JSngry

Does that mean there will be more job openings for bread makers, or that, in order to contain expenses, everybody will have to settle for less bread?

The Firehouse Five Plus Two Jack Brickhouse Lionel Richie

I can imagine it just fine. I just won't expect it!

The Lost Quintet material deserves a full-frontal box that contains everything, even the material of lesser audio quality. That band took an amazing odyssey.

I know it makes dial-hopping on road trips big and small a lot less fun than it used to be. It's pretty much to the "why bother" point now, although very occasionally you'll go through some samll town that still has their own music programming...you can tell it right away too, by the song selection itself and/or the sequencing. But those finds are few and far between these days. Pity. Dial-hopping while driving used to be fun.

Flying women of service!

Si! As a kid, I only knew her as the lady who did that sort little mini-news headline show on NBC after Match Game. Later on, I found out just how much of a true journalist she was. Very impressive list of accomplishments.

These photographs of yours, here and elsewhere....so many are so damn good in so many ways....

Dirtbag? Rangers? Ain't but the one! LOVE the dirtbag!

Casual fandom (the type who ask "how much time is left in the game?) and the more vicariously macho elements of the local sports press (a majority, actually, imo) are already hurling the slings and arrows, and etc. Telling us that this team & this season are FAILURES. Bullshit. Greatest season ever, worst possible ending. Gonna have to figure out a way to reconcile that, but...it's do-able. Calling the whole thing a FAILURE, though, that ain't how to do it. Not in business, not with friends, not with employees, not with anything. Failing is a fact of life, and so is failing when it looks for all the world like there's no way you could. "Failure" is best applied to specific actions, not people. This World Series turned out to be a failure, and even then, a 4/7 failure. But the season and the players? Failures? Get off of that bandwagon and stay off it. One of the lead writers on Lone Star Ball summed it up best, imo: Word.

The phrase I'm already starting to hear is "One strike. Twice". That's true, but...look at who got you there in the first place, ya' know? No guarantees, other than that somebody's gotta fuck up somewhere. On a good day, it's their guys. On a bad day, it's ours. We had two very, very bad days. But they were the two last possible days of the season. Talk about a mixed blessing... Just gotta refine that pitching staff and retool the bench to be as useful under NL rules as they are AL rules. We got a front office for that, and so far, they've proven confident, Someday... I heard a report that Nefti was so distraught about blowing the save in the 9th of Game 6 that he was unable to come back out to pitch the 10th. Wash had originally planned on sending him back out, apparently. I hope he finds a way to forgive himself without forgetting and move on. so much talent...The kid's only 23, supremely gifted, but it seems that his head is not pressure-proof at this point. This might not prove to be the best choice of careers for him...dammit. Like I said earlier - no more Donnie Moores, please.

Kickstart some Kickstart. I like it!

Best Rangers team, best Rangers season, ever. EVER! Worst possible ending to that season. Go figure. No condolences, please. Couple of cold ones wouldn't be a bad idea, but no condolences.This is a dark corner of a very bright street.

Knowing that you have a choice as to where you would spend your rooting mojo this evening, I thank you for that. For real. Come to Texas sometimes and I'll take you to a game. My treat. The Ballpark is truly a splendid place, and the ushers do say "thank you" when you leave. Bring a pea-shooter & I'll spend the extra bucks to get us in p-tooeying distance of W.!

Actually...as I heard it during the last off-season, Berkman was wanting to return to regular field play, that's what motivated him to return to the NL. Didn't really like the whole DH thing.

That's pretty much the same thing I did with my TV, only without the Twitter thing...

You think that's bad...you should see their local pre- & post-game coverage...I'm not sure that they even know what baseball is...

Really, the Rangers organization as it has finally fallen into place (centered around Nolan Ryan & Jon Daniels) has been less than a decade in coming together. I mean, I consider the Tom Hicks years The Lost Years...they never really happened. Or something... And before that...good lord...Bob Short? Eddie Chiles? They always cared enough to offer a fun product, not never enough to offer a truly serious baseball team. Even the ownership group that W. was a part of...they meant well, but they really didn't have a clue. I know that's not how it works in the record books, 50 years is 50 years, but the legacy of poor ownership and bad (or at least not-thorough-enough) baseball decisions has been this franchise's legacy since Day One, interrupted only by the Tom Schieffer-Doug Melvin-Johnny Oates days of the late 1990's. And Hicks pretty much did a Sherman through Atlanta on that. So on the one hand, it's been 50 years. But in terms of current culture, it's not really been that long, and back-to-back World Series appearances is a damn impressive feat. The team and organization are finally getting some recognition and respect. But in terms of turning the page once and for all on the travesties, the cynicisms, the self-inflicted indignities of the past, nothing would say "it's ok, we're home now" than a win tonight. In so many ways, that would be a turning of so many pages, like none other. The final confirmation that a new legacy was underway. But if not, at least we now where home is now. And good lord willing, we ain't never going back to where from whence we came.

...and the Rangers and the Astros as the only two without any...

We are fans and we live and die with our teams. It's not supposed to be therapeutic. The joys of winning and the lows of losing drive that out. It's like being a manic depressive. I'm reminded of the comment about football by the great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly: 'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.' Thus, forget therapy. Didn't George Allen say something like you die a little bit each time you lose? See, I'm not a really big "sports fan", not in the sense that I live and die with my teams (and the Rangers really are the only team I consider "mine")...I've never really considered that "healthy", so I've allowed myself a certain, at times large, amount of emotional investment, but never really rode the whole emotional roller coaster. Closest I've ever come was with the Avery Johnson era-Mavs, and these Rangers are so not like that bunch. This team...they've been so refreshing on so many levels, athletic, cultural, personal, you name it... Ah, never mind. Game 7 has yet to be played, and it's not right to send a thank you note until after the party is over and everybody's gotten back home. But win or lose, one is definitely due.

And for the Rangers, finding a right fielder who doesn't play the ball like it's live ammunition. I haven't read to confirm but I almost think he pulled his groin when going for the triple. Isn't there a bit of an oblique problem as well? I know the last or 2nd to last HR he hit in the ALCS he was grimacing and touching it (the oblique, not the groin.) Groin is definitely pulled, multiple reports confirm this. Not sure when it occurred, but it might have been the at bat in the inning before the triple. Ordinarily, Nellie gets to that ball, so I got to think it was already pulled. But the only available replacement was Esteban German, so...of all the places that ball could have gone, that was the one where it went. Freakin' game of inches... Obliques and hamstrings have been issues all season for Cruz, but he was all healed up going into the post-season. I expect him & Napoli both to be out there this evening. Can't see them not fighting to the finish, no matter what, not unless something is seriously jacked.

The thing this drives home is that although for spectators, competitive sports is amusement, a vehicle for emotional projection, a means of establishing regional identity, etc., for the people who actually play, it's work. And not just any work, but work in which there is zero chance of your work being perfectly executed every time, and even when it is...good lord, when Josh hit that homer in the 10th..was that not "it"? What more could any man do? but then the bottom of the 10th..was that Rangers' pitching folding or Cardinals' hitting rallying? Darren Oliver, Scott Feldman, no hard throwers there, probably not a lot of arm fatigue going on, and they have both been superb. AND it's the freakin' bottom of the order! What happened should not, under any reasonable set of expectations, happened. But it happened. Some other day, you have the same hitters up against the same pitchers and nothing happens. Go figure. Whatever allowed the "fail" part of their probabilities to occur happened. For us, it's maddening, but for them...I'm sure it's disappointing, but they know that it's also a part of their job for stuff like this to happen. That's how most of them are able to go home, go to bed, and come back to work the next day, quite often again performing back to expectations. I was hoping that writing this stuff would be therapeutic, but it's not.

I hear you, man. That "one strike away" thing, two innings in a row, the whole family sitting there together tearing up in happiness, then shocked dry, then going through the whole thing again, riding that roller-coaster that finally went off the rails...I went to bed numb and woke up pretty much dead...seems that the whole Metroplex, ourfamily included, was riding this "tonight's the night" wave, and it so was...twice...and then, no, it's not. My intellect told me going in that losing this game was a real possibility, but my Spider Sense said, no, not gonna happen. And nothing offered a warning about the way it would be lost. I have a gig tonight, playing at a restaurant. Not sure if there's a TV or not. Kinda hope not. I might just DVR the game, check the final on the way home, and if we lose, just erase the thing. I don't want to get bitter, not about this team, not about this year. So many big plays, so many heroes, so much to believe in. Bitterness in the face of all that would be wholly inappropriate. Pain would not be, but I've got enough of that right now that any more would tempt the bitterness to come, so....not gonna go there. And if we win, hey, it will be a very dry happiness that I feel, I'm sure. All the emotions came out yesterday. All of them.

Only one way to find out...

Think you are right on Feliz. Plus, he is only 23, in the biggest game of his life. Folks have to remember, the bullpens are GASSED! This isn't like 1975, this year starters are going what, 3-4 innings, and the first hint of trouble, the manager has to take the starter out, or he will be fired, basically. And as Smoltz has said in the past, the post season pitches are a lot more draining than those in a regular season game...and I imagine most pitchers right now have not pitched this deep into the post season, certainly after being in game after game, after game.... Neftali has had a rough year...they tried to stretch him out as a starter during Spring Training, couldn't get the breaking ball going consistently, so back to the pen, only with that "killer closer mentality" not right, which resulted in a string of blown and near-blown saves the first few months of the season. He'd get it back together in spurts, sometimes sustained spurts, but still would have, and still does have, as witnessed last night, spells where he just can't find the strike zone on a consistent basis. Often he gets out of it unscathed. Last night, he did not. And yes, he is still a young man. He's said to be somewhat highly driven, but also highly sensitive to failures. Reports out of the Rangers locker room last night described him as being "a mess" after the game. We all were, but I just hope he can put it behind him and move on. He seems like the type of guy who keeps a lot of stuff inside. No more Donnie Moores, ever. As for Ogando, hey, the guy's just done, period. He's done so much this year...wish he had an inning or two of gas left, but even after you reach down and find all the extra you have, at some point you just run out, period. I think he''s there now.God bless him for giving as much as he's given for as long as he has. Pretty remarkable season for him.