The Texas Rangers' pitching staff continued to look like the best in the game as the Rangers swept the Yankees at home. Ouch. Mr. Steinbrenner must be restless somewhere. In the meantime, the Red Sox won and are now tied for first as the two teams get ready for their big series. I mentioned here early that when Jeter came back, it could mess up what was a good fluid lineup and I also mentioned here that losing Nick Johnson would hurt the Yankees hitting attack tremendously.

You cannot overestimate the affect a high on base hitter has on a team. I still believe that Barry Bonds 198 walks were the number one reason why the Giants came in first last year. And the managers who kept walking him never got it. I think they have this year as he is ot walking nearly as much. That's why the Yankees miss Nick Johnson so much.

Jason Giambi needs to get going. His slow start is becoming very painful as it is not just the start anymore. I also think that Juan Acevado shouldn't pitch again until he is sent to the minors to figure out why he is throwing beach balls right now. Can you imagine if the Yankees still had Jeff Nelson?

In what was a lot of fun to watch tonight, Pat Burrell hit a long fly up the hill in the centerfield configuration of Minute Maid (formerly Enron) Park in Houston. Biggio was chasing it, hit the hill and crashed to the ground like a train wreck. Very funny to watch.

Speaking of that hill in Houston, the biggest difference in baseball from my youth to now is the change in MLB stadiums. You still have (and hopefully always will have) classics like Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. But the new parks are such a big improvement over the ones that were built when I was young. There was the non-golden era when the Pirates, the Reds and the Phillies all built horrible ball parks all with identical dimensions, astroturf and functional-boring decor. Then you had the awful Olympic Stadium built in Montreal and the hideous dome in Minneapolis. Just as we have a whole generation that can't write, spell or compose a sentence, that must have been a bad era for architects.

Since then we've had wonderfully different parks being built all over baseball. The ballpark in Houston is so distinctive that you can close your eyes and picture the hill in centerfield and the train track in left. Camdon Yarks started the trend and is still a beautiful example of what you should do in building a stadium. San Francisco's park is probably the best of them all with McCovey Cove and how you can walk around the park and watch the game.

Super Stadiums are all over the country: Cincinnati, Houston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Baltimore and Detroit are just a few that have been built with their own identity and quirks and that's great. The biggest change to an old park was the installation of seats to the Green Monster at Fenway. What a great idea! And it wasn't detrimental to the team or the stadium. I'd love to be one of those people who spent a summer visiting all the ballparks in baseball. What a cool idea and a great thing to do. Maybe someday...