There's usually nothing to like about a spring or summer day that doesn't include a baseball game.
After all, what's the point of those seasons if you can't enjoy it with a beer, some peanuts and nine innings of the national pastime? It might as well be the middle of winter.
Thursday is the rare exception to that rule. The Rangers don't have a game to play and that's much better than the alternative.
It has been a stretch of 20 games in 20 days for Ron Washington's merry men, the longest allowed under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Such stretches are always difficult for teams, but this one has been exacerbated by the injuries that have left the Rangers without the kind of depth you need to navigate unforgiving patches of the schedule.
Since starting the run with a sweep of the White Sox, the Rangers have gone 5-11 and the last few weeks have often felt like a snowball heading downhill. The problems kept getting bigger and bigger without any chance for the team to step back, take a breath and allow the pressure to dissipate. Thursday gives the Rangers a chance to make that happen.
The off day would be a good thing under any circumstances, but it is hard to think of any circumstance better than this one. Unlike many off days, the Rangers aren't traveling before resuming business on Friday which means they can spend the day doing nothing but recharging their batteries.
And those fully recharged batteries will come in handy when the Angels roll into town with Jered Weaver and Dan Haren starting the first two games of the series. Beating aces on back-to-back nights is never going to be easy, but doing it with the needle pointed toward empty is darn near impossible.
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That's why we'll deal with a day without baseball. Let's just not make a habit of it, okay?
