40 days

I cannot say how much it warms my heart to leave home for five hours and have an hours worth of Ranger's material to read and process when I get back.  Perhaps the contrast to January and the desert poor Adam had to wade through to tide us hopeless saps over have made the excitement of the recent Ranger goings-on slightly exaggerated, but with that proviso, I for one want to say that the feast of updates and commentary has been nothing short of sublime.

If you asked me what my projection for Gerald Laird is tonight, I would say it would be something like .300/.400/.550, but that is probably because the feast I have engorged myself on during the last few days makes me want to give out praise like Lloyd Christmas passing out Benjamins in Aspen, CA.

However, I must pause.  Like Josh Rupe, I don't want to get into regular season form in the first two days of Spring training with only half the team in camp.  I am grateful for the sane (cynical) perspectives of a few of my comrades, because without them how could I not already crown Brandon McCarthy the Cy Young award winner for 2007 taking down the first of a half dozen in Ranger uniform by barely nosing out Vinny Padilla in the closest vote in Cy Young history.  Thank you for that....imagine my disappointment when some rube named Santana or Verlander gets it.

Now its still forty days away, the start of the Rangers season, and as a religious guy desperate to spiritualize everything in my life in hopes to discover significance in the mundaneness of my everyday, I can't help but think of Lent, or the Israelites sojourning in the wilderness (40 YEARS mind you, January seemed long but not that long) or Jesus fasting in the desert.  Now I am thankful that thanks to Adam I won't have to fast from Rangers news for the next six weeks or so.  Now, please believe that I would if I thought it would win us the West, but thankfully we are entering a season of Anti-Lent. Now I think as the training reports become more repetitive and the same tired storylines get resurrected (there you go another religious theme) by writers short on time before deadline and fresh baseball news, my initial titillation about the impending season, like the first time I hear Christmas music in late-OCTOBER, will fade into just out an out frustration at how long its taking for that damned ticker to get to zero hour.

But that day is not today and as we look forward to the start of a new season, when everyone is undefeated and no team is without hope that the promised land is just around that next corner, let me say how FREAKING EXCITED I am to be a Rangers fan.  

(Now please no injuries tomorrow)

Jon