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It's not supposed to be this easy: Rangers trot to 2nd post-season win, making Rays look like '98, '99 Rangers


Rangers celebrate second cruise control win over Rays. Photo: Ed Bark

By ED BARK
No other major league team is without at least one post-season series win. But the Texas Rangers now would have to utterly collapse to remain a member of that exclusive club of one.

Texas' 6-0 win at Tampa Bay Thursday afternoon puts the team on a cloud as it heads home to play a possibly clinching game Saturday in Arlington. What happens will happen on TBS, which also has the exclusive rights to carry the best-of-seven American League Championship Series that almost certainly will include the Rangers.

The Rays will whine long and hard -- as they did during the game -- about whether third baseman Michael Young really checked his swing on what would have been a third strike in the fifth inning of a 2-0 game. Young then belted a 3-run homer -- his first hit of the series -- to give Texas and winning pitcher C.J. Wilson a big fat cushion.

From one replay it looked as though Young indeed had checked his swing. From another, maybe not. But those slo-mo shots can be especially deceiving in these cases. Texas got the call, Young capitalized and Tampa Bay cried itself a river. They weren't going to win anyway.

This is uncharted, heady territory for the North Texas Nine. No, they're not the Cowboys. But ride 'em, Rangers and for once take the play away from Jerry Jones and his burly batch of underachievers. The real excitement for the next few weeks to come could be in that li'l brick ballyard down the street from the Cowboys' Roman Colosseum.