You're listening to the down Beat on ninety seven the Freak Morning, Morning Morning. This is the Morning down Beat, six thirty five in the am, Kevin Turner, myself, Daniel bayliss Man. We'd got some big shoes to fill. Our compatriot Mikey Serroy is on a little mini vacation. He'll be back Wednesday. He needed a couple of days to decompress after his big weekend following the Fins up in two Bill's territory to watch the Dolphins take on Buffalo
his first time up there, and saw some videos online. Looks great, Looks like they had a ball man. Just what I can tell, what I can glean from vicariously, you know, living through his experience. That stadium looks amazing, that crowd looks amazing. And there might not be an NFL experience closer related to the college football experience than that one. Yeah, that open air stadium and just everybody's super tight and close together. It looked
like an old school college football atmosphere. It always looked like a cool place to go, especially when you go on a day when the weather's like what sixty five degrees or whether whatever was It looked perfect. And I went to Lambeau last week and it was sixty nine at kickoff. Lambo's probably a lot like that as well, I'm sure. I mean, I don't know, I've never been an Arrowhead in Kansas City. Everyone says that's a cool one
to go to. I think those are probably the three closest related markets that do it that way, you know, super old school, smaller market teams. You know, Kansas City, it's it's considered a major city, but it's not that big by comparison to you know, obviously Dallas or Houston or San Francisco, La, New York. It's a smaller market team. And it just it seems really cool that those those cities have that vibe to them when it comes to their NFL experience, because you know, I know what
ours is like and it ain't that, you know. I wonder if Kansas City is now about to just take a big boost in popularity. Did it just get the most female fans ever for a while, we'll see. I mean that was crazy last night. Oh and I was just watching how they would handle it. I didn't know that they were just gonna just go It's the Taylor Swift Show. Featuring the Jets and the Chiefs. That's how ABC chose to handle it, and you could tell that they were uncomfortable doing it,
but it's what they did. Yeah, and I'm sure that was a directive passed down to them by people that are a lot smarter than they are. I don't last night. It was probably the first night, not the first night, but the night that had the most number of wives going, you know what, I really want to watch Sunday Night football while the husband's like, I really want to watch this new episode of the Simpsons. I don't care about tonight's game. Family guys on it. I'm thirty. Let
me get that. And don't forget the premiere of crap Opolus. Oh yes, of course, crap Opolus, the Dan Harmon show featuring one of the guys from What We Do in the Shadows. It looks terrible reviews. It's got terrible reviews. The previous looked like it could be. It looks like it's part of that Fox Edgy Sunday Night animation. I don't watch too much of that stuff anymore, but there was a time. Yeah, it would have taken in some crap Opolus once BoJack Horseman happened. I was like,
I don't need to see anything animated again. It's difficult, too too good. Yeah, to to outdo that for adult animation for sure. I guess it is six thirty eight, and that means it's time for if you're ready, Kat, Yeah it Oh, thank you, Danny. Fantastic. So the Rangers made the playoffs. I mean, give it up for the Rangers. How about that seven years, seven year drought win season? Why does
it feel disappointing? I don't know. I guess if you put the entire season that picture inside the frame, you're kind of being greedy if you are disappointed. But I'm also of the mindset that as a season progresses, I think that your your expectations of the outcome of that season, you have every right to change them. Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
You know, this is this was not the same team that we thought we had in April and the ups and downs that they went through as far as you know, losing their ace pretty early on, making a big trade and getting a horse that you were hoping was going to take you to the Promised Land and be that number one guy in a series see him two maybe
three times if the series went long enough in the playoffs. Speaking of Matt Scherzer, him to see him go down, to watch other injuries affect your offense for a while, then see that kind of come back, you know, incrementally, just to watch your bullpen be exposed as one of historically one of the worst bullpens in baseball, not just this year but in the history
of the game, so bad. Somehow, at the end of the season, they put all those pieces together and you're thinking, holy crap, this team built a two and a half game lead in the AL West with only what was it at the time, four games to play, four games to play, and to watch them squander that away, which was fate a complete that they were going to win their division and all they had to do was a tick above the bare minimum to do that. And all they did was
the literal bare minimum just to get into the playoffs. And now they got to turn around play three, possibly three games on the road in Tampa against what's a pretty damn good Tampa team just to advance to the next round. It just seems I'm a little disappointed considering what they were set up for in the middle of last week to where they are now. It's just I'm a
little disappointed. But I didn't think they'd be here this early either, So I don't know, I really don't know how to weigh those two two outcomes. This should have been the best team in Rangers history with their bullpen prevented that. I mean, it should have been better than the record of the Josh Hamilton years that we kind of think about. Okay, now there's a
couple of things. I've thought about it a lot. And and Mike was kind of questioning you and I on Friday when we were going to just watch things, You're gonna be bad because we were coming in off them. On last Thursday night, in game one of a four game series Againt Seattle or all this, Chapman dropped trou and took a dump on the on the pitcher's mouth, allowed to walk off, walk off win for Seattle. Me put a bunch of people on base, and they took him out of the games
and they couldn't even pinch anymore. And it ended up going on Jonathan Hernandez Ledger after he get a couple outs. But whatever, they lost. Well, the Yes, the Inherited Runners were his. He didn't actually give up, give it up at the guys that were on base were belonging to It's easy to point at him and go, you did this Friday. He has sucked abolutely stable. The fact that they even let him into high leverage games at this point in the season shows not. Yes, they literally have nobody
else to go to Friday night, the bats don't operate. I think they lost eight and nothing or something. Okay, I mean while the Astros went on Friday. So if all these outcomes that had to have, the Rangers needed two positive outcomes to happen. And by positive outcomes I mean either a win or an Astro's loss, or two Astro's loss or two Astro's losses. That ain't gonna happen. Well, sure didn't because Astros went ahead and one
Friday, but one Saturday and then one Sunday. Rangers went on Saturday night. So they are The wind puts them in the playoffs in a wild card spot. So awesome, And in baseball it's tradition. You pop bottles, you celebrate because it's one hundred and sixty two games, and then as it grind and held pitchers and catchers reported in the middle of February, and here you are in October. Absolutely you celebrate, but also at the time the
corks were popping off. I'm just saying. They had live footage of this on Valley. I was watching it. I looked at my phone. It's going on with the Astros. Top of the ninth The Astros are beating the Diamondbacks one to nothing. And I just couldn't help but go, we're gonna have to win tomorrow. Well, why are we partying. We can party tomorrow no matter what happens, lose, even if you lose, we can
party tomorrow. I kept thinking that, and then you're no fun guy if you think that, especially if you tweet it out, You're no fun guy. You're negative guy. Why don't you let them have fun? Man? And I'm like, because tomorrow they have a game at noon on the West Coast. It was two here, It's noon in Seattle where they are, And what they were playing for is a week off to not have to go to Tampa Bay and have a three game series. It's maybe the best team
in baseball. There was a lot to play for yesterday, and they showed up and sucked and didn't hit and didn't look like they wanted to be there, and they lost one nothing. They got shut out twice in that series. Right, Yes, yeah, I believe. So what's your definition of partying, because look, if you if you clinch a playoff spot, I don't think there's anything wrong with having some flutes of champagne set up and you
know, spray the clubhouse whatever, have a couple of SIPs. But I mean, do we know that they went absolutely crazy and went out on the town and took in all of the things that Seattle has to offer and showed up yesterday just drag an ass hung over for that game. We don't know that. In fact, here's what we do know if we're to believe when Emily Jones, I believe Emily Jones, Here's what she said to me on Twitter, and I'm finding it because it's important that it be found. Basically,
she was alluding to the fact of because she saw my tweet. I saw a tweet of third catcher and sometimes bullpen member Austin Hedges, who they put in the game when they're losing ten nothing a lot, and I saw him just getting riffed, just going at him, which is always fun. Watching those videos to see who goes hard who doesn't. And I said this on Twitter. I found it here we go, I gotta get destroyed tomorrow. Wait, I guess Emily deleted to tweet she wouldn't do that. I
don't think she would, but wasn't showing up. We'll just paraphrase. Well, it was said to the point of there was no partying. The champagne popping, bottle popping was thirty minutes. No one went out after no party. I believe that. I absolutely believe Evan Grant tweeted something about that, because I don't know who it was that kind of tweeted what you were intimating a little bit earlier about the Rangers partying and they they got one more game
to win, and he said, hey, there was no partying. They popped some bottles in the in the clubhouse immediately went to have dinner. He said that they watched the conclusion of the Astros game, which you said is logistically probably unlikely because of the timing of everything. Maybe some of the players did made it in there while they were in the final inning. I don't know, but he said that there nobody went out, and in fact, I think he said, Marcus Simeon was crushing a Chick fil A sandwich.
That was the extent of the partying. Yeah, and I believe that. I believe it too, because I think that they probably did realize, dude, we we got to come in and win tomorrow. But look, why did they look like such ass yesterday? Why did they look like such ass for up and down for the back half of this season or the last third of this season. I mean, this is just kind of who they are. This series He's was in a way, kind of a micro microcosm of
the way that the last third of this season is gone. Yeah, So I'm not really surprised by it. It's like, look, it's very ranger of them too, kind of I don't want to say back into the playoffs, because they did win the game necessary to clinch their their playoff berth. But it's a very ranger and it does remind me of the time. And I can't remember the year. You're probably got a clear image of this in your mind, the time that they won their division because of something else that
happened in the league and they were still playing their games. Yeah, and I think they looked up at the scoreboard and maybe it was Seattle or Anaheim. It was it was Oakland. They were they were in Oakland, Okay,
and then they celebrate that was twenty eleven. But they you know, they're in the middle of the game and they realize, oh my gosh, we're going to the playoffs, and they kind of just look around at each other like all right, and then when the game ended, it's it's anticlimactic too to celebrate, So it's kind of like, what do we do that
happens in the nineties two it seemed very Ranger. It's that they got into the playoffs this year and then follow it up, which also takes you back to you know, everybody talks about Game six in the twenty eleven World Series. It's like, well, you know what, that just tied the series. Saint Louis didn't win the World Series after Game six. The Rangers had a chance to come back the next day and win the World Series when they just absolutely didn't show up. This was maybe a baby version of that.
You know, I want to read a text to you please because you can text us in at all times two and four or eight one seven seven eight seven one nine seven one. This is good this guy says, would you stop bitching him at the partying if then partying too hard was the reason for Sunday, then explained Thursday and Friday, when they scored a grand total of two runs, that's I'm not bitching him aout them partying. I'm bitching about
them being the Rangers. Because if Thursday night, one thing happens Thursday night, okay, and again they don't have the most historical bad bullpen of all time, then Thursday's handled. You went on Saturday, you're good, and now you can go home for three or four days. And then you go and you worry about round two. You could spend the early part of the week with a with a Champagne IV. Yes you want. Who cares? That says, I just get the business taken care of. The business was
not taken care of. We're just saying this now. This is very Texas Rangers of them, and to kind of explain that if you don't know what we mean, Boston for the longest time, and the Cubs too, pretty much the you know until like two thousand and four, Boston and Chicago until a little bit later than that, you know, you could claim some type of curse. How this team's cursed the Rangers. They don't really have anything a curse to blame the way that things have happened to them have happened.
No, it was long before that. It's it's just like it's just a strange air about this team that, for whatever reason, you know, they're not going to be able to get out of their own mind. They're just gonna they're gonna have the shotgun pointed safely down at the ground and somehow it's gonna go right into their foot. Did you know they called Matt Bush up again this weekend? No, I didn't even know the guy was still yea even in the system. I was like, did they have a ginger Ale
celebration for him? Because as the story ten years ago, the Josh Hamilton ginger Ale celebration. I was like, what about him because he can't be around alcohol either, like underreported because it happened on Friday. John Gray's on the injured list. John Gray's not in your playoff rotation. They went from having a week to get their pitching in order in some form to kind of not knowing who's starting Game one of the playoffs, where you didn't think it
was gonna get any worse. It did. Now I got big. I got big problems with baseball and the way they roll Sunday at two pm. At all games happen at once. Okay, love when all games happen at once, and playoff situations great, Do it on a Wednesday night, like people are watching football on Sunday. Do it on a Wednesday night. Make one game one sixty two on a Wednesday night at seven pm. Now, another thing I have a big grap about. Most people have jobs. Most
people go to work. Game one, two, and probably three. If there is a game three for the Rangers two pm Tomorrow, two pm Wednesday, two pm Thursday in Tampa Bay, all three games in Tampa Bay the same way seven years ago, playing in Toronto, I believe Toronto, every every game was one at one o'clock, one oh five. By the time, you know, when I was working out afternoon, drive over with the ticket. By the time we got on the air at three thirty, the
games were basically over. Yeah, yeah, going right into postgame show. Seriously, by by four o'clock we were we were in the middle of of faux diamond talk at that point. There's another good text Champagne is crap. Why do we still use it to celebrate evolve people? It depends, It depends on the champagne. Yeah, if they're if they're getting a qt champagne like you were. Yeah, it's probably not the best, but there is
some decent stuff. It was a lot of beer just being popped and just thrown on your head, and I'm like, God, that's got to burn your eye a little bit. It isn't fact the best way to celebrate. I guess, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it would be. I don't know. I've never gotten with thirty of my closest friends who are all athletic and of some sort, and also old coaches as well. Let's keep in mind thirty of my closest friends and then all the old coaches, let's
all hang out and start popping bottles. Maybe that would be fun. And then you here you have Bruce Bocci, who just had what an incredible run with the Giants in the in the two thousands, just kind of looking around, going, guys, really we clinched a wild card berth I put the drinks away, please. Yeah, champagne doesn't taste the best. I think it's just the effect of the bottle popping, which is yeah, because I
know when I mean, it wasn't champagne. In college when we won our conference, it was like, was it like the cider the obviously we couldn't drink, but this is like the pop and yeah, that's what it is. It's not necessarily the taste thomy bubbly. Yeah. Well, I don't have a hard time. They weren't hungover yesterday. If you watched the game, you're like, this is a hungover baseball team. They all looked tired. Everybody had flu like symptoms. I don't know, man, just good
luck and go Rangers, and we're happy. Are you stranger? Things have happened? You should have won more than ninety games this year, but you're and it's and it's back to back to back. It's Wednesday, Thursday, and it's oh no, it's Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in Tampa at two pm. All three games in Tampa. You lost. That you would have had home field, you would have won one game. You would have been home field in the series would start on Saturday. But on the upside,
Kevin, it's not going it's not going to be on Lifetime Network. Or Court TV. Yeah, they are going to be on a major network. So for those of you that are non bally subscribing the season long, not being able to watch your team sufferers, Well they fix that. We got that back ABC, ABC tomorrow, get two o'clock Game one. I wish I could tell you who was starting for the Rangers. They don't know yet. That's awesome, that's such And we still love the same team. Don't
get us wrong. We love our Rangers. We do. And you know what, we've earned the right to kick them in the nuts whenever we want. They square us right in the nuts. They just square us up and put a boot to our nads. We can do it to them back coming up next. Oh boy, the Cowboys still can't score in the red zone. I found a negative about yesterday's game. It's the only one. Next time, ninety seven one the freak