3-3.
It’s not a real, official Texas Rangers cap, as evidenced by the ’47 stitched on its side and stickered on the bill, but it’s a Rangers cap and a good-looking one, much as Texas 6, Kansas City 2 yesterday wasn’t a real, official game, but it was a game, and really good-looking, too, especially the part that the box score indexed as:
Mazara: 3-3
On its face, it has no more meaning than the three consecutive home runs and six runs overall that, a year ago, Colby Lewis gave up before recording an out in the club’s exhibition opener (en route to a career high in wins that lead to 162+), but Wednesday fifth-inning replacement Nomar Mazara’s line drive single to center (and run scored to get Texas on the board) in the sixth inning yesterday, his run-scoring single to right in the seventh, and his three-run bomb to the back of the bullpen in right in the ninth gave us all kinds of overreaction fodder, a fan’s entitlement early in March as long as it’s then dragged into the proper folder, lined with biodegradable plastic.
I share with you the fact that Mazara, born toward the end of Lewis’s high school sophomore year, also went 3 for 3 with a double in Monday’s intrasquad game only because fun baseball is fun, even when it doesn’t count.
Six at-bats and six hits this week against six different pitchers, each a big league veteran: Fun. Especially for a 20-year-old.
Even one not competing for a big league job.
He’s not.
He’s not.
But when he gets here — and that timeline will be Nomar Mazara-dependent, not Josh Hamilton-dependent (something that Ian Desmond’s arrival solidifies) — he will be a gift.
A gift that lasts a long time, like a favorite ballcap that you wear for years and years, and it just keeps fitting better.
Please remember that Michael Choice hit .369/.406/.708 in spring training 2014 while leading the Rangers in plate appearances, and that Ronald Guzman (signed the same day as Mazara but still not out of Class A, and left exposed to December’s Rule 5 Draft without consequence) homered twice in spot duty for Prince Fielder in that same camp, while Rougned Odor was busy hitting .238/.304/.286 that spring.
Take care to exercise appropriate restraint when thinking about Mazara’s super-meaningless 3-3 that followed his other super-meaningless 3-3 this week, and when watching this over and over and over again.
My Mom’s probably the only one who caught on to the references above to 47 and to 3-3, and she’s almost certainly the only one willing to overlook the flagrant shoehorning, but that’s the date and today that’s my age, and ever since I was a kid I’ve always thought that “seven” was the first of the “big” single digits, so this morning I’m feeling like I’m as close to 50 as Nomar Mazara is to the big leagues.
But both can wait.
Some years I’ve included a picture of Kelly Dransfeldt or Juan Moreno or a can of WD-40 or a record adapter to mark my new age, and I suppose I could have gone with Sam Dyson this morning (maybe I would have if he’d punched out six straight yesterday), and, failing that, I can assure you I’d have rolled Ross Detwiler out well before Joe Saunders.
But instead, to celebrate number 47, I just went with a good old Texas Rangers lid, throwback style, but unlike 46 and those numbers before it, 47’s a number that just feels a lot older (though maybe that’s just my low back and throwing shoulder talking) and I’m probably happier just celebrating the 3-3 part, and not the number of times I’ve circled that base.
Nomar’s meaninglessly tantalizing 3-3 yesterday, and his even more meaningless 3-3 tease about 47 hours earlier (BOOM!), make that choice fit even better, snug as a well-worn ball cap in just the right colors.
Max Faulkner/Star-Telegram