All due respect to Garver’s mic drop after the Game 2 grand slam and every Doli bat flip ever, this was my favorite of the year. A thousand words right there. Ten thousand.
We sat through an entire 6 year rebuild for moments like THIS ❤️ No matter what happens next, this year and team is so special and will always be remembered
#GoAndTakeIt
There’s a Rangers game on MLB Network right now. They’re playing Arizona. Arizona’s pitcher has a no-hitter going right now in the sixth. Drama building.
The Rangers are in the final four.
Last season the Stars were in the final four.
In 2022 the Mavs were in the final four.
The Internet doesn’t go back far enough for the other team. No idea.
Since the Cowboys last won a playoff game past the Wild Card Round:
* The Rangers have played in two World Series
* The Mavs have played in two NBA Finals
* The Stars have played in three Stanley Cup Finals
Bally announces
@JaredSandler
will handle TV play-by-play duties on occasion this season. Could not be happier for him. Rising superstar who gets to call TV games for the team he grew up loving.
Didn’t make it into 1 Thing, but cool note I thought worth sharing: after the game, Torey Lovullo praised the Rangers as a class org for coming to him before formally announcing the Doli/Max deactivations—to let him know so he could adjust last night’s pitching plan if needed.
Won't listen to sports talk radio today (unless alerted to a Rangers segment). I don't need the 90% saturation on Dak's decisions, the thousand penalties, the effect of no Diggs and a decimated O-line . . . in game three.
It's baseball season.
I owe my writing career to this man. Without
@theoldgreywolf
taking interest in a flimsy email list I'd started back in 98, there's no Newberg Report. No blog, no books, no events, no opportunity to join
@TheAthletic
. I depend on all of it-& it's all due to Mike. Stay hard, dude.
Texas Rangers GM Chris Young: "Our fans have waited a long time for this. To see this building packed the way that it was, and the support of our fans, we felt like we couldn't fail tonight."
At restaurant patio watching football. Sign out front say “We Went & Took It.” Family just walked in, guy wearing a City Connect cap. Another family walks out, mom in a Rangers jacket and tells someone they’re on way to see the WS trophy.
It’s a Sports Town, Josh.
Since Texas traded for Scherzer and Montgomery and created a musical chairs situation in the rotation, Heaney has gone 11.2-6-0-0-2-15. All singles.
That’s one helluva response.
And Dallas’s has no asterisk by it.
I wouldn’t trade any of the DFW four for any of the HOU three right now. The Astros have had a better run since 2016 but it’s forever tainted.
Closing the book on Houston:
Always had respect for Altuve, and that only grew. Dude’s a warrior of the highest, most epic order.
Always feared Yordan but my respect for him spiked exponentially—not only as the game’s best hitter but in the way he helped deescalate the scuffle.
The Angels had Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani together for 6 years. Zero playoff appearances. They’ve had Trout for 13 years. One single playoff appearance for him—9 years ago—and they got swept by KC in three games.
That’s unbelievably, phenomenally, historically unacceptable.
I didn’t go to the Mavs parade or the lifetime-ago Cowboys parades — but I can’t imagine the scene was anything like this one. This is hard to believe.
To be fair, the second pitch in that at-bat was as brutal in favor of the other team. Evened out. But the point is well taken. That’s horrible incompetency in the biggest game of the league’s season.
There have been a couple of exceptionally bad ball-strike calls tonight. One in the ninth inning of a 3-1 game that makes the difference between a walk and an eventual groundout is just not acceptable.
Some love this morning for Jonathan Hernandez. He was one pitch away from an insanely heroic effort — well, it was a heroic effort, just very nearly a heroic outcome — that we would be talking about the rest of his career and well beyond that.
You and I have experienced plenty of Rangers losses. Max Scherzer, Jordan Montgomery, Chris Stratton, and Jonathan Ornelas haven’t experienced their first one yet.
BREAKING: Catcher Mitch Garver and the Seattle Mariners are in agreement on a two-year, $24 million contract, pending physical, sources tell ESPN.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to him, Mariners fans who get to celebrate an unexpected gift and everyone else.
** NEW UMPIRE AUDITOR RECORD **
Umpire Angel Hernandez rang up Wyatt Langford on three consecutive pitches out of the zone.
The strikeout pitch missed outside by 6.78 inches.
This was the largest miss on a called strikeout in Umpire Auditor history.
I’m sure every big league umpire appreciates the strength and conviction of their union—but they can’t be ok with this. They just can’t. AH’s routine incompetence has become such a narrative, and getting worse, that it discredits the entire profession. Including the good ones.
The Rangers entered the Break on a skid and came out of it having to take on three straight division leaders.
They knocked CLE out of first.
They dropped TB into a first-place tie (first time since Opening Day).
Now LAD comes in – up one game on SFG.
We're quick to praise Bruce Bochy and Mike Maddux -- and we should -- but it's time that Tim Hyers and Donnie Ecker and Seth Conner get some love for how much better hitters like Lowe, Adolis, Jonah, and Leody have gotten with their approach.
Free-agent C Martin Maldonado, who has been a key piece of the Astros’ success for the past four-plus seasons, is already drawing interest from 4-5 teams, per sources.
Cowboys pull out a game that the rules didn’t allow both teams to lose — and now don’t play again until the travel day after Game 2 of the World Series.
It’s baseball season.
Starter gives you six, Sborz in the 7th, Aroldis in the 8th, Smith in the 9th. Blueprint stuff. (Stratton will figure in some nights.)
And credit to Garver, not just for the HR but also for calling a gem.
Imagine, after 102 and 94 losses the last two seasons, someone telling you Texas would be 20 games over .500 this year.
You wouldn’t believe it.
They’re 20 games over — with more than 100 games to go.