The Angels, despite their recent winning ways, can’t quite seem to make the Texas Rangers go away. The season is about to head into August yet the Rangers remain 3.5 games back of the Angels even after the Halos just rattled off a lovely little eight game winning streak. It seems nothing the Angels do can give them any separation in the race for the division title. Well, fortunately for the Angels, Mother Nature is here to lend a helping hand by giving the Rangers the swine flu.
Texas has struggled this past week with several players being stricken with flu-like symptoms and it turns out that at least one of them, Vicente Padilla, has tested positive for swine flu. All the affected Rangers are expected to be fine (so, no, I am not an a-hole for making fun of them getting this not-as-serious-as-everyone-first-though disease).
Maybe I am just being cold-hearted, but it is nice to see that the Baseball Gods are exercising their influence in the Angels favor for a change this season after they struck such unwarranted and damaging blows against the Angels early in the season (i.e. injuries to Santana, Lackey, Shields and Vlad plus the Adenhart crash).
Of course, what actually might be more concerning, at least from the Angel perspective, is that despite being riddled with the most feared disease since the bubonic plague the Rangers still have managed to win six of their last seven games. Texas is supposed start dropping off right now anyway due to the crippling summer heat in Texas but instead they have gotten hotter than Vicente Padilla’s current temperature. Maybe fatigue will catch up with them soon though (hopefully around August 7th when the Angels head to Arlington).