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Looking for a little RISPectApril 12th, 2008
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It’s called “Runners In Scoring Position”. And it is something the Rangers might want to start thinking about a little bit more often. And some catching and throwing might be a decent idea too. But you know what? The Rangers are sitting at 5-5 after the first 10 games. Got the nice (and vital, even this early) sweep of Baltimore on Thursday. Didn’t get rained out for the home opener, and you can’t stress how much that would have been the pits (yes, St. Louis, we are looking at you). And they’re still pitching like maybe there should be a different name on the front of the jersey.
Opening Day wasn’t a great game, but it was still Opening Day. It’s never fun to lose the game, especially if you get it pretty well handed to you. This year, home teams only went 14-16 in their own Opening Days (14-17 if you include Oakland losing at home and in Japan). And two of those teams lost by as many as 7: Texas and Colorado, both putting up one run versus eight.
What the casual fan doesn’t realize is that winning or losing matters on Opening Day, but not as much as one might think. The greatest fact in baseball is that you will win 54 games and you will lose 54 games. The losing team trots out the tired cliche about it being only one game, with a whole season left to play. And over the past decade, it’s true. No team has missed out on the play-offs because they lost their home opener.
But if you got there early enough, and you weren’t one of the thousands and thousands sitting in traffic (Did you see me? I was waving at you from the upper deck while I was waiting in a very short line for grilled onion hotdogs…), it was still Opening Day. Full team introductions, first pitch (nice job, Mr. Nadel), bombers, eagles, the whole works. And now, the Rangers can settle down into the solid, steady grind of the summer. Did you get a chance to see Josh Hamilton’s homerun on Friday night? As Dr. Evil might say, “laser”. Crushed it into a tunnel in the upper deck of the Homerun Porch. Micheal, Hank, Ian, Josh, Milton Bradley, Byrd, Laird, Broussard, and Cameron Frye lookalike David Murphy? You just have to think they’ll get a grip on this RISP thing soon.
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