Astros at Rangers – Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Boot EditionRangers Ballpark in Arlington Friday, 7:35 PM on FSSW
Saturday, 2:55 PM on FOX (sweet, we get to see Jeanne Zelasko, owner of the biggest set of man hands this side of Rachel Ray)
Sunday, 7:35 PM on KNWS
Notable giveawaysIn honor of Sammy the Clown’s 600th Home Run, the Rangers are giving all fans 16 and older a free 10cc injection of Durabolin. There are other festivities planned as well to celebrate the Hippy Hoppy Bunny’s historic HR, including:
--a pre-game demonstration on proper bat corking techniques
--loud salsa music blared over the PA to the annoyance of everyone else
--premature HR celebration/trot on fly balls to the warning track
--and much, much more.
Projected Matchupshttp://houston.astros.mlb.com/news/probable_pitchers.jsp?c_id=hou If this were 2000 or so, we’d be in deep trouble. Thankfully, the days of Tha Thong Song and Who Let Tha Dogs Out are long gone.
Friday: Woody Williams versus Kevin Milwood.
Milwood has a fine career ERA of 3.38 (and WHIP of 1.07) versus Houston, but its a little deceiving as he hasn’t done jack shit versus the good guys in a few years. We smacked him around twice last year and twice in 2002. He had a solid outing in 2003 but most of his real damage came in the late 1990s and 2000/2001. Here’s how has fared versus the individual Astros batters over the years.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/5848/batvspit;_ylt=AgQz2heKnUkGsKsk598FcwWFCLcF?year=career&type=PitchingSaturday: Roy Oswalt versus Jamey Wright.
I’ll always remember Jamey Wright for the game he pitched against the Astros as a Brewer in 2001. It was late August/early September and Wright was mowing down the Astros—double digit strikeouts. Up 2-1 in the 9th inning when the Mexican Mullet hit a 2-run bomb with 2 outs to propel the Astros to a 1 run victory. I always thought Wright was going to be a real player based on that night. Little did I know he would eventually lose 12 in a row to the Astros until beating them last year.
Sunday: Chris Sampson versus Robinson Tejada
Kevin Milwood—7.62 ERA
Jamey Wright—10.57 ERA
Robinson Tejada—6.29 ERA
Same old Rangers. Can’t pitch for shit.
Injury ReportTexas – Mark Teixeira is out for a little while longer, with on-going speculation he’s on the trading block. Tell you what, I’d give up Troy Patton, Lidge and a couple other minor league pitchers for Tex. Though I doubt the Rangers are dumb enough to do it.
Hank Blalock is out with something called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. No idea what it means though I did find this website...
http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/fact/thr_report.cfm?Thread_ID=206Remember the old Blalock for Wade Miller discussions? Those were the days!!!
Houston – Lidge has an oblique strain/pull. No definitive timetable has been set for his return. AE is out another 5-7 weeks with a Flapjack induced fracture of the fibula. El Caballo needs to pull his head outta his ass, and start fielding the position. He’s making me wish Biggio was still out there in LF.
I Marky, Jerry and little brother Tommy In a town that loves its sports (as long as they are winners), the Rangers have always been the little brother. Right now, the Mavs are a success (at least in the regular season) and the Cowboys are a playoff team. And the Rangers are....well, the Rangers are the Rangers. And Tom Hicks can’t sit back and let Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones hog all the headlines so Hicks had to do something.
Earlier in the week he dropped this...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bba_rangers_gonzalez_steroids;_ylt=AiNnm692u.ZJ11adD5wQKyHMWM0FTommy, considering your teams history of steroid abuse (Canseco, Palmeiro, IRod) in addition to your current employment of “No Speakie Eenglessh” Sammy Sosa, perhaps its best for you to remain mum on the subject. Your team has been a disaster for nearly 40 fucking years, with the only bright spot being when half the everyday lineup was on the juice. Go play with your soccer team and do a better job keeping the Longhorn football team outta jail.
The ClownI hate Sammy Sosa. Always have. He’s a Grade A cock sucker, a fake who makes Curt Schilling seem genuine. A horrible teammate who quit on his team when things didn’t go his way. A juicer of the highest magnitude. Just a complete piece of shit.
Well, the douche bag hit his 600th HR this week so there were lots of stories about him, most dealing with his chances at getting into the HOF. A majority of those included some form of “he helped save baseball in 1998 with his pursuit of the HR record.” This is an urban myth. Sosa/Big Mac didn’t save baseball. Baseball saved baseball. Attendance was already rising before the flood of HRs. What happened was all the fans who said they were through with the game after the 1994 strike eventually came back. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the attendance figures.
1990—54.8M
1991—56.7M
1992—55.6M (first time in 8 years there was a decrease from the previous season)
1993—70.25M (Rockies/Marlins were added who combined for 7.5M, making the same store attendance 62.75m)
1994—50.01M (in 70% of a season, meaning they were on pace for just over 71.4M)
1995—50.5M (in 89% of a season, meaning they were on pace for a total of 56.7M, about a 20% drop from the 1994 pace)
1996—60.1M (a 6% increase from the 1995 adjusted numbers)
1997—62.9M (a 5% increase from the previous year)
1998—70.6M (see, there’s a huge jump in attendance, due to Sammy and Big Tweet. Bull shit. Arizona and TB joined that year. Back out those two teams and you get a same store attendance of 64.5M. Thats an increase of just 2.5% over the previous year).
1999—70.1M (hey, they were still hitting HRs in 1999, wheres the attendance increase?)
No, what Sammy and Mac did was spike attendance at their home ball parks, though some of the nearly 500,000 increase at Wrigley would have occured simply because the Cubs were winning and were headed to the playoffs. But their HR chase didn’t cause the 700k increase at Anaheim Stadium, or the 300k increase at Yankee Stadium, or the 500k increase at Jack Murphy in San Diego.
So fuck Sammy Sosa. He didn’t save baseball. He didn’t do anything other than inject his body with anabolic steroids, cork his bat, quit on his teammates and pretend he couldn’t speak English when appearing on Capitol Hill. Hope he dies a horrible death with as much pain and suffering as is humanly possible. Maybe he can upset Uggie Urbina and Urbina will set him on fire and whack him with a machete.
Other Random ShitGood to see the DQ get bukkake’d by the Rockies. 10.5 behind the Red Sox. 6.5 behind the Wild Card leaders. Enjoy the summer, dickhead.
Exactly why did the Rangers trade Adrian Gonzales (295/363/534) AND Chris Young (6-3, 2.26 ERA, 1.12 WHIP) for 1 year of Adam Eaton and Akinori Otsuka? By the way, if the Rangers are selling I’d like to nab Otsuka.
Current Favorite show on TV...Man Versus Wild. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is solid as well (and new episodes start next month).
Horrible story about a girl getting her feet lopped off at a Six Flags...
http://www.wlky.com/news/13547817/detail.htmlThis You Tube still cracks me up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2v-AkSj260. Now, I gotta lotta bitches to plow, so you can fuck-a me later, but you should fuck-a me now...
Still going to say Biggio gets #3000 on 6/28 versus the Rox. Get your tickets, now!!!!
