Just for Sport

Today, I walked into The Ballpark in Arlington and rooted against the Texas Rangers.  It was a strange feeling.  The reason?  My Chicago Cubs were in town, finishing up the first series played between the two teams since the Rangers moved from Washington.  My baseball bigamy is well documented, and when we first obtained tickets for this game in February, I worried about who I would cheer for.  Little did I know that by June 21st, the Rangers would have the worst record in baseball, leaving me with an easy decision to make: I would root for the Cubs, the only team in the game with a chance. 

When gametime came, I really was rooting for the Cubs to win.  In fact, when the Rangers won 6-5 on Frank Catalanotto’s walk-off single, I was pretty disappointed.  But, I did find myself rooting for the Rangers at times.  I jumped up and cheered when Hairston made an awesome running catch in left field.  Same thing when Michael Young came through with some clutch hits.  The people behind me must have thought I was crazy.  All in all, I’m just glad neither one of my teams got blown out and that there were no fights.

Here are some more observations from the game:

1 - Apparently, I’m not the only one with an affinity for both the Cubs and the Rangers.  I saw several people wearing merchandise for both teams. (I simply went with the Cubs hat I bought at Wrigley 4 years ago.)  One lady was wearing a Texas Soriano jersey with a Cubs hat.  By contrast, a man was wearing a Chicago Sosa jersey with a Rangers hat.  The funniest one I saw was a man wearing a "Don’t Mess With Texas" shirt under his unbuttoned Mark Prior jersey.  He completed the ensemble with a 1914 Cubs hat.

2 - We got to the game a little more than an hour early and took our seats just over the right field fence.  Both teams had already taken batting practice and there were no players on the field.  At about 12:10 (Gametime was 1:05) a very tall, scrawny man wearing athletic gear and an iPod started walking toward us on the field.  I was confused, because he carried himself like a player, but he didn’t really look like one.  He stopped right in front of us, saw me watching, gave a little nod, and took off jogging around the perimeter of the field.  After taking three laps, he stopped to stretch, then put his uniform and gear on.  It turns out that this very skinny man was Adam Melhuse, who was getting the start at catcher.  I guess the extra work must have jacked him up for the game, because he hit a home run and was solid behind the plate.  It was nice to see the backup catcher who is new to the team take such a serious approach to his preparation, and then watch it pay off for him.

3 - It seems that both teams had some pretty similar things going for them positionally.  Both had their new back-up catcher starting (Melhuse and Rob Bowen, though it remains to be seen what role he’ll have).  Neither gold-glove first basemen played in the field (Derrek Lee was the DH, and Teixeira is on the DL).  Both had rookie phenoms in center field (Felix Pie and Marlon Byrd).  Both had utility infielders playing for their injured third basemen (Travis Metcalf and Mark DeRosa). 

4 - Another similarity: both right fielders struggled with the glove.  Wilkerson was his same slow self, plodding along as if he has no knees.  I honestly felt as if any pop-up to right had a chance to fall in.  Pagan let one go over his head in the fifth that opened the floodgates.  I doubt it will show up in the highlights of the game, but that play looked really bad.  Finally, there was the final play.  Angel almost got to the ball with a dive, but I feel as if he could have gotten there if he had made the correct read.  Just my opinion.

5 - Apparently Vicente Padilla has been working on the Eephus pitch, and he brought it out four times, hitting below 60 on the radar each time.  Three out of the four times it happened, the Cubs hitters stood in the box looking dumbfounded.  The other time, Pagan hit a weak pop-up to center when it looked like he was trying to foul it off.  Padilla seems to mix it in well, either following it or preceding it with a fastball in the 92-95 range. 

All in all, a very good experience to have.  It was fun to see the Cubs.  I had only seen them two times previously.  The first was a four-inning unofficial game at Wrigley and the second was the fourth game of a four game sweep of the Astros at Minute Maid.  I don’t really like the feeling of rooting against the Rangers - I got some of the same looks I must have given people wearing Red Sox hats at the home opener.  Saturday I will be at Game 5 of the Lone Star Series, so it will be all Rangers, all the time.  I should have a report after that one as well.