Concession Speech: 2012 Texas Rangers (Big League Stew)

With the regular season over, teams are facing an offseason filled with golf rounds and hot-stove strategy.
But we're not going to let them get off that easy. No sir. No way. In an attempt to bring some closure between franchise and follower, we're giving a blogger from each team the opportunity to give a�concession speech for this�year's squad. Up next is our friend Benjamin Morris of Lone Star Ball , who's had the unenviable task of surrendering the last three Rangers seasons. He also penned the 10 best things about being a Rangers fan for the Stew earlier this season.
Ladies and gentlemen, Texans and bandwagoners, alienated Houston Astros fans, and followers of the Church of Nolan, I hoped I wouldn't have to give this speech tonight. I was hoping, like all of you, that we would beat a bloody trail of broken candidates all the way through October, and that I'd return triumphant clutching the hard-won Commissioner's Trophy that has been denied us so long.
It wasn't the unstoppable Kennedy family of the baseball postseason that did us in, the sainted New York Yankees. It wasn't the "buy-me-a-championship" free-spending Ross-Perot-of-the-AL-West Anaheim Angels. If you had told me in the heady days of May that we would be denied cosmic justice by the potty Dennis Kucinich of organized baseball, the Oakland A's, I would have called you nuts.
I know what you're thinking. The A's may have won the AL West, but we still tasted the postseason. Balderdash! Playing the Baltimore Orioles for the right to wear a dunce cap saying "fourth seed" to the American League playoffs was the most demoralizing and ignominious end to a glorious campaign since the unfortunate confluence of Gary Hart, a tart named Donna Rice, and a boat named Monkey Business. They started Joe Saunders in their one-game playoff against us. Joe Saunders! Against Yu Darvish! That's like debating Newt Gingrich using only a slide whistle.Will Smith Dick Wolf Dave Matthews Band Tom Brady Ronaldinho Jodie Foster Ray Romano Paris Hilton Adam Sandler Derek Jeter