Texas Rangers Playing Meaningful Baseball in September

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Wake up baseball fans. You have eight teams that make it to the playoffs year in and year out. When October rolls around, you expect to see teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, and the Los Angeles Dodgers, all still in the mix. But what about those other 4 teams? Sure, the Angels have pretty much a lock in recent years. But, as the game of baseball has taught us, things just (for lack of a better term) happen.

The Texas Rangers are barreling down the home stretch in this 2009 season with nine games to play at the time this article was written, four of which against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. They are 6 games out of first place, making the “magic number,” or the amount of games the Angels need to win combined with the amount of games the Angels need the Rangers to lose, 4. Can they make up that ground? History shows us that it is quite possible.

In the Colorado Rockies’ 2007 World Series showing, they had to win 14 of their last 15 games to get into the playoffs. They ended up taking their run all the way into the World Series, where they eventually lost.

The Rangers are a lot like the Rockies’ of 2007. They are a feisty bunch, with several guys in their clubhouse that are too young to know when to give up. They are supposedly in a “rebuilding year,” and everyone was already counting the team out before the first pitch on Opening Day was ever thrown. Actually, even the General Manager of the Rangers was on record as not expecting much from his team in 2009, and that 2010 was the year to look forward to.

But, as luck would have it, here he is with a Major League ball club playing meaningful baseball games in the final two weeks of the season. The last time that happened? Before the infamous A-Rod in Texas era.