Routines

Like most people — I’d assume — my life has a rhythm to it. Not literally, of course, because the soundtrack to He Got Game isn’t playing in the background whenever I’m walking somewhere; it’s more like the routines you go through that you don’t have to think twice about.

The Rangers happen to be a decent chunk of this routine, especially from April through September.

(And for the record, if I happen to catch 150 Rangers’ games a season, it’s roughly 19 days out of the year I’m spending just physically taking in the games — which is actually a pretty depressing way to think about how [un]productive I am with my time.)

Part of my process for consuming baseball — at least from the standpoint of transcribing a game I watched/listened to into a blog — is a dual-perspective, though it’s more by accident than choice. Let me explain;

Every night, usually a few hours after the game ends, I’ll write about 80% of whatever I’m going to post before running out of juice. I’ll reread it, hate it, then shut my laptop and get a popsicle before heading to bed. It kills me that I can’t punch off 500 words without hitting a block, and it frustrates me more that I’ll lose whatever passion I had for that night’s game when I finish off the piece the following morning.

Because, of course, I’ll wake up, open my computer, go on NW’ and reread the piece, and usually it looks OK. I change little grammatical shit, pull out some sentences that didn’t flow well, and cap off the last 20% of whatever I was writing the night before. I’m usually comfortable with whatever I’m posting by the time I post it, or I just wouldn’t post it.

Pacified, groggy, the games usually don’t feel the same in the morning. The baseball schedule has a way of bleeding into itself month after month, so as time goes I remember less and less about the actual night-by-night occurrences, and more about the general feel to that portion of the season. For instance, the Rangers were piping hot in the first month-to-month-and-a-half, but I don’t recall a ton of exciting shit that’s happened. It was simply winning baseball, which generates positives feelings in me.

Right now it’s 10:50 pm on the west coast, so I still feel juiced up about tonight’s game, but by the time I post this you won’t know if I edited it in the morning or not. Well, I guess you’ll be able to tell by the time I posted it, but who knows, maybe I will complete it tonight and post it in the morning; you’ll never really know, anyway.

Have you ever thought about it?

* * *

On Wednesday night, the Rangers dropped a home series for just the 2nd time in 2013, losing the the Indians, 5-2 for the second consecutive night.

– Nick Tepesch threw a shaky 5.0 innings, allowing 5 runs on 8 hits, striking out 5 and walking 1. The loss is Nick’s 6th of the year, and his ERA is now up to a still-respectable 4.30.

– The Rangers’ offense compiled just 2 runs on 8 hits; over this little 6-10 blip on the schedule, Texas has scored 61 runs, but only 27 of those came in the 10 losses (2.7 runs/game). In the 6 wins, they scored 34 runs (5.66 runs/game).

– The next road-trip is to St. Louis and New York (AL), so it’s imperative for the Rangers to capitalize on these next 8 games at home against Toronto and Oakland. Getting healthy is priority #1, yes, but even at that, the Rangers as they currently stand are better than how they’ve been playing of late, and it should only be a matter of time before the offense and pitching staff get back on track.

– Tonight the Rangers are playing the Blue Jays (again), as Yu Darvish (7-2) takes on Esmil Rogers (1-2). It seems like a good day to start a winning streak.