Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Though Victor Martinez’s game-tying home run came at a price with a strained oblique that left him hobbling around the bases, it sparked an outburst of five unanswered runs for the Tigers in what shaped up as a must-win Game 3 in their American League Championship Series showdown with Texas. Doug Fister’s 7 1/3 quality innings took care of the rest for a 5-2 victory.
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Detroit still trails in the series, two games to one, but looked like a different team than the club that dropped two close decisions in Texas in as many games. And a painful home run from the unofficial team leader seemingly provided the spark.
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1. hunting for a halo-red october Posted: October 12, 2011 at 03:47 AM (#3960071)I don't pay much attention the AL West, but it seems like the Rangers have assembled this team through methods dorks like us usually commend: homegrown talent, some mid-tier free agent signings and good trades.
I would think that 99% of the animosity directed towards the Rangers is essentially directed towards G.W. Bush.
I also think some of the Rangers' players seem personally aggravating ("Get the f*** off our field," Hamilton's public proselytizing). Toss in some IMO not-so-classy past behavior (the way they pulled their regulars on the last day of the season in 2010, lingering dislike of Nolan Ryan in Anaheim) by the organization for good measure. Plus the seemingly fairweather nature of the Cowboys-preferring fan base.
As a fan of an AL West team, I'll say this: I find the Rangers to be the most annoying organization in the division. I dislike the A's, but I respect them immensely. The M's are too hapless to be annoying.
Or the city of Dallas and everything it stands for in the world of stereotypes and old TV shows, or Texas, or the oil barons, or the sunbelt in general, or in the case of former Senators fans, the memory of the archfiend Robert Short. I doubt if it's ever directed against the Rangers players. I'd even root for them if they make it to the World Series.
EDIT: I guess some people get annoyed with Josh Hamilton. Never knew that before reading # 4.
I'm a churchgoer, and his act bothers me.
Setting aside that these don't seem like the strongest of reasons, I've got to ask: there's lingering resentment toward Nolan Ryan in Anaheim? Really?
I'll agree with that. Even if I'm diametrically opposed to him politically, I always admired W for being a genuine baseball fan.
That said, I root the hell out of 'em when they face the Yankees. Pure evil > Loathing. Even "Shrub"-level loathing.
He had arguably his best years in Anaheim but is wearing the cap of a division rival on his HOF plaque (and yes, we all realize he's a Texan through and through, but still). He's also in the front office of said divisional rival. Is some resentment really that surprising?
Like I said, "disgruntled Angels fan."
Yes, yes it is.
Not an exact analogue, but how do Sox fans feel about the Rocket?
- but icky polit-ucks aside, it is still teh kewl that we have an ex-president who loves baseball enough to come out to the park and root for his team. and his mother knows how to keep a scorebook, which is also teh KEWL!!!!!
me i don't like the rangers because they use a DH - same as any other AL team except the Y/RS who deserve additional hateration just because
- forgot - i don't like nolan ryan neither - never did
Well, that's only part of my rooting interest-colored motivation, but I said that I wouldn't be surprised for AL West-disinterested, liberal BBTFers to cite that as a primary reason.
No reciprocal dislike for the NL from this American League fan!
Just to be clear, when I mentioned G.W. Bush, I didn't say that I personally felt that way; I just said that I feel that the animosity towards the Rangers on this site seems to be primarily politically motivated towards him, which I believe to be true.
My own personal feelings towards him seem to be similar to yours; I strongly dislike his politics, but respect and like that he seems to be a genuine baseball fan.
It's not really a close one. He left for a division rival, then orchestrated a trade to our archrival two years later. Oh, and he's a jackass (I stopped liking the fat #### when he got his stupid ass tossed in the ALCS).
And while it's true that the Rangers and Angels have been in the same division for 40-plus years, it's not like the Texas boys have been standing in the way of your domination. Until this year, they'd finished ahead of you in a close pennant race only once, when their mighty 88-74 squad outlasted your 85-77 juggernaut.
If Chuck Finley or Mark Langston had engineered a trade to Seattle in 1998 after signing and spending two seasons in Oakland, I could understand some bitterness. But signing with in-name-only rival Texas after 9 seasons in Houston, that I'm not seeing. It would be akin to me being bitter at Cecil Cooper because of his great years as a Brewer.
It took me all day to realize this was Baseball Chick (Lisa) - I just glossed over the handle and when I actually phonetically read it aloud (right now) I laughed out loud...big time.
Yeah the Nolan frustration is pretty deep among folks that were Angel fans in the 1970's. I didn't arrive in SoCal until 1981 as a 9 year old - so I'm less irritated by him being a Ranger FO tool - but I get the irritation. I mean he was ALL we had from 1973-ish through 1978. I mean - he was IT.
The strike he threw in the first game back after 9/11 was pretty sweet, too.
I'm an A's fan and I have no ill-will to the Rangers at all. If anything, I like seeing Ron Washington get some national attention/
I echo this viewpoint. The thing I like the most about GWB (the ONE thing I genuinely like about GWB?) is that he is a serious, well-informed baseball fan.
But the thing I hate the most about the Rangers is that they have GWB sitting in the front row rooting for them. :-)
I'm in this camp.
Bingo. Like the city, love the home uniforms, loved Tiger Stadium, liked Walter Reuther, like Leyland, loved that Mickey Mantle used to say DEE-troit and that The Sporting News used to refer to the team as "The Jungaleers". That's seven good enough reasons.
I neither like nor dislike the Rangers.
My only real reaction to the Rangers is that I wish a few of them were playing for the Yankees. I can't even imagine rooting for a sunbelt team outside the World Series, but there's nothing particular about the Rangers to make me want to root against them.
The idea that a dislike of Texas depends solely on G.W. Bush is rather short-sighted.
As for who goes to games, I'd much rather see war criminals in the seats behind home plate than raping and pillaging nations just because. We're all the better for it.
And as for Texas, jeez. It's a state that executes with glee and gusto. Texas goes ahead and executes defendants when no one disagrees that some poor son of a b*tch's alcoholic "attorney" slept through the better part of the trial. That aspect of Texas is sickening, primitive, and a thoroughgoing embarrassment. It's not like the rest of us are proud that you're in the Union.
Speaking personally, however, I have nothing against the Rangers, though I do have a preference for the richer history of the Detroit franchise and was a real fan of some of their players, especially in the 1980s.
Same here. I just hope this series goes seven. We haven't had a seven-game series of any stripe since the 2008 ALCS between the Rays and Red Sox.
I also find the games more fun to watch when the home team wins. It's great to see the crowd so into the ballgame.
Holy cow. Hi Lisa. That's awesome.
Count me in the camp rooting for the Tigers last night just to keep it interesting. I can root for either of these teams in the WS, if it comes to it, although my preference among the four is Milwaukee.
And sitting in the front row of a baseball game is probably the best use America has for GWB. But if we're to get into politics, at least New York, Boston and Washington are long dead.
When I moved to Dallas in 1988, the franchise had been here less than 20 years, and I got a strong sense that people still didn't know quite what to make of it. It was apparently a team in a major professional sports league, and they'd host the New York Yankees and such, but their image was pretty goofy, and when people talked about them it was often to call them "The Strangers" (a newspaper gag from the 1981 strike year, an imaginary baseball team that was for a while more popular than the actual team).
When Nolan Ryan arrived in 1989, things changed dramatically. DFW fans have always had a cult of "character" – think of the reverence for Roger Staubach – and Ryan somehow exemplified everything classy, manly, and Texan. This despite the fact that the Rangers were just as mediocre with Ryan as they'd been without him. But it was as if the franchise had suddenly entered the major leagues: not by MLB's standards, but by DFW's.
In some respects this makes no sense. Ferguson Jenkins had pitched here, and Gaylord Perry, and Blyleven and Charlie Hough (and Frank Tanana for that matter :), pitchers who were arguably as great as Ryan intrinsically. But Ryan had the image that mattered, and backed it up with lots of strikeouts and no-hitters.
The past 20 years have been complicated, but it's odd how a single free-agent signing can be such a watershed in a team's image.
I want the Brewers to beat them in WS, though.
In some respects this makes no sense. Ferguson Jenkins had pitched here, and Gaylord Perry, and Blyleven and Charlie Hough (and Frank Tanana for that matter :), pitchers who were arguably as great as Ryan intrinsically. But Ryan had the image that mattered, and backed it up with lots of strikeouts and no-hitters.
The past 20 years have been complicated, but it's odd how a single free-agent signing can be such a watershed in a team's image.
I don't give a damn about a ballplayer's personal belief system, but I have to admit that when that NYT Magazine article about the Johnny Oates era Rangers came out in the mid-late 90's, the disclosure that 22 out of the 25 players on the roster were BornAgains, plus Oates himself, kind of took me for a loop. That was my most lasting image of the Rangers for a long, long time, I guess because it fit in so perfectly with most of the other stereotypes about the general state of Dallas (and Texas) culture.
First time I've encountered that one. I guess it was a thing of the past by the time my TSN reading began, circa 1971.
That was my boy-sportswriter period. I was a fly on the wall in that clubhouse for a couple of years, and I never heard a single religious sentiment expressed.
Of course, I never heard any of them talk about steroids, either :)
Damn Andy I would bet that 95% of the people from the south (and Mantle qualifies as a Southerner in my book) would pronounce Detroit that way, or at least they used to. I grew up in western Kentucky and everyone I knew said it that way. I just assumed that was correct until I heard educated people pronounce it the "correct" way. I thought you went to school in the south; perhaps those Dukies were all just carpetbaggers like yourself :-)
Dee-troit is how the word is pronounced. I'll listen to counterarguments from citizens of the Motor City but not New Yorkers.
Next thing you know they'll be trying to tell you how to pronounce Appalachian.
"di-TROIT" is how it is pronounced by 'Old Detroiters'. I thought everyone knew that. Newcomers started emphasizing it as Dee-troit, to the point that radio station WDEE (now WLQV) promoted itself on the basis of putting the 'DEE' into Detroit in the early 1970s. Nowadays both pronunciations seemed to be used interchangeably.
Unlike some Yankees, though (judging from pronunciations I've heard at times on TV or radio ads & football score reports), I by god know how to pronounce "Bossier" & "Ouachita" correctly.
Just to be clear about this, I've never pronounced DEE-troit any other way myself, after consulting the Mick's pronouncing dictionary. But then when it comes to pronunciation I'm often a complete chameleon, and if I like the sound of a word I'll pay no attention to its "proper" pronunciation. Hell, I sometimes even pronounce CBS "SEE-be-ess" after hearing one of those Masters commercials.
"di-TROIT" is how it is pronounced by 'Old Detroiters'.
That's certainly how my Michigan cousins pronounced it when I'd visit them BITD, but since I never saw either of them hit any home runs over the centerfield wall in Griffith Stadium, they had little standing in my 12 year old eyes.
The Dukies Andy went to school with most certainly were carpetbaggers, Andy included.
Back then (1962-67) a small majority of Dukies were actually from North Carolina, though that was rapidly changing. I only decided to go there myself after reading an article in SPORT magazine about baseball at Duke, of all things. And until I got there, I barely even knew of its basketball team, although it went to the Final Four in 3 of my first 4 years there. If I'd applied to college with my heart instead of by looking through SPORT, I would've gone to Carolina, since their legendary Wiltslaying team was composed entirely of New York City Irishmen and Jews. I used to openly cheer for Carolina right in the heart of the student section in Cameron, though I doubt if I'd risk that today.
I also tend to root against teams that have never won the World Series, though I'm making an exception for the Brewers this year. I'm also rooting for the Tigers because buddha (who never posts here anymore) is a Tigers fan, and it would be nice to see them win for him. Though with the Lions getting good, there's the potential that he could get really annoying. Wow, really? I didn't like GWB the President, but GWB the person seems like an even bigger dick. Juvenile, petty, like a silver-spoon frat boy who never grew out of that phase.
Reminds me of how Southerners call the band "LITTLE Feat," and everybody else seems to call them "Little FEAT."
I think the nature of the office of the presidency and what one has to go through to get there pretty much precludes anyone that has successfully occupied the office from being a huge dick.
I guess some people get annoyed with Josh Hamilton. Never knew that before reading # 4.
I'm a churchgoer, and his act bothers me.
- if saying all that stuff keeps him offn the needle, good for him
and serioously, unless what he says is that everyone else HAS to think/say that too or terrible earthly things should/will happen to him, what's it to you? would you be fussing it he was all talking about jobu and his cigars/rum?
this is intolerance pure and simple
and the rest of youse, youse know who you are, who insist on stereotyping us all into being characters from dallas the tv show or mad murderers wanting to put Black men to death - you no better than anyone stereotyping nyc jews, or catholics or muslims or indians (either kind) or irishmen or yankee fans
well, the stereotyping of yankee/red sox fans is normal, acceptable and rational - so leave that one out
- and glad all yall like my handle. i had to be careful you know - The Jim would spank me iffn i wasn't careful which would actually be OK as long as he's wearing his FireMan uni
Wow, I thought that sentence was going 180 degrees in the opposite direction :)
I can't think of a President who didn't have a massive ego, though that doesn't equate to "huge dick" exactly. Some Presidents seem personally very sympathetic, even ones like Franklin Pierce who were out of their depth. Others (Jackson, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, TR, Hoover, LBJ, Nixon) seem to have pressed the massive-ego thing to extremes; some of them were successful, others not.
Amen, Chick. I would also like to take issue with the common stereotype that Texas must look like Monument Valley. Actually, Lisa's part of Texas looks like New Jersey, and my part looks like Chicago, minus lake and snow. Not to everyone's taste, but not much different from a lot of the East or Midwest. There's some desert about 600 miles west of here, but it takes some driving to locate it.
I'm pretty sure that he went with "DEE-troit", at least back when he was in Baltimore.
-----------------------------------
But I particularly despise this version of the Rangers mostly because of Ian "Get Off Our Field" Kinsler,
What about Dallas "Get off my mound" Braden?
people like to think texans are all like _____
i can deal with it but people on this here board who are supposed to be all educated and highly intelligent gots NO excuse for that kind of talk
when my mama went away to college and she told people she was from dallas she heard from LOTS of surprised people (not in any sort of mean way, she said) that they didn't know they had Black people in texas. everyone though it was cowboys, injuns unless they all dead now, awl wells and slutty cheerleaders. in fact, they were just as surprised to learn that there were still people of mexican descent here in texas didn't all get kilt by pancho villa or something
people outside texas don't get The Nolan Ryan Phenomena in dallas with the rangers any more than they get The Roger Clemens Phenomena with the astros. sure we got randy johnson, bagwell, biggio and even pettitte, but roger made the astros BIGTIME like no one else
Both the Ryan and Clemens phenomena in Texas make perfect sense to this outsider, just as the Cal Ripken phenomenon makes sense in Baltimore and the Joe Mauer phenomenon makes sense in Minnesota. "Hall of Famer** makes good in his own home state" is always going to be a big deal for the local fans.
**Well, maybe not Clemens, and maybe not (yet) Mauer, but you know what I mean.
Now that you mention it, I hated the Rangers in all of those games, too :)
You only now just figured out what it meant and how it was? A little slow on the uptake there.
Frankly, though, I think it's time to change the handle, Lisa. I don't like having to associate you with that two word phrase.
One of my favorite Broadway memories is watching him tap dance with Honi Coles in "My One and Only"
"You remember me?"
"How many six foot white tap dancers do you think we get in here""
I couldn't figure that out either. On the one hand, he's an A, so you're probably not inclined to root for him. On the other, he said it to Arod, so there's no reason for you to get particularly worked up about it.
To be fair, I was mostly away from the site for quite a bit this summer and only noticed this handle in the last couple of weeks of the season. Didn't think much about it.
Or, for that matter, how can you not hate RMc?
Thanks,
Much of the rest of the world
p.s. and thanks, too, for Molly Ivins. How she kept her sense of humor and sanity while covering the Texas State Legislature for something like three decades is literally awe-inspiring. Molly is one of my very few heroes.
p.p.s. do understand that in some part it's the ####### gusto with which so many of your citizens (note I wrote "so many", not "all") greet the extraordinary number of executions your state commits that brings you a lot of the opprobrium you resent. Your governor even seems to speak with pride regarding state murder. I know you don't like it, but you get #### for that kind of thing in many quarters, and it's not undeserved. The cheers that went up when Brian Williams referred to the 234 inmates Texas has executed under Rick Perry's reign are routinely heard in your fair state when the subject is publicly discussed. Accept that that's disgusting, and symptomatic of the worst of your state, and like a lot of the worst things about anyone or anything, you'll hear about it. As you should, until you stop doing it.
I actually phonetically read it aloud (right now) I laughed out loud...big time.
Holy cow. Hi Lisa. That's awesome.
You only now just figured out what it meant and how it was? A little slow on the uptake there.
Frankly, though, I think it's time to change the handle, Lisa. I don't like having to associate you with that two word phrase.
- yeah, i know what you mean because that there second word is really seriously horrid/vile/nasty - you don't want to think of that one with a nice sweet grrrrls like lil ol me
we got some options here:
draytonmclane is a explecativedeeleted
jimcrane is a racistsexist nitwit who ain't got no dough
astros fans all playin we don't get stuck in the inferior league
but those are kind of long
But I think you're right as a general principle. A fair amount of my general appreciation of the Brewers has been inspired by the Wallbanger. Of course this will not add up to any quarter if the Brewers play Texas in the Series ...
committee to make ehdwayde an organ donor
I don't necessarily root for any positive outcomes for others here but knowing people (and liking most) from pretty much every fanbase sure makes it hard to squeal with glee when someone loses.
Hard. Not impossible.
trouble is that MOST people who "want" the death penalty think about putting child rapists/murders to death. would YOU want someone who raped and butchered YOUR baby to be allowed to live out a full life while they are dead? that kind of thinking
most people do NOT realize how incredibly shtty the evidence is or even that 99.9% of death penalty crime defendents do not have OJ's team. and also way too much testimony is from other dooshbags and that there are more than a few false confessions. and this is not counting all the bad/invented CSI "evidence" like what happened with amanda knox
or the amount of $$$ spent on death row defendents
not wanting to go on death row...
but i'm actually much angrier with drayton mclane
i COULD go with something about - CJ wilson is HOTTTTT unless he turns into a Y/RS/c*b
or
mattkemp is teh HOTTTTTTT. no matter what is isn't wearing
Yes again, in that some of my more reasonable friends who are pro-death penalty have expressed astonishment upon learning that executions tend to be far more expensive than life in prison, or that having an attorney who was disbarred for multiple sins shortly after ineptly defending you is not grounds for rehearing your case. All the more applause for Illinois's Governor Ryan, for commuting the sentences of his state's death row. A conversion like Ryan's takes genuine interest and study, and a willingness to admit to having been wrong.
p.s. Matt Kemp is hot? I'm just not seeing it :)
Conversely, everyone here now hates the Marlins.
i hate the sight of the ol WB
so i would have to go with JB shuck
i know it's hard to believe, but i sure would like to see an OF next year of bogusevic, shuck, JD martinez. also jason bourgoies - rotate CF/RF among all guys not named martinez (who is too slow to play CF or RF) schafer can go toke himself, i mean take himself - off to AAA
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