The Day Ohtani Came To Town

So, you’ve all heard about the Angels two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani. I won’t bore you repeating it. When the Rangers released their 2018 schedule I checked to see when the Angels were coming to town, and put those dates on the calendar, I wanted to catch Ohtani in person, and SCORE him in my scorebook (because to me, that’s the only valid proof that I saw a certain player in person, but that’s a whole nother story).

Ideally, I had hoped to see him pitch, but he had started Sunday in Oakland, and this series was only 3 games starting on Monday. I’d have to settle for him DHing. I knew that he usually sat out the day after he pitched (Monday) so I eagerly awaiting the release of the lineup for Tuesday…no Ohtani. Oh man (no pun intended), I hope he starts on Wednesday, I don’t want to have to wait until August the next time the Angels come to town... finally at about 3PM I saw he was penciled in at DH, so I headed out to get my ticket.

I walked around the stadium prior to gates opening, went in and hiked up to the upper deck observation to see the construction of their new indoor stadium, and caught some BP.

New stadium is pretty much just a hole so far.

I was glad to be able to catch the Angels BP.

 The Rangers have an Autograph Wednesday several times a season, and this happened to be one of those Wednesdays, so I was able to pick up a few autographs of players/coaches signing on the concourse:

The Rangers don't announce who'll be signing, you find out when you get there, so I pulled a small stack of Rangers to take with me. Fortunately I had this Drew Robinson card.

The team provides these photo cards if you don't have anything else for them to sign.

Game ticket with Rua autograph.

(A good detective would see that I didn't sit in my assigned seat)

Game Action: Glad I had my camera ready, I caught Ohtani's RBI single in the first, and some action when he moved over to second.

He went on to go 1-3 with a walk and an RBI. I was a happy camper with that.

Some Game Notes:
* MLB Debut for Angels starter Jaime Barria (Angels #7 Prospect), he went 5 and ended up with the win.
* Ohtani was picked off at first, it was overturned on challenge, but then Ohtani got picked off again.
* Elvis Andrus was hit by a Keynan Middleton fastball that fractured his elbow.