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Friday, June 27, 1997

Rangers end awful week 'reassured that we can win a game'

By JAIME ARON / AP Sports Writer

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) - This is how bad the last week was for the Texas Rangers:

- The demoted shortstop regained his job because of an injury, then lost it again to someone else.

- The slugger hoping to cash in as a free agent slumped so badly he was dropped a spot in the batting order.

- The ace starter was hit in the knee with a line drive and could miss a start.

- The ace closer who so far had made everyone forget last year's awful bullpen suddenly made those guys not seem so bad after all.

With so many things going wrong, the team president resorted to llamas. Two of them.

Local handlers brought the animals to batting practice under the premise that if they were good luck in Peru, maybe they'd help the team snap out of their funk. They didn't.

Finally, on Wednesday, Texas ended the miserable stretch by beating Anaheim 5-4, prompting pitcher Bobby Witt to say the victory "pretty much reassured ourselves that we can win a game."

The Rangers will have to do that a lot more often if they're going to have any chance of repeating as AL West champions.

Texas was in Oakland on Thursday trying to recover from a seven-game losing streak that was their longest in two seasons and sent them from one game behind division-leading Seattle to 5-1/2 back.

"We've been losing, but it wasn't from a lack of effort," manager Johnny Oates said. "We were in one of those streaks where we were playing just well enough to lose."

Actually, the Rangers were doing so many things wrong that opposing clubs couldn't help but win.

Clutch hitting was a foreign concept, errors became common and the starters and relievers went sour at the same time.

Texas has fallen from the AL's best fielding team last year to 11th. The rotation that won a major league-best 75 games last year is 24-30 this year.

When they finally snapped out of it Wednesday, it wasn't easy.

Mickey Tettleton led off the bottom of the ninth and turned a swinging bunt into a double, quite a feat for a guy with little cartilage in his knees.

Dean Palmer, the slugger dropped to seventh in the lineup for the first time in more than two years, put down a great bunt on a high, inside pitch to get pinch-runner Benji Gil to third.

Anaheim walked the next two batters to face Mark McLemore, who had failed in his two previous at-bats with runners in scoring position.

This time, though, he lined a single to center and the burden of a losing streak was gone.

"Hopefully, we'll build on it," Tettleton said. "It was nice to see smiles. It's a nice way to go out on the road.

"You look at this particular streak we've been in, and it wasn't like this team was playing poorly. It was just a couple of little things here and there that put a damper on everything." Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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