Round Rock Express pitcher Nick Martinez allowed seven earned runs.

Baseball is back. Comebacks are back. It’s all so wonderful.

Yesterday was a reminder of how incredible the Rangers season was last year. The regular season, that is.

All those come-from-behind wins. For the first time in a long time, the Rangers showed the ability to turn around a game in the late innings.

And for fans, there couldn’t have been more magical baseball.

Yesterday, in their practice game in Surprise, the Rangers Jerseys were down 8-2 then 10-5 to the Indians Jerseys, mainly due to another collapse from a rotation hopeful. Nick Martinez is battling for the fifth slot in the rotation, a slot more wide-open than Montana and seeming more difficult to get into than Fort Knox.

It appears as if nobody wants to occupy the back end of the Rangers rotation.

But the Rangers Jerseys were able Kick the Nick, scoring two in the sixth, three in the seventh, one in the eighth, and the game winner in the ninth (after blowing the game in the top of the ninth—feeling even more like the 16 Rangers.)

Not too far from Surprise, in San Diego, a game broke out with more actual Rangers than the actual Rangers game. The United States battled Venuzeula in the World Baseball Classic. Rougned Odor and Robinson Chirinos played for Venuzeula. Jonathan Lucroy and Sam Dyson played for USA.

Odor homered in the top of the seventh to put Venezuela up 2-0. Lucroy countered with a sac fly in the bottom of the inning to break the shutout.   Kansas City’s Eric Hosmer hit a three-run shot in the bottom of the eighth to turn the game around and give the win to USA.

Lucroy ended the game going 2-for-3. Dyson pitched an inning-and-one-third of scoreless baseball. And Chirinos went 1-for-3.

So, all in all, the fake Rangers did well. The real Rangers did well.

It was a good day for Rangers not named Nick Martinez. But, then again, he won’t be called a Ranger much longer.