Major League Baseball

Short memory has Rangers back in ALCS

Published Oct. 17, 2010 5:05 a.m. ET

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Ian Kinsler took his lead off third base, with suppertime shadows crawling across Rangers Ballpark. It was the bottom of the fifth inning. Eric Nadel, eminent radio voice of the home team, told his listeners that this “could be a big run.”

The score, at that moment, was 6-1.

The Rangers were winning.

Yet, it was a perfect choice of words: For this team, against that opponent, there was no such thing as a lead too large.

The collapse of the Texas bullpen in Friday’s eighth inning — a happy 5-1 lead became a bitter 6-5 defeat — tore open the scars of an anxious fan base. The Yankees staged a similar rally against the Rangers in a playoff game 14 years ago; Texas had not beaten New York in the postseason since. And baseball is a sport of long memories.

So, here was the Rangers’ plan in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series: 1) Score. 2) Score again. 3) Hope.

Kinsler did score in that fifth inning when Mitch Moreland, a rookie who has never set foot in New York City, punched a single to left. Based on the 7-2 final, the Rangers didn’t need the run. The murmurs in the mezzanine said otherwise. The grand exhale from this crowd wasn’t going to come until the home team shook hands.

“I heard fans counting down the outs,” reliever Darren O’Day said afterward.

You sure that was coming from the crowd?

O’Day smiled.

“We might have been doing a little bit of that in the bullpen.”

Of course they were. And who could blame them? The baseball deities had set up the Rangers for a catharsis or catastrophe, with no options in between.

The New York starter was gone early. Texas took a 5-0 lead. Just like the day before.

The irony was rich. The Rangers dugout had to be talking about it.

Right?

“No,” countered the captain, Michael Young. “Matter of fact, if you asked a lot of these guys what ‘irony’ meant, they’d probably be a little confused.

“In all seriousness, that was something we really, truly did file away last night. It has been a major thing for this club: We forget about things like that.”

Thanks to the short memory of 25 men, we have a series. There is indeed a roadmap from Texas to the World Series, even if the coffee splotch from Friday’s mess hasn’t entirely gone away.

The Rangers managed a split against the defending world champs. They earned their first-ever postseason win at home, thus ending the incessant questions about that. They have Cliff Lee to pitch Game 3. They are (tentatively) scheduled to face the iffy A.J. Burnett in Game 4.

They are in surprisingly decent shape.

Confident, too.

“We outplayed them for two days,” Kinsler said. “They had a great eighth inning yesterday, but we were able to outplay them. We’re going to have a day off. Hopefully, we can continue to play well. Yankee Stadium is going to be a little different.”

It will be. Leads are even more difficult to protect in a hostile environment. But for all the worries about the Texas bullpen — and those concerns remain very legitimate — the Yankees have surrendered more runs in this series. The Rangers, contrary to rampant and reckless speculation, did not forget how to pitch after beating Tampa Bay.

How were the Rangers better in Game 2? Let’s begin when starter Colby Lewis left the game. That’s when the home crowd pivoted from cheering to fretting.

Lewis surrendered two runs and pitched into the sixth. That was sufficient, despite the unease when Rangers manager Ron Washington emerged for his first pitching change.

The matchup: left-handed reliever Clay Rapada against right-handed pinch hitter Marcus Thames. This did not look for the Rangers. Thames crushes lefties. In fact, he delivered the game-winning hit against a left-hander (Derek Holland) less than 24 hours before.

Also, Rapada was one of the guilty parties on Friday night. He threw one pitch, and it was crushed for a single.

But in Game 2, Rapada had this on his side: He played with Thames in Detroit. He watched Thames victimize many a southpaw. He knew where not to throw it. In other words: No meaty fastballs. So, Rapada steered around the zone, used mostly off-speed stuff, and struck him out swinging on a flat-planed curveball.

Rapada needed nine pitches, but there it was: A job well done by the Texas bullpen.

“I wanted to get out there as soon as possible,” Rapada said. “When that phone rang, and they told me to get going, I couldn’t have been happier. You wanted to erase that one.”

Others took the same approach. By day’s end, the Rangers bullpen combined to throw 3 1/3 scoreless innings. There were nervous moments — due in large part to four walks — but the work was more than adequate.

Look. No one is going to suggest that the Rangers should feel better than the Yankees in the late innings. The Texas closer, Neftali Feliz, is a rookie who has had trouble throwing strikes in the postseason. The New York closer, Mariano Rivera, is the greatest of all-time.

But now the Rangers have shown that they can, in fact, close out a postseason game against New York. Save for one inning on Friday night, the Bronx Bombers have looked like a pretty ordinary team. These postseason novices from Texas have no reason to be afraid.

As they packed their bags for the flight to New York, the Rangers heard Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” coursing through the clubhouse speakers. With a legitimate bullpen in tow, they are ready for the trip.

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