Last weekend saw the first instalment of Interleague play during the 2009 MLB season.\u00c2\u00a0 There are plenty of reasons to dislike the now traditional sight of AL and NL teams coming together outside of the World Series, but it does at least give fans in two-team cities and states the chance to gain bragging rights for a few weeks.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lone Star Series is one such example.\u00c2\u00a0 The Houston Astros and Texas Rangers come together to try to gain Major League wins and to capture the ‘Silver Boot’ trophy.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their early game a week ago today allowed me to get a first-hand look at what the Texas rivalry is all about.\u00c2\u00a0 Being an A’s fan, I tend to see a fair amount of Rangers games over the course of a season (including the first game of a double-header against Oakland last night), but I haven’t seen a great deal of the Astros.\u00c2\u00a0 Judging by their win-loss record, it doesn’t look like I’ve missed a lot.\u00c2\u00a0 As I noted in my feature<\/a> on the Astros at MLBlogs earlier this week, they are a team stuck in limbo: neither set to win now or in the near future.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n We’re always told in football that form counts for nothing in derby games, so I was hoping that the Astros would rise to the occasion.\u00c2\u00a0 That didn’t turn out to be the case, they lost all three games in the series, although they started brightly in the second game.<\/p>\n After Michael Bourn’s groundout to the second baseman led-off the bottom of the first inning, I had to wait seven minutes before being able to note down the next play on my scorecard<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Miguel Tejada belted a Scott Feldman pitch to the right-field wall where Nelson Cruz tried in vain to make the catch.\u00c2\u00a0 The ball bounced back down on to the field, with Cruz pointing up at a fan in the stands while the first base umpire whirled his finger in the air indicating a home run.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Tejada made his way around the bases and stood in the Astros’ dugout looking as confused as everyone else.\u00c2\u00a0 The umpires had an impromptu chin-wag out on the field and decided to make use of the Instant Replay system.\u00c2\u00a0 So we all waited.\u00c2\u00a0 Feldman gently tossed the ball around to keep loose.\u00c2\u00a0 The announcers looked at the replays on numerous occasions, which didn’t allow them to state a convincing case either way as to whether the footage backed up the call on the field or not.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile Tejada and his teammates were standing in the dugout, desperate to begin their ‘let’s all jump up and down together’ celebrations.<\/p>\n They were not to be denied their moment of joy.\u00c2\u00a0 The pictures weren’t conclusive, the call on the field had to stand and a home run could be duly noted on my scorecard.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Rangers fans watching FOX’s coverage would have been forgiven for muttering a few swear words at that point.\u00c2\u00a0 The announcer Eric Karros had begun the inning by talking up Feldman’s impressive run of not conceding a homer during his six previous appearances.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a classic case of the ‘Commentator’s Curse’.<\/p>\n Karros didn’t just spend his time jinxing the Rangers though, he also added in what turned out to be an inspired comment.\u00c2\u00a0 The Astros’ starter Brian Moehler was perfect through the first three innings (brilliantly revealed in perfect form on a standard scorecard), but Karros sounded a note of caution: getting through the lineup the first time is one thing, he pondered, keeping the batters down during the second and third time through the order is much more difficult.<\/p>\n Karros was made to look a genius in the bottom of the fourth inning as Moehler immediately hit trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, he was hit out of the park by Nelson Cruz for a three-run homer to give the Rangers a 3-1 lead.\u00c2\u00a0 He conceded another run in the fifth inning before being chased in the sixth by back-to-back jacks.\u00c2\u00a0 Cruz made it two out of two for him by launching another shot to left-centre, while Hank Blalock sent one into the right-field seats.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n The Astros couldn’t rescue the game from there, although they finally managed to get to Feldman in the seventh inning.\u00c2\u00a0 Geoff Blum hit a two-run round-tripper to reduce the deficit to 6-3 and to send me scurrying to section 10.16<\/a> of the rule book.<\/p>\n