Game 1: Advice for Buck.

Me at the ballpark:

Pictures from Game 1

A piece of friendly advice to Buck: Don't pitch to Vlad with anyone on if it is close. Seriously. He wasn't the AL MVP for nothing. Dare Anderson to beat you. Perhaps he might too. Yes, you might be tempted to challenge Vlad because he swings at everything, but haven't you figured out that he hits everything? (Unlike Soriano!) It's a stroke of luck that the double didn't go over the fence. It was hit almost as hard as the home run. I just went, "Oh no. Don't pitch to him here." Then, bam, double to left-center. Tie broken. sigh

Drese pitched extremely well. If he continues to pitch like that, I'll take it. At one point, I think he retired 15 straight batters. Nice. Too bad he had to face Guerrero.

Colon was typical: shaky at first, but since the Rangers didn't run him to the showers early, he settled down and got his 110 pitches in. The Rangers had their chances to blow the game open (runners on third in the 1st and 2nd and no one in? Come on!) and failed to capitalize.

Frankie was good in the 9th. Made Barajas look silly. Got Sori and Blalock to induce into weak little outs. Yet, he was mainly throwing 80mph sliders from what we could tell. Either he wasn't comfortable with his fastball or he was confident enough that he didn't need the fastball to get them out. I'd guess the latter. (I hope to see Cordero before they leave town!)

Teixeira was good. I hope John Hart realizes what he's got and doesn't let him go away. Interesting note: the HR that Mark hit was one section to my left and about 15 rows down from where we were sitting. Yet, even with as few Rangers fans in attendance, the ball ended up in the hands of a woman wearing a Texas hat. Oh what fun she had when the crowd wanted her to throw the ball back and she kept waving her T hat. Justice.

Absolutely silly move by Matthews to try to stretch a single into a double that eventually turned into the 2nd out of the inning. I didn't see if he went on his own or whether the first base coach was at fault. Yet, he shouldn't have tried. The Rangers needed base runners (as Colon was starting to get near his pitch count) and they just gave the Angels a free out. Well, in addition to leaving so many runners on base in the first few innings.

On that same token, the Angels are remarkably effective of getting runners home while the Rangers don't seem to have figured that out yet. (At one point, I think it was 8 LOB for the Rangers and 2 for the Angels. 3-1 at that point, if I remember right.)

And, yes, I applauded Vlad when he was announced before the game. This guy is flat out great and not applauding what he does is inane. No shame in that (even as I was wearing my Texas regalia). And, Vlad's probably due to get even more respect this year. More managers are going to wish they had taken my advice by the time the year is out.

Anyhow, game two tomorrow night. Washburn vs. Rogers. I doubt it'll be as low-scoring as tonight's game was.

Best sign: Where in Los Angeles is Anaheim? chuckle

Last thought: the jets in the flyover during the anthem were incredibly low and loud. Neat.

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Opening Day is today!

I'll be at the ballpark tonight for Opening Day with my Rangers opening the season against the Angels. Once again, I'll be one of the few folks wearing blue amidst the sea of red. Oh well.

The Angels red still perturbs me since the Rangers wore red when TBIA was opened in 1994. Of course, I was there for opening series at TBIA against the Brew-ha-ha-ha-has (back when they were in the AL). I have my tickets framed over my desk. The Angels just copied the Rangers, or so I tell myself. But, why didn't the Rangers copy their World Series victory? Gah!

I'll be at all the Rangers games at Angel Stadium this week. Yay!

Go Rangers!

Some hopes on the cusp of the new season:

• I hope Mark Teixeira has a breakout year. Whatever position he plays...
• I hope Orel works his magic on Matt Riley.
• I hope Hart gets a decent return for Soriano. (Pitchers or outfielders anyone?)
• I hope Frank F. throws baseballs better than chairs this year.
• I hope Ryan Drese pitches like it was 2004. (cross fingers)
• I hope Richard Hidalgo likes playing in TBIA. (Could we have any worse OF production than we got with Brian Jordan last year???)
• I hope Kenny Rogers pitches like it was 1995, again. (pray hard)
• I hope Hicks is forced to eat Chan-Ho-Ho-Ho That One's Gone Over The Fence's salary. Fitting on so many levels. (pray really hard)
• I hope Chris Young does not wish he was playing basketball instead.
• I hope Laird gets a real shot to be catcher again at the MLB level.
• I hope Coco saves even more games than last year.
• I hope that by September Ian Kinsler makes me forget about Soriano and A-Rod.
• I hope that this year they are in through the last week of the season like last year.

No opinions offered on how likely these are from this dreamer...

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Migration issues when you get a new Apple computer...

This is now the second time that I've run into this set of problems, so here goes for the record and for Google and the world to take note!

When you get a new Apple (like I did this weekend when I picked up a new PowerBook G4 laptop - yay), it offers you the option of migrating all of your existing data via FireWire when you first bring up the new machine.

It works, mostly.

I've found three caveats:

• X11 is not installed on the new computers. So, you have to manually fetch X11 from Apple's site. Since I'm an X addict, this is really annoying until it is fixed, the X11 app on my dock just bounces and emits an error in the console.

• XCode (aka gcc) is not installed either. So, you need to install gcc.

• The printers aren't carried over properly. So, all of your printers are seemingly lost when you migrate. Sucky. However, the fix is rather simple: copy the //etc/cups/printers.conf and /etc/cups/ppd/ directory from your old machine to their respective locations on your new machine, and restart cupsd.

Enjoy! (I am.)

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