Rangers drop two of three to New York, running out of time

The Texas Rangers had been playing some of the better baseball of their up-and-down season, until the Yankees came to town.

Over the course of their history, the Texas Rangers are no stranger to this time of year. The dawn of football season relegates baseball to secondary status. It’s not that the Rangers are always bad at this stage of the season. It’s simply the way it is. And in a baseball season beset by a series of frustrating fits and starts, the interest just isn’t there.

This is somewhat discouraging to the handfuls of us who still care about the fate of the baseball team. Of course, none of us expect a World Series appearance. In fact, the Rangers find themselves the fortunate recipients of a truly lackluster American League in 2017. Take a look for yourself. A middling bunch hovers around .500 as they meander to the end of the regular season.

While Texas is definitely part of this woebegone group of teams, they had done themselves a lot of favors in winning three consecutive series in the lead up to the weekend tilt against the Yankees. Also, they were 53-59 just over a month ago. Even after yesterday’s shellacking, they’ve gone 18-12 over their last thirty games. Granted, a lot of us were wondering where .600 baseball has been all year, but better late than never.

Nonetheless, three weeks of baseball remain. There are twenty games to try and claim this second wild card berth no one else seems to want.

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On paper, things don’t look good. Future Hall of Fame third baseman Adrian Beltre went down with a hamstring injury a couple weeks ago. The pitching staff is up and down, as they have been all year. Yet here they are with a chance to play beyond October 1st.

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If you’ve been paying attention to this team– especially recently–you know they’re an endearing bunch. They’re still grinding, still hustling. They’re certainly not showing any quit. So as maddening and streaky as they’ve been, credit must go manager Jeff Banister and his staff for keeping his squad focused. Or at least as focused as a fatally flawed team with no realistic shot a championship can be. That’s not meant to be a backhanded compliment, either. I still look forward to coming home after work and watching them play. Call me crazy, but give me late season baseball over preseason football any day.

Now this all may change if the Rangers fall off a cliff and find themselves out of contention. Being a life long fan, I’m quite used to ignoring the last month of baseball in the pursuit of other pigsknned interests. But so long as they continue to fight and give themselves a reasonable chance to win on a nightly basis, I’ve got no reason to change the channel.

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There is also the pride factor at work here. These Rangers didn’t have to keep fighting after trading Yu Darvish and Jonathan Lucroy. They could have resigned themselves to their fate and run up the white flag. They did the exact opposite, and that’s admirable.

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