a. The most hallowed two-digit number in baseball.
b. Not unrelatedly, the basis of one of the two Rangers trivia questions to which Marc Sagmoen is the answer.
c. For that matter, the answer, as I recall, to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
d. And, today, me.
I don't ask for much, unless you can figure out a way for me to take in not only Neftali Feliz's start against Cleveland today but also Derek Holland's against the Cubs, both at 2:05 our time, the first Cactus League work in each case this spring for the two pitchers most squarely under the microscope in camp.
I'm interested in how Eric Hurley fares in relief of Feliz and how Tanner Scheppers, who follows Holland, handles his second camp assignment, and I'm betting Jurickson Profar suits up in one game or the other, too, but birthdays don't mean as much as they used to, and I'll be just fine if Feliz and Holland kick tail today and move the ball forward as they try to cement bigger roles a month from now than they finished with in November.
When Feliz and Holland posed for the 2009 book cover, I believed, not without company, that their development arc, if we really dreamed on it, could help take this team over the top once they arrived, matured, and grew into something approaching their ceiling projections.
But team success arrived a year early, at least, and while Feliz and Holland contributed, one substantially more than the other, they did so as relievers, not as the pitchers whose 2008 farm explosions (23-7, 2.46, 310 strikeouts and 91 walks in 278 innings) suggested that 40 percent of the future Rangers rotation was working on back-to-back nights, as the summer ended, at Dr Pepper Ballpark in Frisco.
Today, for one day at least, those two are starters once again, if only attempting to prove to the organization that that's what they are, in spite of what they were in 2010. The Rangers will be fine if Feliz and Holland give them what they did last year, particularly late in the season, but the club will be better off if they do prove their case for promotion this month persuasively, perhaps conclusively, starting today, which could be a very big one as camp days go and, for me, a Feliz Cumpleaņos.
Dallas attorney Jamey Newberg has been commenting on Rangers from the big club down through the entire farm system since 1998.
Scott Lucas was born in Arlington, Texas, to Richard and Becky Lucas. He lived mostly in Arlington before moving to Austin, where he graduated from The University of Texas. Scott works for Austin Valuation Consultants, Ltd., and has published several boring articles about real estate appraisal and environmental contamination. He makes a swell margarita and refuses to run longer than ten kilometres.
Eleanor grew up watching the AAA Mudhens in Toledo, Ohio. A loyal Ranger fan since 1979, she works "behind the scenes" at the Newberg Report.
