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I don't know about you, but, baseball-wise, I'm pretty glad this turd of a year is ending in only hours. Soon it will be 2014 and all references to the Berkman-Pierzynski-Garza Texas Rangers of 2013 will officially be referred to as "the past."
Out with the old, in with the Choo! Bring on the Miles Mikolas era!
In fact, let's meet our newest Ranger:
"[Miles] Mikolas earned the nickname "Lizard King" when, on a bet, he ate a lizard in the bullpen during a 2011 Arizona Fall League game."
— Joey Matches (@BBTiA) December 30, 2013
about to get real with this tile chipper ! Looking like tim the tool man Taylor . Who wants to be my AL boreland? pic.twitter.com/BGZN3rNsJ2
— miles mikolas (@lastoneformiles) December 28, 2013
Miles Mikolas is my favorite Texas Ranger already.
Jeff Wilson writes about the Rangers shipping Chris McGuiness to the Pirates for Mikolas and designating Rafael Ortega for assignment.
In its final moments, 2013 has rallied for one last ditch effort to win our hearts. As New York Magazine reports, Yankee president Randy Levine had an email relationship with exiled baseball villain Alex Rodriguez that abused the English language similarly to a teenager texting their first crush.
You can pretty much cancel Christmas 2014. It has come ridiculously early. Remember when Levine got all perturbed when Chuck Greenberg wasn't kissing the rings after the Cliff Lee free agency saga? Well, it turns out Levine doesn't just behave this way when behooving us to buy Yankee mystique in public. He writes to A-Rod:
When u succeed it will be Yankees lore. There is nothing more powerful than that.
Thank the heavens our American hero George Steinbrenner spent the early 1980s tirelessly keeping Yankee lore out of the hands of the Soviet Union. I shudder to think what Leonid Brezhnev could have accomplished with Oscar Gamble by his side.
Levine also makes several awkward "jokes" about steroids to a guy who had previously admitted to steroid use and also a guy Levine's Yankees are now trying to get banished for suspected PED clinic involvement. Whoopsadoodle.
Levine said this of the Rangers when sparring in the media with Greenberg:
"If he really wants to impress us then he can get the Rangers off of welfare and show how they can be revenue-sharing payors, rather than recipients for three years in row, without financing from Major League Baseball. That would really be something ... I think Chuck is delusional."
Well, the Rangers' payroll is nearing $140 million while Levine apparently finds writing out the words "you" and "are" to be quite time consuming. Dysfunction is way more fun when it wears pinstripes.
Jim Callis writes about the incredible draft the Anaheim Angels had in 2009. This was, of course, the Mike Trout draft. While Trout would make any draft class look amazing, the Angels also drafted the likes of Patrick Corbin, Tyler Skaggs, Garrett Richards, and Randal Grichuk that year. Now, the humorous part. Even with a legendary draft just four years ago, the Angels still have the worst system in baseball. Ha-ha.
Richard Durrett offers some Ranger Resolutions and begins by discussing the need for better clutch hitting during the 2014 season.
T.R. Sullivan says goodbye to the 2013 Texas Rangers if you happen to desire reading anything else at all about the 2013 season ever again.
Evan Grant was on SportsDay On Air to talk up the possibility of the Rangers selling the naming rights to The Ballpark to jump in on the Masahiro Tanaka sweepstakes.
Lastly, Gerry Fraley is grumpy with Wilmer Font for not being Carlos Pimentel and for needing help to win a Venezuelan winter league game.
