Remember when you were little and you were on a long, boring car trip because your dad wouldn’t spring for pitching, ooops, wouldn’t spring for airfare, so you piled everything and everyone into a small car and drove, and the miles and mile and miles just piled up endlessly and you were stuck in the back seat with your big brother who was a bully and he wouldn’t stop punching you in the shoulder and you kept telling him to stop punching you but every time you told him that it only made him punch you more and you just wanted the car trip to end so you could get out of the car and quit getting punched?

Just nineteen more miles, ooops, nineteen more games to go.

Rangers bats came out again last night. But their arms came out as well. And their bats are not quite powerful enough to overcome their arms. Dane Dunning was staked to a 5-1 lead going into the fourth inning and coughed up three runs before being taken out. The bullpen couldn’t hold a 7-4 lead, and the this long, slow journey to nowhere suffered another loss, 8-7 to the basically minor league Oakland Athletics.

This 2022 car trip to Hell continues with three games in Tampa Bay. The Rays are fighting for a playoff position. Oh, and they have this thing called pitching. Oakland didn’t have that.

Expect to be punched in the shoulder a lot these next three days. Dad is not going to pull the car over and do anything about it either. 

Happy motoring.

*****