Did Rangers TV announcer spark impressive win streak, push toward playoff spot?

In the midst of a horrific stretch of baseball in mid-August, the Texas Rangers were woken up by a bald-headed pearl of wisdom. While there is zero evidence to back up this claim, it might have been the jolt that they needed.

On August 17, prior to the Rangers series finale in Toronto, fresh off a 14-2 beatdown at the hands of the Blue Jays and in the midst of a 1-7 record over their previous eight games, Texas Rangers Sports Network Analyst Mike Bacsik made an inspirational call out.

Bacsik implored the players to simply finish the season strong. Take it one pitch at a time. Forget yesterday. Don't worry about tomorrow. Take it pitch-by-pitch and remain committed to seeing it through.

Who's to say if the Rangers' players actually heard him on the pre-game and used it as inspiration but they turned around and salvaged the weekend series with a 10-2 win over Toronto. Since then, Texas is 12-6 and have found themselves back in the playoff race, half a game back of an AL Wild Card spot.

After stumbling in the Kansas City series after Toronto, they came home and swept Cleveland, took two of three from the Angels and traveled to Sacramento where they swept the Athletics. Despite losing the series to Arizona, Texas returned to Arlington on Friday fresh off a 4-2 road trip and managed to walk-off the Astros in 12 innings on Friday.

Maybe the real motivator was finally starting to care. They've had their backs against the wall all season, none more since the calendar turned to August and they were defeated with injuries. Fresh life entered the clubhouse in the form of Michael Helman, Alejandro Osuna and Cody Freeman, a.k.a. "The Little Rascals."

But I feel comfortable saying that the outside voice of Bacsik played the role of motivator and there's no way the players avoided that speech and didn't come out of it a little bit more motivated. I guess we shall see as the Rangers work to climb into the playoff race and make the postseason after missing it l