Spring Training Day 2

I love a flyover after the National Anthem at a baseball game. It gives me goosebumps every time. At Surprise Stadium, the spring training home of the Rangers and the Royals, you get the added bonus of a flyover several times during a game. That’s because it is near Luke Air Force Base, where fighter pilots are training. Sometimes there is one or two, sometimes they are in formation, and they are ALWAYS loud. It provides quite a rush.

On our second day in Arizona the Texas Rangers provided the rush. They brought out the bats in a big way. Marcus Semien led off with a booming home run, and three other Rangers went deep among the team’s 19 hits. The final score looked like a football game:

Texas 13 - Los Angeles 6. It was fun to watch.

Our old buddy Ron Washington is the second year manager for the Angels. I’ve got a lot of good memories from watching him in the Ranger dugout, but I still get a little queasy when I see him. I’ll never understand why he didn’t put in a defensive replacement for Nelson Cruz in the ninth inning on that fateful night in St. Louis. You may agree with me or you may think I need to let that go. If it’s the latter opinion, you don’t really know me very well. I still dwell on questionable decisions I made when I was managing youth baseball many years ago. Fortunately I also remember some of the good decisions I made from the dugout, and on a bigger scale, I will always remember the joy we felt on November 1, 2023. Let’s do that again!

That’s one man’s opinion - what’s yours?