Wash; away; the past.

The 30-year-old career National League pitcher in his first full season as an American Leaguer was in a National League park once again and, like it was old times, he shoved.

The 30-year-old career National League catcher in his first full season as an American Leaguer was in a National League park once again and, like it was old times (in even years), he raked.

It was Texas that benefited from extra outs and it was Texas that led all the way and it was Texas that played crisper baseball and that issued fewer walks and that threw fewer pitches and that put more runners on base and, most importantly, that had more cross the plate.

Like it was old times.

It was a night on which the Rangers were the better team than the NL’s best, and on which an NBA TV audience was once again treated to PuppyMonkeyBaby, and for those three baseball hours sharp (with the exception of the final few minutes), it felt like another year.

2017 has been a year in which Adrian Beltre has missed more than half the season and Cole Hamels has missed more than half the season and Carlos Gomez has missed a bunch of the season and Andrew Cashner (whom I had all wrong before he got here) and Mike Napoli and Jose Leclerc have missed some of the season and Tyson Ross and Hanser Alberto and Jake Diekman (gut) have missed all of the season and A.J. Griffin (gout) has missed part of the season once, and another part of the season another time.

A year in which Sam Dyson went from 60-to-0 in record time and in which Jurickson Profar, well, hey, Jurickson, here’s a really good opportunity to modify the increasingly indelible narrative, and in which Rougned Odor has had almost as inexplicable a downshift as Dyson.

A year that features a month in which this team, currently four games under .500 and 14 games back in the division and seven teams back in the Wild Card chase, started out by facing the best club in the American League, now tees it up with the best club in the National League, then heads out to face the best club in the American League again, then faces the second best club in the American League in a couple weeks, and sees only one club with a losing record (the nemesis Blue Jays) all month, until its final day.

A year that features a month in which the draft is unfortunately arriving as a welcome distraction and in which stories about Japan’s most intriguing player in a long time are as riveting and adrenalizing as any local angle right now and in which trade talk is going to heat up considerably, and not from the vantage point to which we’re accustomed.

The Rangers aren’t going to deal impact prospects this summer, and adding complementary pieces won’t change the above, but I will say it again:

We will never forget this Rangers season.

Friday night, meanwhile, gave us some feels that’d been sort of difficult to remember.