Our daughter wore princess costumes just about every day as a toddler and our son wore baseball pants to pre-school (I might have misspelled “kindergarten” there) and the last two nights made me think of that, as well as of the Staubach 12 jersey I wore out as a kid myself.
This is Robby, and what he was doing at the end of the game Thursday night:
And this is Robby, and what he was doing at the end of the game Friday night:
Robby is in full catcher’s gear.
Robby is nowhere to be found in Thursday’s box score.
Robby doesn’t show up in Friday’s box score, either.
He didn’t play in either 5–2 win, each of which featured a four-run Rangers ninth and a three-run blast to walk it off.
But Robby is in full catcher’s gear, and that’s awesome.
To be fair, in each night’s ninth, Jonathan Lucroy singled and was lifted for a pinch-runner, and Robby was dutifully suiting up for the tenth, if it ever came around.
It didn’t.
Either time.
Each time that pinch-runner came around to score — Joey Gallo jogging in as as the winning run on Mike Napoli’s missile on Thursday, and then Pete Kozma sprinting home on Napoli’s game-tying sacrifice fly on Friday, a double and homer short of Gallo’s pole vault that ended that one.
Robby would have replaced Gallo on Thursday and Robby would have replaced Kozma on Friday, but neither game ever got to that point.
(Although Delino, who was on deck when Oakland surprisingly gave Gallo something to hit with first base open and one out, seems to have wished the longest that Friday’s game wasn’t quite over: )
Our daughter was in the room when Friday’s 5–2 happened and thought I was crazy the way I bounce-scream-reacted to Gallo’s shot.
Our son was there, too, and he understood. One hundred percent.
The words “tool” and “ignorant” might have crossed our daughter’s mind then. I don’t know.
I don’t have my Staubach 12 any more and it’s a good thing there wasn’t any eyeblack around and a wall to run through at home last night, because otherwise I might have broken something other than my Mac, or my quad.
Instead I just fell asleep with a sports-smile on my face, imagining with impunity that Robby was going to go to sleep Friday night with his full catcher’s gear still on, if he’d even taken those tools of ignorance off after Thursday night’s home plate scrum.
Dallas attorney Jamey Newberg has been commenting on Rangers from the big club down through the entire farm system since 1998.
Scott Lucas was born in Arlington, Texas, to Richard and Becky Lucas. He lived mostly in Arlington before moving to Austin, where he graduated from The University of Texas. Scott works for Austin Valuation Consultants, Ltd., and has published several boring articles about real estate appraisal and environmental contamination. He makes a swell margarita and refuses to run longer than ten kilometres.
Eleanor grew up watching the AAA Mudhens in Toledo, Ohio. A loyal Ranger fan since 1979, she works "behind the scenes" at the Newberg Report.
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