out in the 2nd inning for being impolite enough to point that out). The Rangers are going to win or lose based on their abilities, not because they got mad about a thrown bat. But baseball thrives on fans' belief in these kinds of stories, on people buying into "clubhouse chemistry" and so on, and I'll admit it is fun to believe that kind of stuff.

So, for now, I guess I will.

Posted by Observer at May 9, 2004 08:41 AM