From the Belly of the Beast aka Arlington 5-22-10

Went to see our western rivals, the Bankrupt Arlington Ryans, on Saturday night, play the Loveable Losers from Chi-town. And aside from bringing home a nice LOSS for y'all, I had a pretty decent time at the Texas Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

Let's recap, shall we?

The drive in.  I listened to the Rangers station, FM 105.3 for the pregame, Gavin & Gregg, and one of them, I forget which one, "called the season" saying that the Rangers would win it all. You heard me right, Sports Fans, the season is over at game 45. No need to play the other 117 games. No matter that your team is bankrupt, pardner, and you won't be able to make any deals, or that your team hasn't won prairie dog droppings since 1999, or that your team wilts like lettuce under a sunlamp each and every August, you have it IN THE BAG! Or just maybe, y'all are all hat and no cattle?

The park.  I got to the 6:00 pm game early, just before 5:00 pm. Parking? Well, the Rangers' park is located in a commercial district, so there are lots of little strips of 1 story businesses with empty parking lots. So the Rangers happily sell you parking in those spaces for $10, $9, or if you have the stamina of a marathoner, $8.  I opted for the $8 lot.

The park itself is a large handsome square sandstone structure, with a dark green painted infrastructure - metal rails, and girders.  It has an open feel, very retro. I like the park itself, and I was able to get seats in the 4th row of the lower view level behind home plate. The seats were $25, somewhat more than the $17 - $24 that Arte charges for the same seat. I would've thought that, given the economics, seats would be cheaper in Dallas, but as they say, everything is bigger in Texas, including ticket prices.

Here's a picture of the inside of the park:

via hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net ...Nice place. Especially if you like 100 degree weather and 90% humidity.

The pregame.   A couple of things. They gave away glossy Rangers' team guides, which I thought was a nice touch.  So I gave it a read.  First thing that caught my eye, this is the dude who is their director of Amateur Scouting:

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As they would say on SNL News, "Really, you chose for your son's first name - and whose last name you knew would be Fagg - Kipp? Really?"  I mean, I guess the name "Josh Beckett" was already taken, so they settled on this.  The poor guy has suffered enough ...

On the upside, he gets to work with some amazing talent:

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Anytime Shannon, Kate and Danielle want to come over and talk baseball, I'm all ears.

I put down the program, as the pregame ceremonies commenced.  And who threw out the first pitch?

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Yep! Mr. Six Flags, doing a dance that was part 1920's shimmy and part epileptic seizure.  I can only assume that his caregivers were able to stop him from swallowing his tongue, as he threw out the first pitch and disturbed every right-thinking person in the stadium.  To his credit, his first pitch was much closer to the strike zone than, say, the President's was.  More flags, more fun, indeed.

An interesting sidebar to the pregame was the crawl on one of the scoreboards, which I tried to photograph:

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Where it says "Vote Texas" in the photo above [sorry for the lack of legibility] it also says that if you vote 25 times, you get 2 free tickets to a Rangers game. Huh? What? Is that legal? I guess. Pretty creative idea, but I don't think ballot stuffing should be encouraged.  Unless Arte encourages it, and then I'm all for it.

The game.  The Rangers trot out some impressive talent, much of it former Angel talent.  In fact, all three of the former Halo's factored into the decision [a 5-4 loss to the Cubs in 10 innings.] Vlad had a single and a homerun, scored twice and looked to run very well. Darren Oliver pitched an inning of effective relief.  Darren O'Day, despite being a big part of the early Ranger's success, was ineffective and gave up 3 hits and recorded no outs and took the loss.

It was odd to see Vlad in a Rangers uniform, but it was nice to see him have a very good game.

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Despite his impressive early season numbers, they haven't really taken to him in Texas yet. No chants of "Vladdy, Vladdy" or anything of that nature, despite a nice homerun - his 10th of the season - to left field in the 4th inning. Oh well.

Lastly, a couple of random thoughts.

First, there are some odd ducks in Texas. This dude in the lower right, check out his jersey name:

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"What's my name? Exactly." Maybe a fan of Abbott & Costello?

Second, if you cleanly catch a foul ball, the announcer calls it and says "That fan gets an honorary Ranger's contract, signed by Nolan Ryan." Pretty cool, and a way for Nolan to keep his name mentioned at least 2 - 3 times every game, during the game.

Third, the dot racing is real human beings dressed as dots.  I kid you not.

Lastly, they had a promotion where a kid races to steal a base [like they do in Anaheim], but the kid - some local kid - was racing against "Carl from Aurora City, Illinois" and it was a guy in a fat suit, meant to be your typical lardy Cubs' fan, too out of shape to even finish one lap. It was pretty silly, but it was the sort of thing that would never play in Anaheim.

That's it, I brought you home a Rangers' loss and saw Vlad and Oliver impress, so my night was complete.