Angels Begin "Must-Win" Games With a Win

Final Score in Anaheim: Rangers 3, Angels 11

With every game basically a must-win for the Angels, this one certainly started out encouragingly. They pushed an early run across thanks to a Torii Hunter single, and with Jered Weaver on the mound, you're feeling good about things. 1-0 Good Guys.

Then thanks to yet another set of soul-crushing bombs from devil-children Mike Napoli and Ian Kinsler in the 3rd inning, this game suddenly looks like yet another 2012 Angels heartbreak. 3-1 Bad Guys. Season over, right?

Wrong. In the bottom of the 4th the Angels scored for 40 minutes straight (five times longer than your average high school couple -- BAM) and cashed in 8 runs on a sequence that went something like this: single, walk, groundout, single, walk, hit by pitch, wild pitch, hokey pokey, shamma-lamma-ding-dong. 9-3 Good Guys. They tack on one in the fifth and another in the eighth. 11-3 Good Guys.

After giving up three runs on those two homers, Weaver refocused and threw seven good innings. LaTroy Hawkins and newbie Barry Enright finished the job, and the Halosphere still has oxygen for another day.