Making plans for the unplanned: Part 1.

The first third hasn't gone the way it was supposed to for the Rangers. Could the middle third usher in a major shakeup?

The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago

Turned around backwards so the windshield shows

Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse

Still, it's so much clearer

* * *

These things, they go away

Replaced by every day

A week ago, a month ago, six months ago, if all I knew was that the Rangers would hit the one-third mark of the season with a ninth-inning comeback win in Chicago, a game in which their starting pitcher — statistically one of the least effective in baseball for the last four seasons, and on March paper probably no better than the No. 8 starter here — made his ninth Texas start, in none of which he’s allowed more than three runs, I’d probably be excited to see the rest of the picture painted.

I suspect finding myself now looking up where the 2024 Houston Astros, who won 88 games and ran away with the West, sat after 54 games — they were 24-30 — was not on the bingo card.

But here we are. Grasping.

Because this is what sports does to us. Does for us. There is always hope.

And even when there’s not, there still is.

Just maybe in a different form.

Someone not paying particularly close attention to the plot lines that have led up to the Rangers’ 26-28 record — but maybe aware that virtually every key cog in the expected lineup has spent time off the active roster, as have four starting pitchers (but not the two coming off elbow surgery) as well as the key offseason bullpen signing — might conclude that things could be much worse. And they’d be right.

They might also believe, knowing only the above, that things are bound to get much better.

They’d possibly be wrong.