Got a message from my friend Colleen from highschool about a week ago seeing if I'd like to go to the Rangers annual charity event for the Rangers Foundation: The Rangers Triple Play. Having wanted to go in the past, I really jumped for the chance. We had no idea what to expect - Colleen had gotten two tickets from Mr. and Mrs. Hicks since they love Colleen. So, the ticket stated that we were at "Table 6," the "Thomas O. and Cinda Hicks Family Foundation" table, and other than that we had no idea what to expect, and who to expect at our table.

On the way in I joked that I was going to sit next to Nolan Ryan, but only because he literally was my childhood idol (I even wore #34 when I played). At any rate, after milling around for awhile and checking out the silent auction items, we were instructed to take our seats. Colleen and I were the first to get to our table, which was extremely front and center, and a woman who I recognized walked up and introduced herself: "I'm Ruth Ryan," she said.

I turned to Colleen and said, "That's Nolan Ryan's wife!" and she sat down one seat away from me, and put her bag down in the empty chair between herself and me. Then I said to Colleen, "Oh my God, Nolan Ryan is going to sit next to me!!!" He came in a few minutes late, but sure enough it was him. And it was awesome. Even crazier was that on the other side of Mrs. Ryan was Tom Hicks, and farther along was his wife. Also at our table were Hicks' daughter and her friend, another couple, and the player we got was Derek Holland. So crazy. So, so crazy.

As a bit of a disclaimer/disappointment: I did not take any pictures of these people. I mean, I was a guest of the Hicks family themselves (via Colleen), and I thought it would be in poor taste to start taking photos, or demanding photos with them. I really did plan on asking Nolan at the end of the program if I could get a quick shot, but him and his wife ducked out about 20 minutes before it ended (probably because he was not left alone by the autograph seekers the entire show), so no dice.

Anyways, on to the program. They played Infielders (featuring Vizquel, Kinsler, Blalock and Young) vs. Outfielders (Hamilton, Jones, Cruz and Murphy) Family Feud (pictured at the top), which I thought was pretty good. My favorite answer was "Name famous 'Mickeys.'" The #1 answer was "Mouse," of course, then they had Rourke, Mantle and the Infielders got to Omar Vizquel's turn, and he said, "Mickey Young." Eric Nadel had him clarify, and he did in fact mean "Michael Young," but thought enough people surveyed would answer "Mickey Young." It was not one of the choices. Anyways, the Outfielders won somehow (Andruw Jones at one point could not even give an answer for "Boardgames you can play as a family." Seriously, Andruw? No answer?) Second, the Rookies came and did some Karaoke:

From left to right we have: Chris Davis, Matt Harrison, Elvis Andrus, Taylor Teagarden and Derek Holland. They had some corny Anchorman-esque knockoff dialogue (Davis was Ron Burgundy), and then they sang a few bars from Afternoon Delight. Pretty amusing stuff, but best of all was Elvis in that weird blonde wig and moustache combo. They didn't let him have any lines, but he danced and shook morraccas(sp?) during the Karaoke (he didn't sing). Third on the list was Battle of the Sexes:

Battle of the Sexes pitted the Byrds, the Kinslers, the Youngs and the Saltalamacchias against each other. I'm still confused why Marlon Byrd had to blind guess whether "Saltalamacchia" contained 12, 13 or 14 letters (Salty's wife had to count up the letters herself). Tess Kinsler seems nice. Mostly because she is so awesomely hot. Seriously. The women ended up beating the guys pretty badly. One more shot of Michael Young vs. Christina Barbosa Young:

Anyways, I totally had a blast. The gameshows were enjoyable, they raised some money for a good cause (I bought a Michael Young autographed baseball; who's signature Nolan promptly made fun of, then later Nolan told Nelson Cruz that he has to do better with his autograph too - pretty funny.) The best part was that I got to sit next to Nolan Effing Ryan for the whole program; to say it was intimidating is a vast understatement, but he was extremely nice, as were everyone at our table. Thanks to Colleen for the seats. Thanks to Tom Hicks for letting me sit at his table, and thanks to Nolan Ryan for sitting next to me all through dinner. I am still sort of speechless all that happened.