The Texas Rangers take off from Surprise today, heading to Oklahoma for a couple of exhibition games before starting off the season on the road (AGAIN). Home opener is Tuesday, April 8 — or, on my calendar, New Year’s Day.
DevinPike
1) The Rangers picked up Broussard in a hot-stove deal with the Seattle Mariners for Tug Hulett. Broussard was arbitration-eligible, which is why the one-year, $3.85 million contract is a bit of a relief.
2) His bat’s a little anemic for what you would expect from a Rangers first baseman (.267/.328/ .458), but he makes up for it with great defensive chops.
3) If you go to BenBroussard.com, you won’t find a whole lot of baseball on the site’s front page. Instead, you’ll think you found a budding musician’s promo site. Broussard is a better-than-average guitarist and singer, and has been known to bust out the occasional charity gig or album on ya.
The Cowboys won’t know who they’ll be playing next weekend in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, as they wait to see whether Tampa Bay or the New York (football) Giants will be coming to Texas Stadium. They do, however, know who it won’t be.
The Washington Redskins looked flat for the first three quarters of their tilt with the Seattle Seahawks. Uninspired. That said, ask any Cowboys fan who watched the game about the ‘Skins and how that can all change in two minutes. Their 14-point surge at the start of the fourth quarter looked eerily like their comeback against Dallas on a Monday night back in 2005. Had Shawn Suissham not muffed a 30-yard chipshot field goal, there might have been a similar feeling on the Seattle sidelines tonight.
Cowboys safety Roy Williams has been picked by the NFL to fill Sean Taylor’s spot on the NFC’s Pro Bowl defense roster. (This makes a mind-blowing twelve players from the Cowboys selected for the Afterthought Bowl, and you could make an argument that there should be more. Helluva year.)
That had to be a wonderful conversation in New York among the selection staff:
Dear Baseball Santa:
Okay, look – I know people normally drop their letters to you before December 25th, but I have it on good authority that you spend your post-Christmas decompression period in Arizona. This means you’ll be close enough to Surprise to fulfill each of these wish list items for me (Since you didn’t come through on my original wish for my own nuclear silo / bunker complex, you can consider this a “make good,” Herr Jolly.).
As a Rangers’ fan, here’s my wish list:
Pitching. Like every beauty pageant contestant asking for world peace with their one wish, Rangers fans wish for pitching. So, there.
First, here’s the short version:
- The Rangers didn’t sign Torii Hunter.
- They non-tendered Akinori Otsuka, who still doesn’t know where he’s playing.
- The word around the campfire is that Jon Daniels is building for 2009.
With those points in mind, I’m reminded of the off-season the Rangers had leading up to the 2004 season. I’ll get to that in a bit. Let’s look at who the Rangers did pick up, and quit focusing on the negative:
