Admit it, right now Texas' 10-5 feels more like 5-10.
After Ogando gave up three homers last night, Arthur Rhodes surrendered the game-losing 8th-inning hit to Eric Chavez and Ian Kinsler-Elvis Andrus plunged to a combined 18 for 104 for the season, the Rangers' 9-1 start feels like months ago.
Don't look now, but since Josh Hamilton's dumb dash for home Tuesday in Detroit, the Rangers are 1-4 and tied with the Angels atop the AL West. They start a three-game series with the Angels tonight in Arlington.
In Game 2, Colby Lewis is scheduled to start after missing his last regular turn in the rotation because -- I'm not making this up -- his wife, Jenny, was giving birth in California. To the couple's second child.
Don't have kids of my own but I raised a step-son for eight years. I know all about sacrifice and love and how great children are.
But a pitcher missing one of maybe 30 starts? And it's all kosher because of Major League Baseball's new paternity leave rule?
Follow me this way to some confusion.
Imagine if Jason Witten missed a game to attend the birth of a child. It's just, I dunno, weird. Wrong even.
Departures? Totally get it because at a funeral you're saying goodbye to someone for the last time. But an arrival is merely saying hello to someone you'll see the rest of your life.
Dave Bush filled in for Lewis last week in Detroit and threw three scoreless innings of a game that Mark Lowe and the bullpen eventually coughed up. But that's not the point. Baseball players are paid millions to play baseball. If that means "scheduling" births so they occur in the off-season, then so be it. Of the 365 days in a year, starting pitchers "work" maybe 40 of them, counting spring training and playoffs.
If it was a first child, maybe. But a second child causing a player to miss a game? Ludicrous.
Right, Shane Battier?
