Big picture.

I’m not really a pack rat, but I do tend to hang onto remnants of my insanities. Stuff I’ve written. A fractured aluminum Easton 33” from high school. The sports pages the day after the Herschel Trade.

A couple Ziplocs full of tickets and badges and other wrinkled and worn residue of the months I spent chasing baseball games in October 2010 and October 2011.

I made lots of reckless decisions those two months, attributable to 35 years of perpetually dashed sports-hopes, and it was the best demonstration of serial irresponsibility ever.

A little more than three months ago, a few days after Carlos Peguero signed and the Blue Jays claimed Matt West, and a few days before the Rangers traded for Yovani Gallardo and then Carlos Corporan, I pulled those Ziplocs off a shelf, printed up some photos from those same two October’s, and took the pile to a frame shop, with a rough idea at best of what I had in mind.

This week, on Monday, a day after the season’s most demoralizing loss and a day before perhaps its most satisfying win, I went to pick up the finished product.

Mixed in among a bunch of perforated cardboard on flimsy stock, printed in three-color separation and marked not by date but by game number and trapped under the glass, planted on a muted green and surrounded by rustic brown, were photos that marked the time in more familiar ways.

There’s Cliff jumping into Bengie’s arms, and there’s Neftali jumping into Bengie’s arms.

Neftali, back when you knew what was going to happen whenever he got the ball, and you couldn’t wait.

There’s Rally Minka and the Pancake House, and Nellie with his hands over his head, and there’s A.J. Burnett with his over his, too, and that was awesome.

There’s the Vlad Pyramid, as the Yankees’ most productive player — not then, but now — took his shuffling walk of shame toward the visitors’ dugout, almost two hours after a six-year-old caught the one big league foul ball he’s caught to this day, in what may have been the greatest win in franchise history.

Nestled among stadium shots and family pics and lanyards and pins and hotel keys, there’s Michael and Mike and a tumbling Miguel, and there’s Adrian, so soaked from his St. Pete beer shower that I think my own clothes reeked of the stuff for days.

There’s Elvis making maybe the greatest important defensive play I’ve ever seen, and Wash with his hands on Derek’s shoulders, minutes before probably the greatest important pitching performance in Texas Rangers history.

Yeah, there’s Wash. And Josh.

And a daughter who was about as old then as her brother is now, which makes those Octobers seem like an eternity ago, considering she’s in high school now.

Actually, it seems like forever since those two fall months for lots of reasons.

Thirty-eight players appeared for Texas in the 2010 and 2011 post-seasons. Only seven are still with the club, not counting the two in the front office. Maybe an eighth is on the verge of coming back.

Nine are retired, and two others are out of work but presumably don’t want to be.

Three are in AAA, three are in Boston, two each are Orioles and Phillies and Angels, one plays in Korea and another is in Mexico.

Those two majestic playoff runs were followed by two more years of 162+, though they ended at 163, and after that was a season that miraculously stopped short of 100 losses, not counting the one involving the last manager you’d ever think had any quit in him walking away from his team with games still on the schedule.

October 2010 and October 2011 seem like a long time ago.

But they’re now on my wall, and I’m in that room, and it doesn’t feel as out of reach. #sappy

There’s Adrian and Derek and I’m not done believing Elvis or Neftali — both still on the growth side of 27 — can refind it. (Hey, the Yankees slugger that Nef froze in Game 6 is back carrying fantasy teams across the land.) Prince is here now, Leonys and Nick and Shawn are showing signs of a new level, we’ve got Roogie and Keone, and Martin — and maybe even Matty — could be making starts earlier on the schedule, along with Derek, than Cliff did five years ago.

And speaking of five years ago, the Rangers were 5-9 and three games back at this point in the 2010 season — a game worse than they are today. They started that 2010 season with a rotation, in order, of Scott Feldman and Rich Harden and converted reliever C.J. Wilson and Asian import Colby Lewis and unproven 24-year-old Matt Harrison, at the time inferior by any measure to the 2015 Mariners rotation of Felix Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, James Paxton, J.A. Happ, and Taijuan Walker, and, yeah, the Rangers’ top four starters are all hurt right now, but outside of King Felix, those other four Seattle starters, in 11 times out, have zero wins and as many quality starts (three) as Nick Martinez has in his three times to the mound.

Yu will be back in a year, and maybe a couple of Chi Chi and Joey and Nomar and Jorge and Jake and Luke beat him here, and let’s give it some more time but Nick might just be doing some ceiling renovation right now.

I’m not sure if it’s those 18 square feet of sports-memory have me overdosing on the Kool Aid right now, or all the awesome that Texas 7, Arizona 1 provided while the basketball team looked like one on the brink of a complete retool, but I’m in a good baseball place right now, grateful forever for 2010 and 2011 and eager to plan, if only in my head for now, what the third frame will eventually look like.