Three things:
1. After managing to score only four runs in Games One and Two combined, Texas busted out with seven runs on 13 hits in Game Three, hitting .361/.405/.583 as a team.
And got punched in the mouth.
The Rangers, down 5-0 at the time, scored three runs in the bottom of the fourth. St. Louis answered with three of their own in the top of the fifth.
The Rangers scored three more runs in the bottom of the fifth. St. Louis answered with four in the top of the sixth.
The Rangers scored their final run in the bottom of the seventh. St. Louis answered with one in the top of the eighth.
After seven innings, St. Louis had 12 hits. So did Texas.
Yet the score was 14-7.
None of the Rangers' six pitchers got the job done. Matt Harrison couldn't complete the fourth, having to overcome a bad Ian Kinsler throw and a badly blown Ron Kulpa call and, later in the inning, a bad Mike Napoli throw, but he wasn't especially sharp. Alexi Ogando needed 35 pitches to get one out - strangely enough, his nemesis Allen Craig - and presumably won't be available today. And I don't want to talk about the pitching anymore.
Or the defense.
The pitching and defense Saturday night looked like past Texas teams that the last few years of Rangers baseball had helped us forget. Not cool.
2. A request of the St. Louis scribes who were hissed off at Albert Pujols and a couple of his teammates after Game Two: Please work up some sort of manufactured tirade against Josh Hamilton and Ian Kinsler and a couple Rangers pitchers this afternoon.
Speaking of Game Two: Thank goodness that ninth inning happened.
3. Reminder: Texas hasn't lost back-to-back games in two months.
Another reminder: A slam dunk still counts as only two points.
Even a posterizing slam dunk that shatters the backboard.
I think.
And a final reminder, while sort of on the topic, on a night when Dirk Nowitzki threw out the first pitch:
The Mavericks opened the 2011 NBA Finals on the road, losing Game One to Miami and stealing Game Two with an impossible comeback in the final minutes. Sound familiar?
The series then shifted to Dallas for three games. The Mavs lost the first of those three at home, ceding series momentum and home court advantage right back to the Heat.
Yep.
You know what happened next.
No matter how you feel right now, it's not nearly time to start talking about Yu Darvish or what Albert Pujols might look like for 81+ (times 10) in Rangers Ballpark or whether Texas will be able to hang onto Thad Levine and A.J. Preller.
St. Louis still has to win twice, while the Rangers have to win three times, and the odometer rolls back to 0-0 tonight before George W. Bush throws out the first pitch and Derek Holland fires the First Pitch, three outs after which the offense will get the chance to do against Edwin Jackson what it did against Kyle Lohse, something it tends to do on nights Holland pitches, while Holland gets the chance to help his club and all of us forget Game Three, the way Pujols and his teammates were able last night to bury Game Two.
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.
