The Texas Rangers were looking good coming into the second half of the season with a five game lead.  Here’s where Major League Baseball gets serious.  With a little help from a Mariner‘s base running mistake, the Ranger’s ended Friday’s game against the Seattle team with a barely tweaking 3-2 lead.

The Rangers suffered a minor set-back when catcher, Mike Napoli bruised the inside part of his upper right knee, sliding into home plate during the fifth inning, but his fans have been assured there is no structural damage and he’ll be back in the game within the next few days.  In the meantime, the Rangers decided to recall catcher Luis Martinez from Triple-A Round Rock, sending Reliever, Yoshinori Tateyama in his place.

That winning streak came to a screeching halt July 14th, when the Mariners turned around and clobbered the Rangers 7-0.  Even with Yu Darvish giving it his all, after an initial rough start, pitching a walk, single and hit-batter to load all the bases in the first inning, the Rangers just couldn’t catch up.  Right-hand pitcher, Felix Hernandez slammed the base plate again and again, leaving the Rangers with no score.

The pressure is on.  The Rangers have a formidable team.  They made five appearances in MLB, between 1996 and 2011, all following division championships.  They advanced past Division for the first time in 2010 by defeating Tampa Bay Rays, going on to defeat the New York Yankees for the 2010 World Series, but succumbing to the San Francisco Giants in five games.

They battled again to become the American League champions in 2011, but lost the World Series Championship to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.  Will this be the year they win the title?  Three consecutive World Series appearances would be impressive, no matter how great the team is that steps up to the plate.  The feat has only happened once in thirty-four years, when the Yankees went to four consecutive World Series from 1998 through 2001.  Maybe you can’t win them all, but you can bet the Texas Rangers are going to try.