Tonight Hiram Davies (5-8, 5.64 ERA) makes his third start of the season as a Royal (once again, Kyle is a child's name, and too Southern for our proud Midwestern tastes, Hiram can either adjust, or hitchhike back to Georgia). While the Rangers aren't great shakes, its likely they'll put up more of a fight than the Twins managed on a blistering get-away-day finale last week. Only time will tell. Of course, if anyone here at RR is a medium, then they might want to consider communicating with Merv Griffin or Anna Nicole in the beyond. The dead can view all of our lives like a wonderful unfolding flower, and both Merv and Anna were big Royals fans. The point is, they both know and would love to share information about events taking place five hours in the future. As the eighteenth century occult mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg reasoned, the afterlife is like entering a great city, whereupon you gradually matriculate towards holy or unholy districts, depending on what kind of soul you are. (i.e. If you die and immediately ask, "hey, where's the dogfighting going down?" you'll probably end up in the Hell part of town.) Either way, after you feed Barbaro and look at the Yangtze River Dolphin and ask James Brown if he "feels good" you're pretty much done. They want to help us, and they're bored. If someone, anyone, finds out how tonight's pivotal, epocj-changing Rangers-Royals tilt goes down, please, please, please, let us know!!

The Rangers counter with the perpetually angry looking Kevin Millwood (7-9, 5.90 ERA). Expect lots of on-mound male posturing and the occasional post-questionable-call glower. Delightful. More proof that by the time I snuff it male behavior in this country will consist solely of gigging frogs, illegal street racing, drunken sexual activity and the stilted conversations inherent to a 60-word vocabulary. Millwood, who owns a 5.90 ERA at home this season, may finally snap one day at strangle someone in the Texas dugout.

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Flares:

• Chris at BallHype touches on the final days of the Bell regime. Seemingly, all my positive thoughts regarding Buddy have once again evaporated -- his self-serving desire to not play September callups -- being a major factor. Still, Chris takes a more positive side.

• Joe Posnanski thinks the Royals can look forward to a bright future. Aside from the merits of JoePo's position, have you ever thought about how little run the idea of a dark future gets? Who ever brings up that possibility? Yet, basically, thats what really happens, no?

• Living, as I do in Cleveland, I'm delighted to announce that the Indians hitting coach, Derek Shelton, is now engaged to a random piece of eye-candy (pictured right). Shockingly, young Alison is already employed by the largest radio station in town (on the most popular show) and does occasional work for the Indians' version of the YES Network, Sports Time Ohio. Of course, she's younger than I am, perhaps her and Jenn Sterger can pass along some advice to a humble, slowly-aging-into-dust blogger about how to get a job in the "real" sports media. You know, the one with all the credibility and integrity? The same group thats done such a wonderful job keeping the public informed and holding the sources of power accountable. We, that is, us "bloggers sitting in our underwear in our parent's basement" -- as for some reason it inevitably goes -- have so much to learn from the mainstream media about the mystical art of journalism. Shelton, 38, has two children from previous expressions of love and has spent his adult life in baseball locker rooms; so you know he's a thoughtful, mature, contemplative guy. Ah, the eternal glories of love. Oh yea, the Indians offense has been terrible for a month and a half, so I guess I should now conclude this blip with a tortured joke about Shelton's priorities and how he's the only one scoring (har har). But, that just isn't what RR is about, and it would severely undercut the ethos of the above paragraph, so I won't go there. No, not at all.

• SB Nation just launched another blog today that might be of some interest to many of you: Bring on the Cats, a K-State blog. Now, along with Rock Chalk Talk we've got Kansas covered. Now we just need a Mizzou site...  
 

• I think my fiancee (why isn't there an English word?!?!) may relax tonight with some Office DVDs, both versions. This is a good excuse to post a link to Creed Thoughts.